D: Human Resilience and Climate Justice

Calls for Climate Justice have a double focus on material and ideational aspects. The rising pressure of climate change affects societies in the Global South and in the Global North, augments environmental inequalities, and increasingly turns into violence (Martínez-Alier & Walter, 2016). Recent examples of conflicts over resource extraction in Latin America show that Indigenous peoples are among the most vulnerable to these pressures and are the most affected. For example, water contamination damages communities’ resources but also affects rivers as ‘living beings’ in their worlds (de la Cadena 2015; Escobar 2015). At the same time, classical “fenced” conservation models are challenged by critiques of Indigenous peoples denouncing scandals involving the violation of rights. Consequently, current global initiatives to halt biodiversity loss increasingly acknowledge that local communities have proven to be more successful in sustaining ecosystems.

This session on resilience and climate justice is organized along two lines: The first focuses on education and culture, including Indigenous knowledge and alternative views on human-nature relations, such as the Rights of Nature (RoN) denoting nature’s inherent right to exist and flourish. The second line focuses on the material aspects of fair distribution and access to water, land, and trade by zooming in on conflicts over resources as well as measures to improve environmental and social standards, such as supply chain laws. Finally, the session culminates in a workshop about bottom-up Climate Justice in the Global South and North to explore the potential to build resilience and yield legal and institutional models for more sustainable and just human–nature relations.