The Leverhulme climate justice scholars were fortunate enough to be invited in their entirety to a one day workshop in Bonn, entitled “Clear Eyed Equity: Setting a Climate Equity and Justice Research Agenda”. Hosted by the Germany Development Institute, the conference sought to connect academics and practitioners with an interest in the justice dimensions of climate change, hoping to deliver a manifesto that reflects the future aims and pertinence of the movement.

The day began with three hard-hitting key note lectures, starting with friend of the project Sonja Klinsky (Arizona State), who stressed in no uncertain terms just how central equity is to any genuine progress. Through this, she rejected claims that we should act first and worry about equity afterwards, questioning the feasibility of any climate action that failed to pay suitable attention to this complex dimension of the climate problem. Another key theme from her talk were the importance of creating a vibrant, supportive and, importantly, interdisciplinary network of climate ethicists (partly facilitated by an email list that she has set up – details of which will be at the end of the blog). Timmons Roberts’ discussion drew upon a temporal analysis of high-profile climate discussions, to map whether the arc of history was heading towards climate justice – with the unfortunate (but maybe unsurprising) answer being ‘no’. Finally, Tom Athanasiou (Eco-Equity) delivered a sobering analysis of the extant state of play with regards to climate change, essentially concluding that we are nearly 30 years past the point of urgent action and are now staring real catastrophe in the face. With regards to arresting this rapid decline into the abyss, he highlighted the importance of addressing the startling fact that we are living in a grossly unequal world (a recent Oxfam report suggests that just 8 people own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who constitute the world’s poorest people). While this exists, Tom suggests, an adequate response to climate change will never be mobilised.

Much of the next portion of the day involved the synthesis and discussion of the various policy briefs submitted by equity scholars globally. These were sorted into five ‘bundles’, which explored paradigmatic questions of equity, equity under the UNFCCC, justice at the local level with a focus on adaptation, equity in transformational change and social and cultural responses to climate change (the final four running in pairs, concurrently). A plethora of different ideas and themes arose here, demonstrating just how broad and multidimensional the questions of equity that arise in the context of climate change can be. To mention but a few, there were discussions of technological and energy justice and their crossover with climate justice, how justice may look at a local level, intra-community injustices and the importance of social sustainability – including the need to develop an understanding of the creation and dissemination of environmental knowledge across scales.

The workshop ended with a summary of the day’s proceedings, along with a brainstorming session on practical action that could be taken by the group as a collective. The early contours of a manifesto were deliberated, as well as identifying the need to create a platform in which scholars could discuss their particular research interests. The group then mapped a list of actors with whom they should interact, although the all-important questions of how these interactions should take place were unfortunately limited by time, to no doubt be continued on a later occasion. What was undoubtedly an excellent, and productive day was rounded of by a suitably eloquent toast by Timmons Roberts and Tom Athanasiou to their friend and prominent climate ethicist Paul Baer, who sadly passed away last year.

Having reflected upon the conference, it is abundantly clear that there is an ever-growing and incredibly committed, intelligent and passionate community whose aim is to make tangible and lasting progress in the daunting task of achieving climate justice. To this end, it would be near impossible not to come away feeling buoyed by the day’s proceedings. However, the real success of the workshop lies in what happens next – the actioning of the innovative ideas, the increased interdisciplinary communication and development of a thriving and organised network of researchers and activists alike and the development and dissemination of a bold manifesto are the true indicators of how much the workshop has accomplished.

The climate justice and equity emailing list can be subscribed to by contacting clim_eq@asu.edu, and also found on twitter @CJENetwork.