Climate Justice

by Mary Robinson

Overview

The antidote for your climate change paralysis. —Sierra Magazine

An urgent call to arms by one of the most important voices in the international fight against climate change, sharing inspiring stories and offering vital lessons for the path forward.

Holding her first grandchild in her arms in 2003, Mary Robinson was struck by the uncertainty of the world he had been born into. Before his fiftieth birthday, he would share the planet with more than nine billion people—people battling for food, water, and shelter in an increasingly volatile climate. The faceless, shadowy menace of climate change had become, in an instant, deeply personal.

Mary Robinson’s mission would lead her all over the world, from Malawi to Mongolia, and to a heartening revelation: that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself. From Sharon Hanshaw, the Mississippi matriarch whose campaign began in her East Biloxi hair salon and culminated in her speaking at the United Nations, to Constance Okollet, a small farmer who transformed the fortunes of her ailing community in rural Uganda, Robinson met with ordinary people whose resilience and ingenuity had already unlocked extraordinary change.

Powerful and deeply humane, Climate Justice is a stirring manifesto on one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time, and a lucid, affirmative, and well-argued case for hope.

“As advocate for the forgotten and the ignored, Mary Robinson has not only shone a light on human suffering, but illuminated a better future for our world.” -Barack Obama

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632869289
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Mary Robinson is president of the Mary Robinson Foundation—Climate Justice. She served in two capacities as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change. She is the former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and is now Chair of the Elders and a member of the Club of Madrid. In 2009, she was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Marrakech ix

1 Understanding Climate Justice 1

2 Learning from Lived Experience 15

3 The Accidental Activist 27

4 Vanishing Language, Vanishing Lands 45

5 A Seat at the Table 57

6 Small Steps Towards Equality 73

7 Migrating with Dignity 85

8 Taking Responsibility 97

9 Leaving No One Behind 109

10 Paris-the Challenge of Implementing 127

Acknowledgements 145

Notes 149

Index 155

Editorial Reviews

07/16/2018
Robinson (Everybody Matters: My Life Giving Voice), a former president of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, writes of global warming and climate justice in this succinct but powerful volume. She highlights communities “suffering the worst effects of climate change” that, more often than not, are “least responsible for the emissions causing change.” Robinson describes, for example, drought-stricken farmers in Uganda, who have endured extreme weather in recent years (longer rainy seasons followed by intense periods of drought) that has damaged maize, sorghum, and millet crops; weighed produce down with moisture and pests; and crippled yields. She recalls the havoc wreaked along the Gulf Coast in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina—more than 1,800 deaths and more than one million homes and businesses destroyed—which “weighed more heavily upon racial minorities and the poor.” She bemoans the Trump administration’s “unconscionable” decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, an accord “negotiated by more than 190 world leaders, over decades, in the interests of all people and the planet.” She remains hopeful, however, that humans will heed “personal responsibility for our families, our communities, and our ecosystems.” This brief but cogent account reminds readers that climate change is not academic or abstract; it is real and it has consequences. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/01/2018
As the UN secretary-general's special envoy on climate change, Robinson has traveled the world seeking evidence of how communities are reacting to extreme weather conditions. The author's earlier work on human rights campaigns convinced her that climate change is more than just an environmental issue. In this work, she shows how economic, political, and civil rights are directly connected to access to food, water, and healthy living conditions. Climate justice is the idea that we must intervene to halt the suffering of the most vulnerable populations caused by the actions of wealthy nations and corporations. Robinson reveals the stories of individuals who have faced devastating floods, drought, and pollution and who are organizing to bring change locally and globally. A farmer in Uganda, a small business owner in Mississippi, and a coal miner in Canada share a vision that there is hope for their communities. VERDICT Robinson puts a human face on this politically charged issue, adding to the climate change conversation. Highly recommended.—Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.

Library Journal

2018-07-31

The former head of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights details the human rights dimension of climate change, showing how neglect by the powerful is already affecting the underprivileged around the globe.

Previously the first female president of Ireland, Robinson (Everybody Matters: My Life Giving Voice, 2013) had become increasingly involved with climate change and its human toll when her editor for her American publisher told her, "I would love for you to write a storytelling book about climate justice." This is that book, a narrative of unlikely activists, mostly women, whose communities have experienced firsthand the devastating effects of global warming and have become proactive. The subtext here is giving voice to the previously voiceless, providing seats at the table not only for the powerful who are proceeding heedlessly, but for those who have been suffering devastating consequences: economic upheaval, starvation, and destruction inflicted by the policies of powerful countries on the other side of the globe. "In eastern Uganda there are no seasons anymore," explains a farmer in that country. "Agriculture is a gamble….It was not until I went to a meeting about climate change that I heard it was not God but the rich people in the West who are doing this to us." The book both begins and ends with Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, which had been negotiated after decades of attempts and failures to reach accord. "It is unconscionable," writes the author, "that the United States has simply walked away from its responsibility to people both at home and abroad, in the interest of short-term fossil fuel profits." Nonetheless, Robinson's tone throughout is hopeful and optimistic, as one story after another finds accidental activists, primarily women, changing their own lives as well as those of their communities, accepting both the challenge and the responsibility of confronting the threat.

In a measured tone that is largely free of politicized rhetoric, the author tells engaging stories of extraordinary accomplishments by ordinary people.

Kirkus Reviews

As advocate for the forgotten and the ignored, Mary Robinson has not only shone a light on human suffering, but illuminated a better future for our world.” —Barack Obama

“Robinson's lucid, direct style works because it gives a voice to those who have taken it upon themselves to tackle Earth's most pressing problems. The book's central message is a mantra worth repeating: individual local action can grow into a global idea, producing positive change.” —Observer

“Climate Justice is the antidote for your climate change paralysis . . . [Robinson] uses her powerful platform to highlight the work of mostly female climate activists in frontline communities that are already reeling from the effects of climate change . . . Written in a post-Trump world, Climate Justice burns with urgency.” —Sierra Magazine

“Exceptionally informative and impressively organized and presented, 'Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future' is an erudite and documented manifesto with respect to a critically important and universal humanitarian issue.” —Midwest Book Review

“Robinson's humility and compassion resonates through her story-telling. [Her] stories provide a window into our own future.” —Irish Times

“Robinson and Palmer highlight inspiring stories of ordinary people who are making a difference for the environment-especially women who have become 'agents of change.'” —Foreword Reviews

“Robinson fights despair with inspiring stories of activists, politicians and others who are helping people mitigate and adapt to the changes . . . Putting a human face to those on the front lines and giving them a voice, Robinson illustrates the day-to-day impacts of climate change on those around the world, making the threat more real, more pressing, and, ultimately, more frightening . . . Climate Justice is a compelling, easy read that should persuade people to take personal responsibility for the problem” —Ms. Magazine

“Robinson puts a human face on this politically charged issue, adding to the climate change conversation. Highly recommended.” —Starred review, Library Journal

“Robinson is uniquely qualified to write about the international fight for climate-change justice . . . A surefire winner.” —Booklist

“Giving voice to the previously voiceless, providing seats at the table not only for the powerful who are proceeding heedlessly, but for those who have been suffering devastating consequences . . . Hopeful and optimistic . . . [Robinson] tells engaging stories of extraordinary accomplishments by ordinary people.” —Kirkus Reviews

“An elegant and readable account of climate information and policy, embedded in ten powerful accounts of climate activists from around the world, eight of which focus on women . . . The accounts in Climate Justice share a trajectory of awakening, power, and the promise of deep, community-based change.” —Women's Review of Books

From the Publisher