Julia Dehm, Associate Professor in Law and ARC DECRA Fellow, explores this issue through the lens of international justice.
“Internationally, the need for climate reparations has become a powerful demand for reparative justice and a means to contest how climate change is intensifying existing injustices and exacerbating structural inequalities,” she says.
Her recent essay, published in the American Journal of International Unbound Law, compares two strikingly different legal cases: a Peruvian farmer’s lawsuit against Germany’s largest energy producer, and a British company that sued Italy for banning oil production concessions of its coastline.
The contrast, she argues, reveals a troubling imbalance.
“The challenges in securing climate reparations for vulnerable individuals and communities demonstrate the asymmetry in available legal mechanisms, where fossil fuel companies are entitled to protection under legally binding treaties, but climate-affected communities must rely on politically contingent and legally fragile avenues for redress.”
She adds that the international legal order reflects a structural bias that prioritises corporate compensation over climate justice.
“There is a need for interdisciplinary thinking about how we conceptualise climate reparations, the climate reparations owed by countries such as Australia, and how climate reparations intersect with broader imperatives for a just transition and social justice.”
Beyond her published work, Associate Professor Dehm co-convenes a Climate Reparations Reading Group and has led national discussions on how Australia might address its own responsibilities. A recent workshop she co-hosted brought together researchers and policymakers to shape a research agenda on climate reparations in Australia and how Australia might address its own responsibilities.
Read more: https://bit.ly/4qKq4jo
