Just Climate Transition Network – Annual Workshop

Climate Change and Vulnerability

Tuesday June 17th – Haus 1 – Room H02

13:20 Welcome

13:30 Josep Recasens Subias: Conditional Compensation for Climate Disasters

Climate disasters are causing severe loss and damage globally, necessitating a balanced approach among the three pillars of climate justice: mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage compensation. While mitigation reduces emissions and adaptation minimizes the impact of unavoidable hazards, loss and damage compensation addresses residual harms. However, allocating resources among these strategies can create conflicts. For instance, compensation might inadvertently fund activities counterproductive to mitigation or adaptation, increasing vulnerability.

This paper argues for a conditional compensation framework to harmonize these strategies. Compensation for loss and damage should depend on recipients’ past actions regarding disaster preparedness and their likely future behavior, ensuring it is both mitigative and adaptive, to reduce exposure and vulnerability. This approach reduces tensions between climate strategies while incentivizing responsible actions, particularly in non-ideal contexts where compliance may be inconsistent.

The paper distinguishes between rectificatory compensation (for wrongdoing) and non- rectificatory compensation (distributive justice) and explores backward-looking conditionality, where eligibility depends on past decisions, and forward-looking conditionality, which ties compensation use to responsible and vulnerability-reducing activities.

Finally, the paper addresses two key objections to conditional compensation. The Abandonment Objection (Knight, 2015), that sufferers who acted wrong would be abandoned, is responded by distinguishing exclusionary from incentivist conditionality, ensuring basic support while rewarding responsible behavior. The Unfair Asymmetry Objection questions why climate disaster victims may face special duties while non-sufferers of climate disasters, usually major polluters and non-compliers, may not have these obligations. These concerns help refine conditional compensation rather than undermine it.

14:30 15 min coffee break

14:45 Kathleen Wallace – Vulnerability and Climate Change: What do Care Ethics and Disability Studies Tell Us?

Care ethics and disability studies often focus on the need for climate adaptations to be inclusive of the vulnerable and disabled. I want to explore how concepts from these areas could frame climate vulnerability more generally. As care ethics shows, vulnerability, dependency, and the need for care, experienced as temporary or permanent, are universal human conditions. A basic premise of care ethics and disability studies is that adaptation requires recognition of the “enmeshment” of human dependency and disability and of social and environmental infrastructure. Disability as a permanent, rather than transient, heightened vulnerability and dependency requires ongoing adaptation both to and of a social “infrastructure” that contribute to or is itself disabling. Extending these concepts to climate vulnerability, it can be conceptualized as a universal, permanent disability, in widely varying degrees and kind, in which ecological environments have themselves been and will continue to be injured and disabled and are in turn disabling. Insofar as the most climate disabled and front-line vulnerable communities are often also racially or ethnically marginalized, poor, or otherwise disadvantaged, a capability/disability approach to climate justice may also imply prioritizing such communities.

Climate justice seems to minimally require that injury causing actors (such as primary polluters) be responsible for remediating, mitigating, repairing the root cause, and compensating injury. But if climate disability is a permanent state requiring ongoing adaptation, then, that requires not only remediation, repair, compensation (e.g., carbon mitigation, capture; alternative energy, paying into a victim compensation fund), but facilitating and providing resources for reinventing social and environmental infrastructure to address the daily challenges of “living with” the permanent, albeit evolving environmental and ecological disablement. It also requires empowering climate disabled communities to develop and implement adaptations of the daily, ongoing “infrastructure” of living (housing, communication and support networks, preventive and resilient public health practices and structures as well as post-damage health care, and so on) that are responsive to their particular situation, values and culture.

15:45 15 min coffee break

16:00 Meilin Lyu: Climate Change and the Vulnerability of Cultural Heritage: The Case of Greek Archaeological Sites

As climate change intensifies, heritage sites emerges as a “new” yet under-recognized site of vulnerability. In Greece, extreme weather events such as heatwaves, storms and floods, now regularly threaten both the physical integrity of ancient monuments and the communities who live alongside them. These monuments hold not only historical and aesthetic value but are embedded in local identities, ecologies, and economies. Their loss would not only be cultural but social and ecological. This paper explores how heritage vulnerability complicates established justice frameworks in climate change discourse. While archaeological sites are often managed through bureaucratic, conservationist paradigms, their meanings are co-produced by local communities and visitors, whose relationships to heritage are shaped by memory, ritual, and lived experience. Yet, these same communities and stakeholders are rarely included in decisions about preservation or climate adaptation, exacerbating social exclusion and mistrust.

Drawing on decolonial and critical heritage theory, I argue for a justice-based framework that recognizes heritage sites as living, relational spaces rather than static national symbols. I explore how crowdsourced monitoring and participatory conservation projects can empower communities as co-stewards of heritage, offering not only a more resilient approach to climate vulnerability but also fostering democratic participation, cultural literacy, and environmental stewardship. Furthermore, I critique the persistent prioritization of traditional disaster management approaches in Greek heritage policy over strategic planning for climate resilience, even at World Heritage Sites. A critical rethinking of heritage vulnerability, one that integrates power, knowledge, and identity, can bridge environmental justice with cultural sustainability. In doing so, this paper contributes to broader discussions on what counts as a vulnerable group, how heritage fits into global climate justice narratives, and how inclusive strategies can build more just climate transitions.

17:00 10 min comfort break

17:10 Vedran Obućina: Religion and Vulnerability within Environmental Ethics

As climate change accelerates, it exacerbates existing vulnerabilities and creates new ones, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. Religious traditions, often deeply embedded in vulnerable communities, offer both a source of resilience and a framework for justice. This paper explores how religious perspectives shape understandings of climate vulnerability and contribute to ethical responses in just climate transitions.

First, it examines religious notions of vulnerability, particularly within traditions that emphasize care, stewardship, and interdependence. Many faiths articulate vulnerability not as a passive state but as a call to solidarity and ethical responsibility. By engaging with theological concepts such as eco-theology, prophetic justice, and intergenerational responsibility, religious frameworks challenge dominant paradigms of climate justice that focus solely on material redistribution.

Second, the paper considers how religious communities—especially Indigenous, monastic, and grassroots faith-based organizations—respond to climate-induced vulnerabilities. These communities often play a crucial role in disaster response, advocacy, and sustainable resource management, yet they themselves may face existential threats due to rising sea levels, desertification, and forced displacement. The paper argues that religious actors must be included in discussions about just climate transitions, not only as vulnerable groups but also as agents of climate resilience.

Finally, the discussion addresses the ethical tensions between climate vulnerability and other justice concerns, such as democratic participation and decolonial critiques. While religious perspectives can provide moral urgency to climate justice debates, they also raise questions about pluralism, power, and the role of faith in public decision-making.

 

Wednesday June 18th – Haus 1 – Room H01

9:30 Yvette Drissen – When Workers Are Left Behind: Epistemic Injustice in the Climate Transition

In response to the climate emergency the world is facing, there is an urgent need to decarbonise. Technological innovation is considered the main instrument to realise emission reduction but is also likely to involve significant social and economic disruption. Industrial decline and technological innovations are known to impact the lives of one vulnerable group in particular: workers in carbon intensive (e.g. steel) and fossil fuel (e.g. oil and coal) industries. A key demand raised by e.g. trade unionists is therefore that the climate transition should involve a just transition. This demand is incorporated into the European Green Deal (EGD) and is being implemented at the regional level through a Just Transition Mechanism.

The current just transitions literature mainly distinguishes distributive (De Vries, et al., 2024; Banjeree & Schuitema, 2022; Newell & Mulvany, 2012), procedural (Banjeree & Schuitema, 2022; Newell & Mulvany, 2012), restorative (Banjeree & Schuitema, 2022), and recognition (Wood, et al., 2024; Schlosberg, 2007; Honneth, 1995) (in)justice, yet the ways in which workers in these industries are treated in epistemically unjust ways remains underdeveloped. Through interviews with workers in the oil, gas and coal industries (United Kingdom) and trade unionists in carbon-intensive sectors (the Netherlands and France), we seek to refine and enrich both the philosophical concept of ‘epistemic injustice’ (Fricker, 2007) and identify concrete instances of workers/trade unionists being wronged in their capacity as knowers.

Our interview material suggests that workers’ expertise and knowhow is not being recognised by managers and policy makers and (hence) destroyed altogether. Trade unionists, in turn, experience various practices of discrediting and exclusion of their knowledge throughout the implementation of the EGD, including: not being invited to the table altogether; merely being considered a recipient of information; and being considered a nuisance. Ultimately, we argue that a just transition should include epistemic justice.

10:30 15 min comfort break

10:45 David Paaske – Climate Mitigation Harms and the Rights of Animals

It is widely recognized that climate change poses severe impacts on both human and animal populations. While most discussions have traditionally focused on human vulnerabilities, this paper introduces the concept of ‘Harms of Mitigation’—disruptions to animal lives and habitats arising from climate change mitigation measures themselves. These harms emerge not from climate change directly, but from interventions designed to combat it.

Climate change threatens animals through changing environmental conditions, including altered precipitation patterns, rising temperatures, and habitat shifts. Most species face compounding challenges of malnutrition, disease spread and forced migration. Critically, proposed mitigation strategies—such as large-scale solar and wind power installations, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), and hydropower systems—can themselves impose significant adverse effects on animal populations through habitat destruction and displacement.

The incorporation of animals into climate considerations dramatically expands the scope of moral subjects whose interests warrant serious attention. This expansion challenges existing climate policy frameworks by requiring evaluation of impacts on current and future generations of animals—billions of sentient beings profoundly affected by both climate change and our responses to it.

The paper explores two fundamental implications. First, current approaches reveal an inherent injustice where animals suffer adverse impacts—first from climate change itself, and subsequently from attempts to address it. Second, accepting animal rights as a moral constraint potentially significantly narrows available climate action options, creating a complex tension between the imperative to rapidly reduce emissions and the requirement to respect animal rights.

Drawing on emerging scholarship in animal ethics, particularly the Political Turn within animal ethics, this paper investigates how different conceptions of animal rights shape our evaluation of Harms of Mitigation and challenges climate policy to consider the rights and interests of animals.

11:45 Lunch break

13:00 Zhyar Nasruddin, Friederike Rohde: Epistemic Infrastructures of Vulnerability: Attribution, Capacity, and the Epistemic Foundations of Climate Vulnerability

This contribution explores the epistemic dimensions of climate vulnerability by examining how Extreme Weather Event (EWE) Attribution Studies inform our understanding of vulnerability in the context of climate change. While attribution science has advanced significantly—providing methodologies such as storyline methodologies and probabilistic approaches—its capacity to inform vulnerability assessments is deeply contingent on the availability and quality of [model]-suitable data (Trenberth 2011, Stott et al. 2010, Shepherd 2014, Nasruddin 2023). This dependency introduces a critical asymmetry, where regions and communities lacking the necessary data infrastructure, research tools, and academic capacity remaining unobserved, with their vulnerabilities uncertain or entirely unknown.

In many socio-political contexts, data scarcity is not merely a technical limitation but a reflection of broader structural inequalities. The issue is compounded by the non replaceability of long-term ground-based observations with satellite proxies (Otto 2017), making reliable vulnerability detection even more inaccessible. These barriers reveal two core epistemic problems: first, that the definition of climate vulnerability is often inferred from what can be modeled or measured, thus indicating a strong epistemic dependency of vulnerability; and second (which derives from first), that the lack of such epistemic capacity leads to invisibility within scientific and policy frameworks. In other words, the proneness to be overlooked.

This epistemic gap has profound justice implications. It raises urgent questions about whose vulnerabilities are rendered visible in climate policy, and whether the very processes meant to protect the vulnerable may in fact perpetuate existing exclusions. Based on the approach of transformative justice (Newell et al. 2021) this paper repositions climate vulnerability as a matter of epistemic justice (Temper et al. 2021) by foregrounding the methodological and infrastructural conditions underpinning EWE attribution calling for a more inclusive and reflexive approach to defining, detecting, and addressing vulnerability in a warming world.

14:00 End of workshop