The Case For Climate Reparations
It is quite apparent that some countries contribute greatly to global greenhouse gas emissions while other countries don’t emit many greenhouse gases at all. As the effects of climate change continue to take a toll on the planet, certain places feel the impacts much more than others.
A concept called climate reparations has started to become more popular. According to an NIH article, “climate reparations would require raising funds and material resources from the governments in the countries most responsible historically for the climate crisis”. The implementation of climate reparations operates on the principle that countries which have caused the most harm to the environment must recognize their effects and assume proportional responsibility to remedy the problems.
Building countries resilient to climate change involves many things, all of which take a lot of money and support. This may involve building new infrastructure that can resist unpredictable weather events, financing a country’s transition to renewable energy sources, or assisting with climate adaptation strategies. These reparations would not be a single-time event; instead, climate reparations would look more like a series of initiatives over time.
As optimistic as this sounds, climate reparations may be a hard idea to cement into the global agenda. While there is an existing program called the Green Climate Fund that provides economic assistance to countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, the program has a hard time raising the necessary funds to carry out its mission. There may need to be partnership between public and private sectors in order to raise enough money to effectively support climate reparations, especially because a lot of private interests, namely oil and coal companies, have caused a majority of destruction to the environment. One of the biggest obstacles to overcome is the question of how to secure dedication from a variety of contributors to continually provide support to countries most devastated by climate change.
This may be a long time coming, though. Read more about the United States’ current perspective on climate reparation funds in this BBC article. If climate reparations are going to become a practical climate defense strategy, the countries causing the most harm, which includes the United States, need to be onboard.
Written by Carmen Marshall ‘25
Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash