Justice for Whom? Children and Climate Change Risk

Citation

Connon I, Dominelli L, Henley S & Hutton C (2021) Justice for Whom? Children and Climate Change Risk. Rees N (Project Member), Macdonald F (Project Member), Bollasina M (Project Member), Fassio A (Project Member), Hutchison A (Project Member), Marcinko C (Project Member), Mollard J (Project Member), Sargent K (Project Member) & Watmough G (Project Member) 2nd World Forum on Climate Justice, Glasgow, 21.09.2021-23.09.2021.

Abstract
Social and environmental justice are first-order priorities for policy and decision-making around climate change at national and international levels. In professional and academic settings, most social justice discourse has been expert-led, leaving a gap regarding the absence of the voices of marginalised groups. This is particularly the case for children, whose direct voices on climate change are missing from the National Action Plans demanded by the Paris Agreement by countries committed to the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. This Convention acknowledged the importance of children’s agency and right to be heard in decisions that affect them. This paper examines adult definitions of social justice from a child-centric position to consider the perspectives of both physical and social scientists about climate change justice as the right to a healthy environment in which children can thrive, engage in decisions about safeguarding the environment, reduce fossil fuel consumption, transform adult behaviour and achieve net zero globally on the timescales required to reduce children’s differentiated vulnerabilities to climate change-related risks. We draw on findings emanating from the Child Climate Risk Index research being undertaken by the Universities of Southampton, Edinburgh and Stirling to propose ways in which children can be engaged in assessing and responding to climate change-related risks over multiple spatial and temporal scales, and to propose ways forward wherein social justice is not considered solely from an adultist perspective that assumes children’s dependency and casts adults as their protectors. Children can contribute significantly to these discourses, as Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future Movement and our research demonstrate.