CLIMATE REPARATIONS READING GROUP
The Climate Reparations Reading Group has been meeting since 2023 to discuss interdisciplinary texts to explore the relationships between different demands for reparations for the violent histories of colonialism, slavery, and environmental exploitation, as well as the relationships between demands for reparations and other transformative justice struggles in different parts of the world.
SEMESTER 2, 2025
#1: Climate Reparations and International Legal Frameworks
ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change (July 23 2025) – section V
“How to Do Things with Climate Reparations” ACIL lecture with Professor Anne Orford (Melbourne Law School) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r7CcZ6CP
#2: Decolonising Loss and Damage
Farhana Sultana, “The Unbearable Heaviness of Climate Coloniality” (2022) 99 Political Geography 102638
Petersmann, Marie. “Entangled Harms: A Reparative Approach to Climate Justice.” (2024) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5054925
Additional: Farhana Sultana, “Decolonizing Climate Knowledge: Repairing Epistemic Injustice and Loss in the Era of Climate Change”, January 23, 2025,
Or listen to the recording:
#3: Climate coloniality and the struggle against anti-Black racism
Tao Leigh Goffe. 2025. Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis, Chapter 9 “Affective Plate Tectonics”
Kris Manjapra. “Conclusion: The Insurgent Presence of Reparations.” in Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation.
#4: Climate Reparations vs. Climate Aid Colonialism
Nick Malherbe and Abiodun Omotayo Oladejo. 2024. “Against Climate Aid Colonialism: The Case for Climate Reparations and South-South Solidarity.” Africa Spectrum 60:1. Against Climate Aid Colonialism: The Case for Climate Reparations and South-South Solidarity – Nick Malherbe, Abiodun Omotayo Oladejo, 2025
#5: Climate Reparations and Intersectionality
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Tell the Others”
Fiona Williams, “Centring Reparation, Intersectionality, and Interdependence in Feminist Climate Justice.” feminist-climate-justice-think-pieces-01-reparation-intersectionality-and-interdependence-en.pdf
Additional Reading: Cook Island submissions to the ICJ Advisory Opinion hearings on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change
#6: Climate Reparations and Military Harms
T.J Demos, “Gaza Genocide, Climate Colonialism, and Survival Media: What it would mean to repair loss and damage” https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64b559baa0356cb403a29930/678e4eb7a03f061c5a24beea_WOR_TJ_Gaza_Genocide_Climate_Colonialism_Survival%20Media_200125.pdf
Additional Reading: State of Palestine submissions to the ICJ Advisory Opinion hearings on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, pp. 41-55.
#7: Climate Reparations and Indigenous Justice
Birch, Tony. “‘We’ve Seen the End of the World and We Don’t Accept It’: Protection of Indigenous Country and Climate Justice.” Towards a Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace: Navigating the Great Transition (2020): 251-273.
Birch, Tony. ““On what terms can we speak?” Refusal, resurgence and climate justice.” Coolabah 24&25 (2018): 2-16.
Additional reading: Klein, Elise. “Beyond Compensation: Reparations and the Ongoing Colonization of Australia.” Development and Change 55.4 (2024): 830-854.
#8: Temporalities of Climate Injustice
Jackson, Guy. “More-than-climate temporalities of loss and damage in Australia.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113.10 (2023): 2359-2375.
Eliana Cusato, “Against temporal abstractions: the battle for colonial and climate reparations in international law” International Journal of Law in Context, 2025. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/80133CC88C6992C40E5C234D8D1C5636/S1744552325100074a.pdf/against_temporal_abstractions_the_battle_for_colonial_and_climate_reparations_in_international_law.pdf
Additional: Janet Fiskio, Climate Change, Literature, and Environmental Justice: Poetics of Dissent and Repair (Cambridge University Press, 2021), chapter 2 “Ghosts and Reparations: Thinking through Enslavement and Climate Futures with Octavia Butler”
#9: Fossil Fuels and Climate Reparations
Rosemary Lyster, “A Fossil Fuel-Funded Climate Disaster Response Fund under the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change Impacts” (2015) 4(1) Transnational Environmental Law 125-151
Christopher W. Callahan & Justin S. Mankin, “Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability” Nature, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08751-3
#10: Climate Reparations and Just Transitions
Lara Montesino Coleman, Helena Müllenbach Martínez & Louise Wise, “Reparation for extractivist genocide: harm, responsibility and implications for a just transition” International Journal of Human Rights, 2025
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642987.2025.2519583#abstract
Correia, Joel E. “Land matters: how Indigenous land restitution can inform loss and damage policy and chart a path toward an otherwise climate justice.” Climate and Development 16.9 (2024): 811-825.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Photo by Amanda Chen on Unsplash