Climate justice is a concept that addresses the just division, fair sharing and equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of climate change and the responsibilities to deal with climate change to achieve a truly fair transition.
The Climate Justice Observatory is a Queensland-based online resource developed by industry leaders at Griffith University. The Observatory helps citizens to monitor local climate issues, map their local problems and crowd-source potential solutions for adaptation challenges.
They provide the best curated climate essays, explainers, community partners to join and a mapping tool to help people visualise impacts of climate change in their own street and neighbourhood and meet the challenges with a rights-based response.
At the Observatory, the first focus is on the effects of the summer heat and how this impacts the most vulnerable in the #CruelSummer campaign launched in Birdsville, Queensland in February 2023.
Here, we discussed the impacts of heatwaves and climate change on the town’s locals to better understand climate adaptability. How should we protect the homeless, the outdoor labourers, those suffering energy poverty, the very young and the very old? Is there an emerging right to shade in our cities?
Fair transitions start local, and they start now
The greatest risk to the right to life caused by climate change is – hands-down and without a doubt – extreme heat events. Heat-related deaths are on the rise globally and so Australia must be better prepared for the extreme heat events of the future.
Heatwaves affect people’s ability to work and to access services; they affect those facing housing stress or homelessness. Serious issues also emerge around energy poverty as well as issues of power failures and inadequate housing that are further exposed during heatwaves. Do we need cool havens in every neighbourhood?
Time to think about seasonal mobility and managed retreats
Will there be parts of Australia that are already difficult places to live and work in the summer months that tip over to become uninhabitable on a seasonal basis? What happens to summer sport or agricultural activities, or tourism?
“Expand your thinking with author and advocate David Ritter – and more – with the Climate Justice Observatory library.” – The Shadow and the Light by David Ritter
Articles on disease impact, environmental collapse and mental health help build a picture of the multi-faceted approach to climate justice.
The shadow and the light
“What is the first bedroom you remember from being a child? The room where I slept until the age of ten was located at the back of my family’s single-story 1950s brick house, itself situated unnervingly close to the highway that ran through our part of Perth’s unfashionable periphery. I slept in a steel-based single bed, the frame of which felt pleasingly cool and smooth under my fingertips in the dark. The curtains and the bedding – sewn by my mother when this was more commonly still part of life’s usual labours rather than an indulged as Instagrammable hobby – were pictures of animals that I can’t quite visualise now, though I still have some sense of some of the colours, greyish turquoise and harvest brown, straight from the late 1970s decorating palette. The furniture, an eclectic ensemble of wooden structures – from the genuinely antique (though not actually valuable) to what might now be euphemistically described as ‘mid-century chic’ – were out of scale for the diminutive boy who wrestled with their imperfect properties, including drawers that fought against opening and cupboards that resisted closure. Ironically, given my life’s trajectory towards working for Greenpeace, one particular compartment was dubbed the ‘weapons drawer’ because it contained the numerous toy swords, cap-guns, bows and suction-arrows and other similar obnoxious paraphernalia that I was gifted from time to time. It was very rarely tidy, but I experienced my childhood bedroom as an airy hall of possibility and remembering. I felt the deep safety of growing up in a residence which – the fearsomeness of my ‘weapons drawer’ notwithstanding – was free from any real fear or violence. A great and privileged fortune, and one that every child should have as a right.”
“Creeping from the cornices of our children’s bedrooms is an actual shadow, which is also the stain of a much greater monstrosity. This is no phantom but a true terror, brought into being by unnatural forces of human creation, real and murderous. And this shade slithers deeper into our home as the days and weeks pass, a darkened weed capable of invading all that is safe and familiar. It is the black mould brought by 2022’s incessant rain in Sydney, driven by climate change here, now. And it is climbing across my children’s ceiling, spreading towards them.”
Uncover your climate future, now
In addition to the wealth of curated resources and essays available on the website, the Climate Justice Observatory offers an interactive map developed by Griffith University’s Relational Insights Data Lab (RIDL).
Paired with population and health data, this innovative tool allows Queenslanders to visualise how much hotter climate scientists forecast their homes will become over the coming years.
Through the tweaking of variables, users can discover the best and worst possible climate outcomes for our great state.
