Acknowledging the historic presence of justice in climate research

In a recent Perspective¹, Zimm et al. argued that “there is no consistent approach to comprehensively incorporate and examine justice considerations” in climate research. While we welcome the attention of the authors and the journal to climate justice, we find that Zimm et al. replicate a number of forms and practices of injustice and fail to recognize and include the history and breadth of environmental and climate justice scholarship. In other words, the paradox of the paper by Zimm et al. is that it unwittingly contributes to the very problem it wants to address.

Zimm et al. suggest that the “absence of a broad shared understanding of justice” stems from a lack of clarity and consistency, requiring cross-disciplinary translation and a novel framework. In reality, existing scholarship on environmental justice² and climate justice³ has examined the intersection of climate change and social inequality for many decades. This literature emerged from both social and scholarly movements producing a wealth of cross-disciplinary frameworks, principles and concepts that are clear and consistent. By failing to engage with the existing work on climate justice, Zimm et al. miss important historical and contemporary insights on the intersecting crises of climate change and social injustice, and how to study it.