Climate Crisis and Climate Justice

HAN Jaekak  Member of Executive committee, Alliance for Climate Justice 

This is the era of climate crisis. The survival of all humanity depends on a stable climate. But the stable climate is breaking down, and there are rising doubts and anxieties about the sustainability of human civilization. Scientists such as Johan Rockstrom at the Stockholm Resilience Center have presented a concept called ‘planetary boundaries’ and are closely watching the situation around the planetary boundaries. Planetary boundaries refer to the risks caused by nine potentially unstable elements including climate change, loss of biodiversity, and pollution from chemical substance that should be controlled to maintain the Earth system. 

 In this regard, organizations including co-operatives and movements pursuing social economy, solidarity economy, and cooperative economy are positioning themselves as a strategy to move beyond the capitalist growth system. Such approaches have been clearly stipulated by degrowth scholars such as Giorgos Kallis and Jason Hickel. They are suggesting that we should shake and break away from the capitalism theory by creating ‘commons’ through ‘commoning’ and by developing alternative system elements. In the era of climate crisis, social economy movements should perform a more radical role in the forefront of decapitalism.