The climate justice

Points for discussion

1. Show slide 5 of the slideshow — farmers’ homes on a riverbank in Bangladesh, after Cyclone Bulbul. Families in weak houses close to the water lost far more than families in strong houses on higher ground. And inside those same villages, women, children and old people were hit hardest: less money, less schooling, and less freedom to leave and look for work somewhere else. 2. Now bring it home. Ask learners where the same pattern runs in India — the villages the river takes every year in Bihar and Assam, the coast in Odisha, the lane in their own town where the water stands first and drains last. Who loses most there, and which of the things in that diagram explains why?

3. Press the point that this happens between countries and inside one country — and that inside one country the gap can be the bigger one. India is the example standing in the room. In a dry summer the same city holds a flat with a tank on the roof and a borewell underneath it, and a lane where everyone waits for a tanker that comes when it comes. Same city, same shortage, two completely different days. Nothing about the sky explains that difference.

Inequality is the first half of climate justice. The second half is connection: the people hurt most by climate change are the people who did least to cause it, and those two facts are tied together. A mystery activity makes the tie visible, and the discussion afterwards is where it lands.

A Mystery gives learners a pile of clues on separate slips of paper and one question to answer with them. It is a good way to show how far apart two lives can be and still be joined.

1. Learners work in groups of three or four. They have one question to answer: why did Sunita’s snack cart close down?

2. Give each group a full set of the clue cards. Some clues matter much more than others.

3. It is not enough to put the clues in the right order. A group has to be able to say how they got there, and what the activity is telling them.

1. There is no single reason. Sunita’s cart closed because of the weather, because of where her cart stood, and because a woman on her own could not borrow the money to repair it. There are also real reasons why Aarav is driven to school. The activity is not there to blame a child for a global problem. It is there to show how two lives that never meet are still joined.

2. Carbon is not shared out evenly, and an average hides more than it shows. A household with a car, an air conditioner and flights burns far more fuel than a household with one fan and a bus pass — and both can sit in the same city, in the same country, on the same street. We have no figure here for either household, and the argument does not need one. Ask the class which of these two lives uses more energy, and how they know.

3. Climate change reaches both of them. Aarav’s Delhi has the dirtier air and the hotter summers, and that is real. But Sunita has lost her whole living. She has no second thing to fall back on, no insurance, no savings, and no loan she is allowed to take. Aarav’s life carries on. Hers does not. The difference between damage you recover from and damage you do not is what this chapter is about.

4. The people who did least to cause this suffer most from it. The people who did most have so far paid least, and have kept the comfort that came with it. The climate emergency is an inequality emergency, and the part that gets discussed least is what happens to the millions of people like Sunita, who did not cause it and cannot get out of the way of it. CLUE CARDS

Aarav is driven to school every day in his parents’ car. · Sunita cannot afford to repair her damaged cart. The moneylender she asks lends only to men. · Climate change is raising sea levels and making extreme weather more likely.

Odisha is on India’s east coast. It is one of the places most at risk from rising seas and severe storms. · Sea levels are rising, and storms are stronger and more frequent because of climate change. · Aarav’s parents say the traffic is too dangerous for him to walk the short distance to school on his own.

Sunita’s snack cart has had to close. She has no way to earn. · Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that causes climate change. · After her husband died, Sunita worked and saved until she had enough to set up the cart. Few women in that market run a business on their own, and she never made much. · Aarav lives two kilometres from his school in Delhi. · Last week heavy rain and wind wrecked Sunita’s cart for the second time. · Delhi’s traffic is mostly cars, and some of them are large SUVs.

Dock workers and people waiting for a bus stop at Sunita’s cart for tea and a snack. Fewer of them stop now. · Storms and heavy rain have been flooding the roads near the port. · Cars make carbon dioxide by burning petrol and diesel.

Paradip is a large port town on the coast of Odisha. · Sunita’s cart stands on the main road beside the port. · Aarav’s school bus is often held up in traffic.