CARING FOR OUR COMMON HOME
By Charlotte Evans, JRS Australia Community Engagement Coordinator
From March 10-16, Sydney hosted its second Climate Action Week – “a series of community-led events across the city from all aspects of the climate action ecosystem”.[1] This brought together much-needed collaboration and learning around the climate crisis, and a collective call to action.
Seen through the eyes of JRS Australia’s mission, climate change intersects and resonates with our work, both in its impact upon forcibly displaced communities, and in other spaces and systems of injustice. Climate justice is a core tenet that motivates us towards advocating for, and building, a more just, safe, and sustainable future.
A greener future can be gauged not just by carbon and climate metrics, but by communities and care. Building a more just future – in the face of climate breakdown – means seeking not just to slow down anthropogenic (human-induced) warming, but also to seek more abundant, diverse and equitable societies. This means living in greater harmony with both the non-human living world as well as our human neighbours. This work includes cultivating communities, policies and border regimens that care for people on the move, in the face of climate change and disasters, and in new host contexts.
Future Generations Day
I was honoured to be invited to attend a series of panel talks hosted by UNICEF Australia as part of “Future Generations Day”. This was the first time that a day dedicated towards young people has been included in the programme, a decision that has to be commended. After all, the climate crisis affects us all, but skewed in a very uneven way. Paying attention to these complexities and intersections is hugely important, especially since women and children bear the brunt of climate change impacts, including climate-related displacement.[2]
The first panel, “Towards a COP 31 that works for future generations”, asked critical questions of representation, especially regarding young people’s voices and the challenges of not just gaining a seat at the table, but being listened to as credible voices. It is clear that these dynamics are particularly complex within the contested space of the Conference of Parties (COP) process, the annual climate conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). This panel also raised important questions around Australia’s bid to co-host COP31 in 2026 “with the Pacific” – a notion riddled with contradiction and tension. For many Pacific Island nations, Australia is not perceived to be a credible leader of international climate negotiations, nor a “partner” of the Pacific, while it continues to be the leading exporter of coal, thereby inherently exporting harm to its Pacific neighbours.
The evening event, “Climate change is changing childhood”, provided a lively discussion on the impacts of the climate crisis, particularly for young people, coupled with a range of inspiring initiatives by youth activists and researchers, parents and health practitioners. Young panellists shared stories from their home communities and childhoods, including the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires and extreme heat in Western Sydney. This was followed by members of Parents for Climate and Doctors for the Environment Australia explaining the greater vulnerability of children’s bodies to factors such as intense heat and smoke. These stories of lived experiences signified a clear message that climate change is far from an intangible issue requiring action here and now.
One young member of the panel shared the sobering fact that Western Sydney is considerably hotter than the rest of the city during extreme heat events.[3] Many of the people whom JRS serves live in Western Sydney, an area of diversity but also greater deprivation. In this ‘Tale of Two Cities’,[4] paying attention to the built environment is critical – where the housing crisis, cost-of-living crisis, and climate crisis combine to produce environmental harm.
Climate resilience and energy were two of the three issues raised at the Sydney Alliance Pre-Election Assembly on 13 March, alongside housing, where affordability and environmentally safe housing were viewed as equal priorities. The Assembly emphasised the power of community mobilisation and solidarity. JRS Australia is an ally to environmental organisations in our home city of Sydney and beyond, and sees allies as crucial to the work of seeking climate and refugee justice.
Our responsibility in the Pacific
The impacts of climate change and climate injustice manifest at different scales, from local neighbourhoods in Western Sydney to the threatened homelands of our Pacific neighbours. JRS has a mandate to serve where the need is greatest, and we recognise that climate change is particularly acute – and unjust – for communities such as low-lying Pacific Island nations. For some of these communities, climate-related displacement presents a real and existential threat, raising a myriad of cultural, socio-economic, and emotional concerns. JRS Australia is seeking to listen, learn, and build our partnerships within this region, so that we can be better allies within this space, as these challenges are set to grow.
JRS Australia’s Climate Related Displacement page can be seen here.
References:
[1] Climate Action Week Sydney
[2] Impact of climate change: women and children bearing the brunt
[3] Building adaptive capacity to heat in Western Sydney
[4] A tale of two cities: Housing deprivation in Sydney
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