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Climate justice roundtable
The climate crisis affects us all, but racialised and marginalised communities feel its effects the most. The struggle for climate justice and for racial, social, and economic justice are interconnected. For example, marginalised communities are overly exposed to and often placed in polluted or toxic environments. This means they often experience illnesses that could have been avoided, and increased health costs as a direct consequence.
We believe that increased recognition of how the climate crisis reinforces existing forms of oppression and finding solutions that centre affected communities is crucial. This work will complement existing efforts fighting for state adherence to emission targets and holding multinationals accountable for the damage they are doing to the planet.
Europe-wide consultation
To make sure our work meets the needs of activists and movements, we conducted a Europe-wide consultation in the first half of 2022 to identify priorities for developing litigation projects.
We explored priorities for climate justice in Europe on 21-22 April, with 12 participants from grassroots movements and those directly working with communities. You can read about the gathering and the opportunities for action identified on our blog.
We approached all themes through an intersectional lens, centring how a person’s social or political identity and personal characteristics can combine to create different modes of discrimination, exclusion, and oppression. We considered issues across both digital and non-digital space.
Building community-driven litigation
The input from the roundtables was combined with input received through a survey conducted between October 2021 and May 2022, individual conversations, and desk research. The combined findings are available in our 2022 report Surfacing Systemic (In)justices: A Community View.
Based on the consultation process and the mapping of current litigation work in Europe, climate justice and social protection were identified as priority areas for organisations, movements, and collectives working on racial, social, and economic justice that are currently underserved by intersectional litigation. We are developing our first litigation projects on these themes, starting from the priorities and opportunities identified in the consultation.
Following up
Building on this initial consultation process, in 2024 we developed Revisiting Systemic (In)justices: Community reflections report.
Through new, rich conversations we held with community organisations, movements, and collectives, we gained new insights on how structural harms persist across Europe, and how systemic injustices are experienced – and resisted.
Community organisers described interconnected struggles: from resisting police violence to confronting the myth of scarcity to how technology harms marginalised communities. At the same time, we heard that very few organisations have the capacity or confidence to use the law to challenge these harms.
This reaffirmed our commitment to support communities to build legal knowledge and power and use strategic litigation as a tool for change.
Stay in touch
Systemic Justice will continuously build on this consultation process to ensure our work aligns with communities’ priorities. We will also continue sharing our findings along the way: subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn to be updated about any new publications.
