Climate justice movements took their inspiration from the environmental
justice movements in the US recognising that specific groups of people
based on race, gender and poverty were at the highest risk of suffering
effects of climate change. However, unlike dumping on 'property' near
an ethnic or impoverished community, climate pollution has no
understanding of borders or location. Yet, the effects of climate
change similarly have greater effects on poor and ethnic communities.
Although climate justice movements are diverse, a fundamental principle
lies at the heart of the different movements. This is the recognition
that within the threats from climate change are unequal economic and
social power relations, both globally and locally.
pollution trading and climate justice
A fundamental problem of emissions trading is its tendency to
perpetuate and aggravate environmental injustice. The six greenhouse
gases due to be traded all have toxic co-pollutant side effects. This
aggravates other dimensions of social injustice inasmuch as polluting
industries are disproportionately located in low-income areas and
communities of colour. In the case of a sulphur dioxide trading scheme
RECLAIM, in Los Angeles , localised pollution of the local Latino
communities around factories involved in the scheme continued unabated.
It is likely that this phenomenon will be widely replicated with global
greenhouse gas trading. Reductions will not need to take place at their
source, allowing factories to continue polluting locally. The
communities affected are those with the least power to resist, thus
‘pollution ghettoes' will be created.
This phenomenon is likely to replicate itself in the UK . Friends of
the Earth recently showed that the same patterns of environmental
injustice exist in the siting of polluting industries in England and
Wales . The poorest families are twice as likely to have a polluting
factory close by, than those with average household incomes. Over
ninety percent of London 's most polluting factories are located in
communities of below average income. In an emissions trading scheme the
fundamental principle of one party reducing and another continuing to
pollute will hit the poorest hardest, as polluting industries continue
to buy credits instead of making reductions locally. The impacts on
local people living around industry are invisible to trading schemes
and this is one example of the many dangers of taking such a narrow
approach to climate change issues.
Emissions trading also exacerbates global environmental injustice as
poorer countries will be manipulated into hosting CDM projects thus
transferring the burden of resolving climate change to the South. Thus
Northern polluters are enabled to continue to pollute, and even
increase pollution through the new market in greenhouse gases.
2010 Carbon Trade Watch
