Farhana is championing climate justice and just transition as central organising principles in the UN Climate change negotiations. In October 2021, she published a “Manifesto for Justice for COP26 and beyond” in The World Today advocating that equality and fairies must be at the heart of all future climate change talks to allow those hardest hit by global warming to have a say in their future. She worked closely at COP26 with the Climate Vulnerable Forum, Indigenous Peoples from the Minga Indígena Alliance and climate youth activists who were all working on demanding a Justice Reset.

What is a Justice Reset

Justice Reset is a unifying demand first presented at COP26, Glasgow, November 2021. It gathers all constituencies whose call for climate justice and just transition recognises the need for a complete overhaul of the existing system by shifting resources and political power to those with less. It supports the convergence of multiple groups and voices who agree that climate action requires global solidarity based on systemic change and cannot be solved by a patchwork of weak policies.

The most important starting point is an official acknowledgement that people impacted by historic and systemic injustice – such as poorer countries, Indigenous Peoples, small-scale farmers, children and those with disabilities – did not cause the climate crisis and will bear adverse consequences. Instead of viewing gender, race, disability and poverty as tangential issues, a demand for Justice Reset centres people with these experiences and their voices.

A Justice Reset would be operationalised through dialogue – and an examination of COP’s weak structures and policies – led by COP-appointed JEDI (justice, equality, diversity and inclusion) champions whose role would give fairness a voice.

 

Why advocate for a Justice Reset?

Currently COP is composed of a patchwork of institutional arrangements and proliferating agenda items with no clear overview of how they relate to issues of inequality, inclusion and fairness. There is no one unifying demand from civil society to COP26. A Justice Reset will focus attention on whether the pace of COP’s deliberations is in line with what needs to happen in this critical decade.

Through gathering multiple, diverse and influential voices around one call for a Justice Reset we can establish a justice-based narrative that will help future COPs make changes to the structure, values and principles on which our global economy is based.

 

How do we use the demand for a #JusticeReset?

Justice Reset is complementary to existing COP26 comms that centre climate justice and just transition. By gathering existing comms and justice demands under the #JusticeReset umbrella we ensure that our voices come together to an overwhelming crescendo.

For more information Read: Farhana Yamin’s A Manifesto for Justice for COP26 and Beyond
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