Climate justice is a principle that grants everyone worldwide, including future generations, the same right to an intact global climate and strives for equitable financing of measures necessary as a result of climate change.
To keep the world’s climate from going off the rails, manmade global warming must be limited to less than two degrees Celsius. This means that each person in the world is only allowed to cause a maximum of two tons of CO2 per year. In 2019, CO2 emissions per capita in Germany caused by energy use and consumption were 7.9 tons, almost twice the global average. This is in contrast to the CO2 emissions caused by people in the Global South, which in many cases are less than one ton per year.
At the same time, the countries of the global south are most affected by climate change: Precisely in already dry regions, such as the African Sahel, precipitation is decreasing, even more, deserts and steppes are spreading, agricultural yields are falling, and there are crop failures and food shortages. Coastal regions are often affected by erosion and rising sea levels – in Senegal, for example, entire coastal regions have already sunk into the sea.
Climate justice is a question of risk and opportunity distribution. As the biggest polluters, the industrialised and newly industrializing countries have to contribute substantially to climate protection!