Recent Developments in Climate Justice
Climate justice can be defined generally as addressing the disproportionate burden of climate change impacts on poor and marginalized communities. It seeks to promote more equitable allocation of these burdens at the local, national, and global levels through proactive regulatory initiatives and reactive judicial remedies that draw on international human rights and domestic environmental justice theories. Yet, efforts to define climate justice as a field of inquiry remain elusive and underinclusive. A recent book, Climate Justice: Case Studies in Global and Regional Governance Challenges (ELI Press 2016), seeks to fill that void by providing an overview of the landscape of climate justice from a variety of legal and geographic perspectives. On March 10, 2017, ELI convened the book’s editor and three contributing authors to discuss current developments. In this Dialogue, we present a transcript of the seminar, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations.