Climate change is one of the central challenges facing African countries and their people. Unless concerted efforts are made worldwide very soon to reduce emissions, climate change impacts are likely to be devastating. Higher-end temperature scenarios present a dark future jeopardizing secure access to basic needs such as water, food, housing and a healthy environment, as well as adding to the stressors on natural resources.

Those who will suffer the most from the challenges posed by climate change have contributed the least to the problem in the first place: the poor and vulnerable, especially in developing countries. To make matters worse, these are the same people who have benefited the least from modernisation and industrialisation and have a relatively small carbon footprint. This is a double injustice.

While climate justice and social justice are difficult to disentangle, neither the legal systems nor the main actors framing the dominant climate change narratives seem sufficiently attentive to the double-edged justice questions posed by the impacts of climate change on poor communities.

This book fills some of the gaps in climate change scholarship by focusing on the climate narratives emerging in and around South Africa – how they relate to broader issues of social justice and resource allocation, and the role of rights talk and legal strategies in the framing of the problems and solutions. In doing so, the book contributes to developing rights- and justice-based strategies for translating knowledge into action.

• Introduction - Jackie Dugard, Asunción Lera St. Clair and Siri Gloppen
• The role of social justice and poverty in South Africa’s National Climate Change Response White Paper - Kjersti Fløttum and Øyvind Gjerstad
• An analysis of the Human Development Report 2011: Sustainability and Equity: A better future for all - Des Gasper, Ana Victoria Portocarrero and Asunción Lera St. Clair
• Situated resilience: Reframing vulnerability and security in the context of climate change - Petra Tschakert and Nancy Tuana
• Climate change, poverty and climate justice in South African media: the case of COP17 - Jill Johannessen
• Contesting climate injustice during COP17 - Brandon Barclay Derman
• Qwasha! Climate justice community dialogues compilation vol. 1: Voices from the streets - Molefi Mafereka Ndlovu
• Water rights, commons and advocacy narratives - Patrick Bond
• Payment for ecosystem services versus ecological reparations: The ‘green economy’, litigation and a redistributive eco-debt grant - Khadija Sharife and Patrick Bond
• Let’s work together: Environmental and socio-economic rights in the courts - Jackie Dugard and Anna Alcaro
• Red-green lawfare? Climate change narratives in courtrooms - Catalina Vallejo and Siri Gloppen
• Author biographies
• Table of cases
• Index

• Social and environmental justice activists
• Environmental, development, human rights, governance, linguistics, discourse analysis, and law and society scholars and students of all levels
• Those working on impacts and adaptation in response to climate change
• Anyone interested in rights-based litigation