While these two concepts may seem similar and have various amounts of overlap, there are some differences between environmental and climate justice and their applications. Both are relatively new concepts that arose in the second half of the twentieth century as a result of increased demand for equitable environmental solutions in marginalized communities.
Environmental justice is a social movement that focuses on addressing injustices that occur when marginalized communities experience harm due to hazardous pollution and inequitable resource extraction, generally caused by large corporations.
Climate justice is similar, but it focuses more specifically on the unfair consequences that communities face due to increased carbon emissions and other harms of climate change. Climate justice aims to address the unequal distribution of climate change impacts on low-income and minority communities, mostly caused by oil and coal corporations. Companies in the Global North contribute an enormous amount of the planet’s carbon emissions, while countries in the Global South experience a disproportionate amount of the impacts.
Some examples of environmental and climate injustices include the Dakota Access Pipeline, Cancer Alley in Louisiana, and oil pollution in the Niger Delta.
Environmental justice efforts occur on a more localized level, while climate justice aims to create equity on a more global level. Both must happen simultaneously in order to pursue equity and justice for communities that are experiencing extremely adverse consequences.
Written by Carmen Marshall ’25
Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash