The Routledge Handbook of Applied Climate Ethics, edited by Donald A. Brown, Kathryn Gwiazdon, and Laura Westra, published in 2024, provides valuable insights and a powerful guide to exploring the ethical issues of climate change policy in our modern world. In line with the Earth Charters’ guiding principles of ethics, democracy, justice, spirituality, community, and ecological sustainability, The Routledge Handbook of Applied Climate Ethics gives us light on how (and why) to address the ethical shortfalls in climate policy.
Considering that COP30 is around the corner, and the Brazilian government, as the president of COP30, in calling for a “Global Ethical Stocktake” of climate policy, this book is especially helpful in the effort of understanding the climate crises through an ethical perspective. This “stocktake” should involve investigating and discussing the ethical challenges we as a world community face in responding to climate change, and proposing solutions guided by the principles of ethics and justice. This book can be an important resource in this effort.
Containing 39 essays written by 38 different contributing authors in their respective fields of expertise, The Routledge Handbook of Applied Climate Ethics tackles diverse complex environmental issue head on, through the lens of ethics. It takes readers through the ethical issues of national government’s efforts to reduce GHG emissions, the issues involved in “responding to unavoidable climate harms” through a lens of climate justice, responses to arguments made against climate change policies, analyses of the various current policy responses to climate change, and strategies for the way forward.
Some examples of the outstanding essays contained in the book include contributing author Nigel Dower’s argument that states have a duty to the No Harm Principle, both within their borders, and to the international community outside of them. Or, the case study by Ngozi Unuigbe on climate justice in Nigeria, in which she advocates a pathway for defending the rights of people disproportionately affected by climate change and certain climate policies. Other authors delve into the problem of misinformation and the Climate Change Disinformation Campaign, which successfully worked to change the dialogue around the climate crisis to one of “nationalism, excessive cost, and scientific uncertainty” (Gwiazdon & Brown, 2024).
The book advocates for the role of democracy and justice in climate policy, ethical obligations to develop and support the precautionary principle, the role of developed countries in shouldering the cost of climate adaptation for developing countries, our duty to the plant’s ecological system, and many more principles put forward by the Earth Charter and other major instruments.
In its concluding section, the book proposes different strategies for guiding ethical policy-making and thought going forward. Our own Executive Director, Mirian Vilela is featured with her essay “Ethical and Ecological Education: An Approach to Climate Change through the Lens of the Earth Charter.” The book also offers strategies for ethical climate negotiation, for epistemic justice, media coverage, cultural intelligence, activism, and the legal lens of “environmental personhood”.
Going into the future, we hope to see the principles and strategies outlined in this valuable book taken seriously and implemented in practice. Starting with COP30 and the Global Ethical Stocktake, our appeal to the world is to take this book, and the principles of the Earth Charter, to be a guide, a blueprint, and the key to implementing ethical climate policy and action.
