Anth Final

Climate justice

A framework that says climate change is not only an environmental problem, but also a problem of inequality, racism, colonialism, capitalism, power, and unequal vulnerability.

Environmental justice

A movement focused on the unequal distribution of environmental harms, especially pollution and toxic exposure in low-income communities and communities of color.

Frontline communities

Communities most directly harmed by climate change and environmental injustice, including Indigenous peoples, communities of color, low-income communities, peasants, and coastal communities.

Procedural justice

Fairness in the decision-making process, especially whether affected communities are included, consulted, and given real power.

Distributive justice

Fairness in how benefits and burdens are distributed; a climate policy can lower emissions but still be unjust if vulnerable communities carry the costs.

Ecological modernization

The belief that environmental problems can be solved through green technology, expert management, and market tools without transforming capitalism.

Market-based solutions

Climate policies that use prices, taxes, trading systems, or financial incentives to reduce pollution, such as carbon taxes and cap-and-trade.

Carbon tax

A tax on carbon emissions meant to make fossil fuels more expensive and encourage cleaner energy use.

Cap-and-trade

A system where the government sets an emissions limit and allows companies to buy and sell pollution permits.

Carbon trading

A market system where carbon emissions or reductions are bought and sold, often criticized for allowing continued pollution.

Neoliberalism

A political-economic system emphasizing markets, privatization, deregulation, and individual responsibility instead of public or community control.

Antagonism

Direct opposition to powerful institutions, corporations, governments, or systems that contribute to climate change and inequality.

Solidarity

Mutual support among groups whose struggles are connected, such as Indigenous peoples, workers, farmers, and environmental justice groups.

Commons

Resources collectively managed by communities rather than privately owned or controlled by corporations.

Commoning

The practice of collectively managing and sharing resources for community benefit rather than private profit.

Prefiguration

Creating parts of the desired future society within the present system through practices like community gardens, co-ops, mutual aid, and ecovillages.

New protagonists

Grassroots communities, Indigenous peoples, women, youth, peasants, workers, and local groups who become leading actors in climate justice.

Food sovereignty

The right of communities to control how food is grown, produced, distributed, and consumed.

Food security

Having reliable access to enough food, without necessarily challenging who controls the food system.

Food security vs. food sovereignty

Food security asks whether people have enough food, while food sovereignty asks who controls the food system.

Corporate food regime

A food system dominated by large agribusiness corporations that control seeds, production, processing, distribution, and branding.

Food as commodity

The idea that food is treated mainly as a product for sale and profit rather than as a human right or community need.

La Via Campesina

An international peasant movement that helped popularize the idea of food sovereignty.

Peasant activism

Political action by small farmers and rural communities fighting for land, seeds, fair prices, ecological farming, and food sovereignty.

Seed sovereignty

The right of farmers and communities to save, exchange, breed, and control seeds.

Seed laws

Laws regulating seed saving, exchange, and ownership, often criticized for increasing corporate control over farming.

Agrarian reform

Changing land ownership and rural power structures so small farmers and communities have more access to land and resources.

Local food systems

Food systems rooted in local production, distribution, and community control rather than corporate global supply chains.

Community gardens

Shared spaces where people collectively grow food or plants while building community, improving food access, and reclaiming land.

Urban agriculture

Growing food in cities through gardens, vacant lots, rooftops, community farms, or vertical farming.

Food justice

A movement focused on fairness in food access, food production, land, labor, health, and community control.

Self-determination

A community’s power to control its own land, resources, institutions, and future.

Reclaiming vacant land

Transforming abandoned or unused land into community gardens, farms, or shared spaces.

Land tenure

Secure legal access to land, which is important because gardens and farms can be displaced without it.

Ecofeminism

A framework connecting the exploitation of women and the exploitation of nature, especially through food labor and care work.

Essentialism

The belief that a group has a fixed natural essence, such as assuming women are naturally closer to nature.

Entomophagy

The practice of eating insects.

Edible insects

Insects consumed as food, often promoted as a sustainable protein source.

Technocratic solutions

Expert-designed technical fixes that may ignore culture, inequality, local knowledge, or political power.

Cultural construction of edibility

The idea that what counts as food depends on culture, taste, presentation, habit, advertising, and social norms.

Sustainable development

Development that claims to meet present needs without harming future generations, often criticized for still depending on growth and capitalism.

Green economy

An approach that tries to make capitalism environmentally sustainable through green technology, carbon markets, offsets, and ecosystem service pricing.

Greenwashing

When a company, government, or organization presents itself as environmentally friendly without making deep environmental change.

Capitalist accumulation

The process of increasing wealth and profit through extraction, production, consumption, and expansion.

Growth logic

The belief that economies must constantly grow through more production, consumption, and GDP.

Biophysical limits

The physical and ecological limits of Earth, including finite resources, carbon sinks, water systems, and ecosystem stability.

Commodification

Turning something into a product that can be bought and sold, such as food, water, seeds, carbon, land, or nature.

Decommodification

Taking something out of pure market logic and treating it as a right, commons, relationship, or public good.

Homo economicus

The idea that humans are naturally selfish, rational, profit-maximizing individuals.

Buen Vivir

A “good living” philosophy rooted in Indigenous Andean thought that values community, harmony with nature, equality, and wellbeing over GDP growth.

Sumak Kawsay

Another term for Buen Vivir, meaning good living or living well in harmony with community and nature.

Ecological Swaraj

A concept from India emphasizing local self-rule, ecological sustainability, direct democracy, self-reliance, and mutual responsibility.

Degrowth

A movement arguing that wealthy societies should reduce unnecessary production and consumption while improving equality, health, housing, education, and wellbeing.

Redistribution

Moving wealth, resources, or power from richer groups to poorer or more vulnerable groups.

Local self-reliance

A community’s ability to meet needs through local production, local knowledge, and local decision-making.

Direct democracy

A system where people participate directly in decision-making rather than only through representatives.

Cultural plurality

The recognition that many cultures have valid knowledge systems, practices, and ways of organizing life.

Non-capitalist exchange

Exchange based on reciprocity, social ties, ceremony, mutual aid, or prestige rather than profit.

Anthropocentrism

A human-centered worldview that treats humans as most important and nature mainly as a resource for human use.

Rights of Nature

The idea that ecosystems, rivers, forests, animals, plants, and Earth systems have rights to exist, regenerate, and flourish.

Rights of Mother Earth

A framework that views Earth as a living community with rights, rather than as property or a resource for human use.

Mother Earth

A way of understanding Earth as a living, interconnected community of humans, animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and ecosystems.

Intrinsic value

Value something has in itself, not only because it benefits humans.

Pachamama

An Andean concept often translated as Mother Earth, connected to legal recognition of Nature’s rights.

Earth community

The idea that humans, animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and ecosystems belong to one interconnected community.

Deep ecology

An ecological philosophy that challenges the root causes of environmental destruction and rejects human-centered thinking.

Shallow ecology

Environmentalism focused on surface-level fixes, often technology or consumer changes, without transforming deeper systems.

Earth Jurisprudence

A legal philosophy arguing that Earth and its beings have rights and that human law should reflect ecological relationships.

Wild Law

Another term for Earth Jurisprudence, meaning law based on the rights and relationships of the Earth community.

Legal standing

The legal ability to bring a case to court, including the question of who can represent nature in court.

Property rights

Legal rights to own, use, control, sell, or exclude others from land or resources.

The problem of property

The idea that environmental destruction is often protected by property systems that allow owners or corporations to exploit land and resources.

Ecosystem services

Benefits humans receive from ecosystems, such as water filtration, pollination, carbon storage, and flood protection.

Carbon offsets

Programs where polluters compensate for emissions by funding carbon reductions or conservation elsewhere.

Climate debt

The idea that wealthy, high-emitting countries owe support or reparations to poorer countries and communities harmed by climate change.

Climate reparations

Payments, resources, debt relief, technology transfers, or policy changes meant to repair climate harms caused by historical emissions.

Global North

Wealthier industrialized countries that have historically emitted more carbon and benefited from colonialism and capitalism.

Global South

Countries and communities often made poorer through colonialism, extraction, debt, and unequal trade, and often more vulnerable to climate change.

Environmentally unequal exchange

A global system where wealthy regions benefit from resources and labor while poorer regions experience extraction, pollution, and climate vulnerability.

Community resilience

A community’s ability to survive, adapt, recover, and maintain identity during climate disasters or environmental change.

Adaptation

Adjusting to climate impacts that are already happening, such as flooding, sea-level rise, storms, or land loss.

Wetland restoration

Repairing or rebuilding wetlands so they can protect coastlines, support ecosystems, and store carbon.

Traditional ecological knowledge

Environmental knowledge developed through long-term relationships between Indigenous or local communities and their land, water, plants, and animals.

Community-led resettlement

Relocation where the affected community has real control over planning, location, housing, governance, culture, and future land use.

Relocation

Moving people away from areas threatened by climate change or environmental hazards.

Resettlement

A more collective form of relocation that tries to rebuild community life, culture, housing, governance, and social ties in a new place.

Climate refugees

People forced to leave their homes because climate impacts make living there difficult or impossible.

Sovereignty

The right of a community or nation to govern itself and control its land, culture, and future.

Tribal sovereignty

The right of Indigenous nations to self-govern and maintain authority over land, culture, and community.

Lifeways

A community’s way of life, including food practices, land relationships, language, rituals, subsistence, traditions, and social ties.

Gentrification

When wealthier people or investors move into an area, raising costs and displacing existing communities.

Just transition

A shift away from fossil fuels and destructive industries that protects workers, low-income people, and communities of color while building a fairer economy.

Solidarity economy

An economy based on cooperation, sharing, community support, ecological sustainability, and meeting needs instead of maximizing profit.

Cooperatively owned businesses

Businesses owned and democratically controlled by workers, members, or communities rather than outside investors.

Worker cooperatives

Businesses owned and managed by the workers themselves.

Human Rights Cities

Cities that organize local policy around human rights principles like dignity, equality, housing, health, participation, and justice.

Right to the city

The idea that residents should have collective control over urban spaces and urban development instead of cities being shaped mainly by profit.

Ecovillages

Intentional communities where people try to live sustainably through cooperation, shared resources, reduced consumption, and community self-reliance.

Grassroots innovation

Local communities experimenting with new ways of living, organizing, building, growing food, or using resources.

Replication

When a model spreads by being copied by other communities or activists.