Planetary justice

Climate-induced (im)mobilities require academic researchers, policymakers, and international diplomacy to confront intersectional issues of justice ranging from the rights to move – or to stay – of people affected by sudden or slow-onset climate events, to their fair access to climate decision-making and resources for adaptation and mitigation, up to racial capitalism’s responsibilities in reproducing social inequalities. The conceptual evolution towards understanding climate (im)mobilities as emergent socio-ecological systems demands parallel innovations in justice-oriented narrative construction. Traditional justice frameworks, in fact, prove inadequate when confronted with the planetary scale and situated nature of climate mobilities. Climate mobilities require – at the theoretical as well as political level – a methodological cosmopolitanism that recognizes transnational and inter-species connections. Drawing on the new mobilities paradigm and on the concept of mobility assemblages, we aim at integrating a planetary justice framework with the decolonial invitation to: (1) represent ontological pluralism in recognizing multiple ‘pluriverses’ instead of a singular planet, (2) offer epistemic justice to challenge the coloniality of knowledge production in climate governance and (3) acknowledge historical accountability and colonial legacies that shape current climate crises and mobility regimes.