CLIMATE REPARATIONS IN AUSTRALIA: OBSTACLES AND OPPERTUNITIES

Thursday 15 – Friday 16 May 2025

The University of Melbourne

Organised by Erin Fitz-Henry (University of Melbourne) and Julia Dehm (La Trobe)

With the increased frequency and intensity of climate-driven extreme weather events, there are growing calls from vulnerable communities for compensation for climate impacts from countries and corporations whose historical emissions have caused the climate crisis. Internationally, the need for climate reparations has become a powerful demand for reparative justice and a means to contest how climate change is intensifying existing injustices and exacerbating structural inequalities. To date, however, there have been few scholarly, policy or legal debates in Australia about climate reparations and the obligations of Australian governments, organizations and corporations for addressing this growing damage. This project brings together interdisciplinary scholars from the social sciences and law, legal professionals, policy advocates and climate justice organizers to think expansively about reparations for intersectional climate harms entails and develop an agenda for Australia’s role in advancing climate reparations internationally, regionally, and domestically.

The workshop objective was to develop a research and policy agenda around climate reparations in Australia and the international, regional and domestic obligations owed by the Australian government, Australian organizations and Australian corporations.

More specifically, the broad aims of the workshop were:

  1. to explore diverse historical, philosophical, and cultural understandings of climate reparations in Australia and across the Pacific;
  2. to assess the multiple pathways through which Australia might enact climate reparations for both Pacific Island countries and First Nations communities long subjected to diverse forms of Australian colonialism; and
  3. to develop a set of policy recommendations for both the Australian government and NGOs interested in pushing for more reparative responses to the deepening climate crisis.

The workshop program is available here. 

A report on the workshop discussions, outcomes and next steps is available here.

Videos of Workshop Presentations 

You can view the entire playlist of workshop videos here. 

Panel 1: Mapping policy development on climate reparations internationally  

Chair/Discussant: Julia Dehm (La Trobe)

  • Harjeet Singh (Satat Sampada Climate Foundation) (via zoom), “Advancing Climate Reparations and Justice in the Face of Loss and Damage”
  • Tendayi Achiume (Stanford) (via zoom), “TBC”

    Panel 2: Mapping theoretical perspectives on climate reparations 

    Chair/Discussant: Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne)

    • Rachel Killean (University of Sydney) (via zoom), “Victims Rights, Transitional Justice and Lessons for Climate Reparations”
    • Jeremy Moss (UNSW), “Creating Vulnerability: Australia, Fossil Fuel Exports and Climate Reparations”

      Panel 3: Australia’s International Obligations 

      Chair/Discussant: Robyn Eckersley (University of Melbourne)

      • Julia Dehm (La Trobe University), “Australia’s International Reparative Obligations”
      • Sophie Hardefeldt (ActionAID), “The missing billions: Charting a path from climate finance to climate reparations”
      • Pia Treichel (International Institute for Environment and Development), “Climate reparations in the context of the international climate funds”
      • Lauren Nishimura (University of Melbourne), “Choosing to stay and planning to move: Exploring equity, justice, and Australia’s international obligations”

      Panel 4: Australia’s Regional Obligations 

      Chair/Discussant: John Cox (University of Melbourne)

      • Dylan Asafo (University of Melbourne) (via zoom), “Climate Reparations for Australia’s ‘Pacific family’: Exploring the Im/possibilities”
      • Nina Araneta-Alana (ANU), “Regional Opportunities under the Loss and Damage Fund”
      • Zoe Nay (Melbourne Law School), “The Law and Practice of Accessing Finance for Loss and Damage in the Pacific”

       

      Panel 5: Australia’s Domestic Obligations

      Chair/Discussant: Erin O’Donnell (University of Melbourne)

      • Djarra Delaney (National First Peoples Platform on Climate Change), “”Climate Justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities: consequences of colonisation and contemporary decolonial action”
      • Elise Klein (ANU) (via zoom), “Reparative public policy: ways forward for the settler colonial state”
      • Jack Piper (ARC Justice) and Donna Askew (ECLC and Melbourne), “The right to equitable adaptation. Who pays?”
      • Rosemary Lyster (University of Sydney), “Multispecies Climate Justice, Disasters and Reparations”

      Panel 6: Obligations of private entities 

      Chair/Discussant: Joanna Kyriakakis (Monash)

      • Stephanie Collins (Monash), “The moral obligations of fossil fuel companies”
      • Fiona Haines (University of Melbourne), “What is (not) progress: The value of a field of struggle lens”
      • Denisse Rodriguez (University of Melbourne), “The responsibilities of the fossil fuel industry as ecological debtor”
      • Marco Grasso (University of Milan-Bicocca) (via zoom), “The fossil bloc and climate reparations”

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      Photo by Amanda Chen on Unsplash