Fairness

Our efforts to prevent the deepening ecological crisis from becoming an irreversible catastrophe have—and continue to be —impeded by complex, ominous, often conflicting challenges. Yet one quality has defined our approach to every aspect of the climate emergency at each stage of its evolution: fairness.

The absence of fairness, or unfairness, is a prime cause of the heinous damage to our biosphere after centuries in which we have prioritised our own presumed needs over those of its ecosystems and the species inhabiting them. It is also at the heart of the ignorance and cruelty with which people in the Global North have ignored the dire consequences—socially and economically, as well as environmentally—of perpetuating colonial practices first by plundering the natural resources of the Global South, and then by dumping much of the toxic waste generated by those and other extractive processes there.

Conversely, fairness could be a valuable component of our efforts to reverse this vicious cycle of destruction by stemming the damage, healing our biosphere and empowering it to thrive in the future. We will not succeed unless every element of this process is defined by fairness with regard to all outcomes.

Questioning whether the impacts of our efforts to reverse the climate emergency will be fair is not a panacea for this mammoth endeavour. But it could serve as a useful guide if, at every juncture, we analyse whether the consequences will be fair to all concerned: our fellow humans, whoever and wherever they are; the other species with whom we share this planet; and all the natural elements that constitute it.