Power/Knowledge in Discourses of Climate Justice

Abstract

Rawlsian political philosophers and theorists approach climate justice using ideal theories of the fair distribution of climate change burdens, and the rights to be protected in the face of those burdens. Other theorists and activists embrace these ideal principles, but also identify structural causes of climate injustice, calling for the profound transformation of the global political, economic, and cultural order. Using a Foucaultian framework, this thesis argues that liberal and activist discourses of climate justice are specific configurations of power/knowledge with particular constraints and material effects. Distributive and rights-based climate justice discourses vitiate the voices of those most affected by climate change, overlook and conceal root causes of climate injustice, marginalise alternative political projects, and thereby reinforce existing power relations. By contrast, across critical, utopian, and spatial dimensions, activist climate justice discourse exposes and confronts these fundamental relations of oppression and domination.