Read the session “In case you missed it” notes here.
Key Takeaways
- The Caribbean is living a profound climate injustice shaped by its colonial past
The region contributes minimally to global emissions yet remains among the most climate-vulnerable places in the world. At the same time, many Caribbean countries face limited financial and institutional capacity to recover from escalating climate impacts. This layered imbalance — responsibility without power, vulnerability without adequate support — was framed as a “triple climate injustice.” An imbalance not of the region’s making – one shaped and continually reshaped by its colonial past.
The Caribbean’s vulnerability reflects through structural drivers of climate injustice resulting from centuries of extraction, exploitation, and unequal power relations which are still evident today and which continue in currents extractive capitalist models. The systems that concentrate wealth and power continue to shape whose development opportunities are constrained and who are in vulnerable situations.
- Climate change is fracturing Caribbean life along existing fault lines.
Climate impacts settle unevenly across societies. A hurricane does not impact different individuals and groups in exactly the same ways. Existing inequalities shape who can recover, who is displaced, whose homes are rebuilt and whose losses remain invisible.
There is a need for an intersectional lens, one that recognises how gender, race, class, geography, disability and Indigeneity influence experiences of climate injustice.
- Climate justice is contested, layered, and plural.
The different forms climate justice can take are:
- Recognitional justice asks whether people’s identities, rights, cultures and lived realities are genuinely acknowledged and respected.
- Distributional justice examines fairness in how climate risks, burdens, resources and recovery support are shared.
- Procedural justice focuses on participation and decision-making: who gets heard, who is included, and who remains sidelined.
- Restorative justice considers what is owed to communities harmed by climate change and historical injustice.
- Retributive justice turns toward accountability, including responsibilities for reparative climate finance and emissions reductions.
- Intergenerational justice asks what obligations exist toward future generations whose opportunities are being impacted by today’s climate decisions.
- Justice in system outcomes reminds us that climate justice also includes the protection of ecosystems, cultural heritage and ways of life that cannot easily be replaced once lost.
- Claiming climate justice means claiming power.
Drawing on the capabilities approach, climate justice means building the capabilities needed to restore the freedom and opportunities which are lost due to climate change.
The case study cited in this session reflected the experiences of the Indigenous Kalinago community in Dominica following Hurricane Maria in 2017. It revealed how climate injustice experienced by the Kalinago encompasses inadequate recognition of their Indigenous rights and the impacts of climate change on them, their cultural heritage and identity as well as a slew of other equally alarming factors.
For the Kalinago of Dominica, seeking climate justice requires building capabilities for meaningful participation in political processes and self-determined development and autonomy; control of their land and environment to support their own development aspirations; protection of their heritage and identity; and centring their Indigenous heritage in self-determined resilience approaches.
- Caribbean communities are not waiting — they are seeking climate justice and building
Caribbean citizens are actively:
- strengthening mutual aid networks,
- preserving traditional agricultural practices,
- reviving Indigenous knowledge and cultural traditions,
- building regional solidarity and expanding community advocacy efforts,
- building stronger coalitions across movements,
- calling for greater protection for environmental defenders,
- working to ensure that affected communities are meaningfully involved in shaping resilience and development strategies from the outset.