Climate Justice
Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future
by Mary Robinson
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ)
Nonfiction (Adult) | Politics
Pub Date 4 Oct 2018

I was given this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This book is inspirational. Mary Robinson writes about people living with pollution. She speaks of island inhabitants fighting to keep their land in the face of rising tides. She laments for those communities who will lose their livelihoods as the planet warms and weather conditions become more erratic, at times making land parched due to prolonged dry spells, while at other times making their land prone to flooding due to frequent periods of heavy monsoon. Robinson argues that these individuals' needs should be at the heart of any discourse around global warming and environmental. This book is a good starting point for anyone wishing to understand the effects of global warming. In addition, it is an empowering read for those already engaged in the struggle.

Anything this gives me feedback and more information as to climate change and environmentalism I will read. I liked how it was quick and felt personal.

This book is amazing in that it makes you feel incandescently angry, then fiercely proud, defiant and hopeful, and then the same all over again all in the space of a few pages. It's incredible to read the stories of so many grassroots activists making change in their communities, and to have them situated in the global political context.

However, a couple of things bugged me about the book. The first is that the message seems inconsistent. It starts off really strongly, stating that those worst affected by climate change are the ones least likely to be causing it. However, by the end it seems to come back round to a message of personal responsibility, which seems strange considering most of the book shifts focus between the global politics of climate change and the collective actions communities are taking to meet it. Similarly, it seemed odd to have a chapter towards the end focussing on encouraging individual action by middle class women, and positioning them as consumer activists rather than politically organised ones, It didn't seem to fit in with the spirit of the rest of the book.

Lastly, I don't think I'll ever be able to give 5 stars to a book about marginalised communities, especially women of colour, written by a priveleged white woman. It's a bit of a catch 22. I know I wouldn't have been able to read the stories of these amazing activists and their contexts had Mary not written this, and I know she at least met and interviewed everyone in the book, but she was still the one with the pen, and the power to shape the narrative, so the reader doesn't know how faithfully the contributers' stories are told. In future I would prefer to read first person stories from activists themselves.

There are different ways to think about climate change. There is the pessimistic way. People who are pessimistic, see no path to success on climate change. It is a thinking that often leads to paralysis.

There is the “perfect market failure” way of thinking. Introduced by Nicholas Stern, author of the influential Stern Review on the economics of climate change, it perceives climate change as the result of the greatest market failure the world has seen. Climate change is a global problem and the response must be a collaboration on a global scale.

The philosopher Stephen Gardiner describes climate change as the “perfect moral storm”, because of its inter-generational aspect, and because “it involves the convergence of a number of factors that threaten our ability to behave ethically.”

Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland, UN Commissioner on Human Rights, sees climate change as a problem of justice. Instead of seeing climate change as a technical and distant problem, concerning glaciers, and ice-caps and greenhouse gases, she focuses her–and our attention on people. With Climate Justice, Mary Robinson reminds us that climate change is already here and affects people and communities. Through personal testimonies and the stories of climate activists from around the world share minds the first-world nations that there are communities in Africa, the Northern America, north Europe and the Pacific islands whose entire livelihood and culture are threatened by climate change.

“Everybody matters” says Mary Robinson, quoting Eleanor Roosevelt. The people of Kiribati,whose island nation could be underwater in as little as 50 years, matter, the people in Louisiana and Mississippi who lost everything when Hurricane Katrina hit matter, and the farmers in Uganda whose who lost their homes and harvest from flooding also matter. It is very much from a human rights perspective that Mary Robinson began to understand and learn more about the impacts of climate change on livelihoods in poor countries and communities.

“Everyone has duties to the community in which alone and free ad full development of his personality is possible, “says Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mary Robinson, tells the stories of individuals who decided to do their duty to their communities. When the climate shocks destroyed their homes and harvests,these individuals, local men and women decided to do something about it. They became the leaders of their communities, they tried to held their communities together, and talk about the reality of climate change and how it affects their villages and communities in international fora and conferences.

It is Sharon Hanslaw, a salon owner in East Biloxi, Mississippi, who when she saw the recovery efforts leaving out her Black community after Hurricane Katrina, she founded the Coastal Women for Change to help the recovery of her community. It is Constance Okollet, the Ugandan farmer who persuaded her local council to pass a law authorised the planting of five new trees for every tree cut, in order to reduce carbon emissions and the effects of climate shocks in their community. It is Natalie Isaacs, who started the website 1 Million Women to raise awareness of people’s carbon footprints and make efforts to reduce waste.

There is also Anote Tong, the former Prime of Kiribati who has described his country as a “front-line country,” among the first to experience dramatic climate change impacts. In 2016, Anote Tong made headlines worldwide when he purchased a plot of land in Fiji to relocate his nation in the face of climate change threat.

Although, it is missing from the presentation, there is a feminist aspect in the book. A growing number of women are recognizing that their activism is essential to improving not only their own lives, but also the livelihoods of their communities and indeed the health of the planet. Climate change will hit poor countries hardest, but women disproportionately suffer the impacts of severe whether events and climate shocks because of cultural norms and inequitable distribution of power and resources, especially in developing counties.

Climate Justice is compassionate and hopeful book that tells a few powerful stories of men and women who fight in the front-line to help their communities protect their land resources as well as combat climate change.

Climate Justice is an accessible look at some of the people directly affected by climate change and the measures they have taken to ensure its devastating effects are understood. Many of the people Mary Robinson meets became activists and advocates out of necessity. Some never considered themselves those things, yet grassroots activism and organising is at the heart of their actions.

If you think climate change has nothing to do with you, you’re wrong. Yes, there are global factors at play but as Robinson highlights work on a community level is vital. Community work that, as Climate Justice* shows, is being led by women.

Here, we have one of the best books I have read in 2018: Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future by Mary Robinson.

For those of you who may not know, Mary Robinson is what we would call a complete badass. Former President of Ireland, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, lawyer, campaigner, activist, all around seriously AWESOME woman. She has also created the Mary Robinson Climate Justice foundation, which is exactly what it sounds like: a foundation that works towards education and advocacy for those peoples that have suffered, are suffering, and will suffer the negative impacts of climate change. Mary Robinson calls this movement climate justice, because much of the damage has been done by people, against other people (however knowingly or unknowingly).

This book, of the same name as her foundation, had me both fiercely proud of the women fighting toward climate justice and sustainable living, and in tears at how people have suffered and yet continue to work towards the betterment of society and the human race as a whole. The majority of this books is a series of what an academic would probably call case studies, but in this book are simply stories: true stories, painful stories, personal and private stories, triumphant stories. The activists that speak through this book, as well as the words and work of Mary Robinson herself, are incredibly powerful. More so for the fact that not a word is wasted: there is no flowery language, no ‘wanky words’ as a friend of mine calls them. Much like the author herself, the book is blunt, to the point, and accurate to the point of painful (in the best way).

I can’t honestly say I fell in love with this book as I have with others, because I don’t think this is the sort of book that you can fall in love with. It’s a call to arms, really; an acknowledgment of the danger we’re doing ourselves and our world as well as people we don’t even know or realize exist, a clarion call about how truly, terribly badly we’re fucking things up. What I can say is that this is a book that I have great admiration and respect for, as do I have for the author. I read the kindle version of this book; I can almost guarantee that as soon as the opportunity arises, I’m going to acquire a hard copy so I can have this on my shelf to re-read, and to lend to people. You need to read this. You really do. It won’t take you long: the book is surprisingly short, given the material and, I’m sure, the abundance of stories that remain in the wind, waiting for someone to take pen to paper and tell them.

You need to read this. You will appreciate it. You will regret it. You will be better for it.

Good, educational book. Thank you to netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to read this book.