A review by seclement
Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future by Mary Robinson

3.0

This book definitely isn’t written for me, so I found it difficult to rate. I am also not exactly sure who it is written for, to be honest. The book is meant to explore the concept of climate justice. I have seen other reviews claim this is her concept, but it most certainly is not. Environmental justice is the bedrock of environmentalism and has been since the early days. It was built into climate policy from the very beginning. We most certainly have never achieved justice, but the injustice of environment degradation and its disproportionate impact on communities who didn’t cause it in the first place is a well known and widely discussed fact. So if this book exposes people to these injustices as they relate to climate in a medium they enjoy (I.e. through individual stories), then that is a good thing. I do think that the tone of the book is bland and sometimes patronising, and I do think it would have been better if the women it features were allowed to tell their own stories. It would have been more powerful, and yes, more just. I also did not get out of this book what was intended, but this may be a reflection of my own particular experiences working in this field. Rather than feeling hopeful and inspired by the chapters, I felt it just reinforced the intractable problems we face. Even with all of the amazing things these women have done, and even when we offer them a place at the negotiating table, we still have not even come close to addressing the fundamental problems that perpetuate environmental injustice. Getting a space at the table for women who come from the communities hit hardest by climate change is just a first step. It is procedural justice, but it is not distributive justice. And until the outcomes are achieved and the benefits flow to those communities, I can’t help but feel like it’s not quite time to read these tales and feel hopeful. We need quite a bit more than that.