6 Times Climate Change Was a Climate Justice Issue

Remember Hurricane Sandy? New Yorkers sure do. In 2012, this Category 1 hurricane hit the Atlantic coast, devistating communities from New Hampshire to Virginia. But nowhere was hit harder than New York and New Jersey. And there, nobody felt the impact as acutely as low-income people and minorities. For the 33% of residents of the storm surge area who lived in government-assissted housing, recovery was a long, difficult process. Streets were flooded, residents were without power for three weeks, and even today, almost 5 years later, many low-income neighborhoods are still in need of repairs.

The Solomon Islands are an archipelago in the Pacific. Five of its islands, all uninhabited, disappeared last year. That’s the good news. The bad news is that six other islands lost swaths of land to the sea, with entire villages wiped out and people forced to move. Nuatambu island has lost half its inhabitable area since 2011. Not much help is available for nations like the Solomons that had no part in creating climate change, yet are suffering some of its worst impacts. Rectifying that was the driving force between the Green Climate Fund, which intends to raise billions of dollars from rich countries to offset the effect of climate change on developing countries. 

Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf coast in 2005, hit African Americans and poor people hardest. And race played a role in the slow emergency response, leaving communities of color stranded for far longer than they should have been. Here, as elsewhere, climate change merely compounded a history of environmental injustice. After the end of slavery, ruling whites pushed African Americans into segregated low-lying districts prone to flooding, marginal areas which eventually became home to polluting factories and plants. Throw poor water- and sewage-management practices into the mix, and it’s easy to see that Katrina was a manmade disaster many decades in the making.

The Iñupiat people have lived in the region around the tiny town of Kivalina, Alaska (population: 400), for generations. And for hundreds of years, they have hunted bowhead whales from atop the sea ice. But now that ice is melting rapidly, threatening to put an end to the hunt, and possibly to the whole town. The sea ice had always protected Kivalina from ocean waves barreling toward the shore, but with the sea ice diminishing at an astonishing rate, the town could be wiped out altogether. The price for relocating the town? $100 million. And with other indigenous groups fighting just for clean drinking water (remember the Dakota Access Pipeline?), it’s clear their struggle has a systemic basis.

Where the coasts of many nations are at risk from rising sea levels, inland areas may be exposed to a host of different threats. Turkana County in northwestern Kenya is home to a growing population that lives in crushing poverty. Data shows that over the past few decades shifting precipitation patterns have left the rural region with less rainfall, a critical resource for the community. That, coupled with higher temperatures, means the grazing lands are drying up and there’s less water to drink, for people and livestock. The result is greater poverty and widespread hunger.

Members of Native American tribes settled this area in Louisiana more than 100 years ago, hunting, trapping, and farming all across what was a lush island. But more than 90% of the island’s land mass has been washed away since 1955. Even though there’s little land left now, three previous efforts to relocate the community failed. In fact, many residents don’t want to leave: they don’t want to leave their history, their community, their land, and their way of life. The current plan would move about 60 people at a cost of $48 million. Given the price tag here (such as in Kivalina, in Alaska), imagine the costs associated with, say, moving the residents of Miami...