Reading List
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Fair Shares Explained [Video]
A short video by Climate Fair Shares.
This short video explains the concept of Fair Shares to solve the climate crisis fast, in a just and equitable way. By adding up historic emissions of climate pollution versus each country's capacity to pay we can calculate what a country’s fair share of responsibility is to address climate change. It also introduces climate finance as an essential element to climate justice with nations that have earned the most through pollution support the countries that have emitted the least in their response to climate impacts and transition to renewable energy.
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"Canada Failing to Deliver Its Fair Share of Global Climate Finance"
Tova Gaster, The Energy Mix. November 2025.
A great summary of our 2024 Canada’s Fair Share – A Summit on Global Climate Equity where experts and civil society groups convened to discuss the climate debt Canada owes the Global South, stressing that effective solutions can be found not just in scaling up finance but also in significantly reforming trade and taxation policy as well as international financial institutions.
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"Rich nations can afford to pay their fair share to fix global crises"
Lidy Nacpil and Thuli Makama, Context. December 2022.
This opinion piece written by two prominent movement leaders for the Global South after COP27 discusses how the climate ‘loss and damage’ fund is just part of a wider set of proposals to ensure rich nations pay their fair share to respond to climate disasters – something the Global North can (and must) afford, with the authors laying out how.
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"The Vicious Cycle: Connections Between the Debt Crisis and Climate Crisis"
ActionAid International. April 2023.
The countries that are most vulnerable to the climate crisis are also facing a debt crisis. This report explores the profound contradictions when the money that is supposed to help countries respond to the climate crisis comes in the form of loans, forcing governments to pay back their debts through extractive economic policies that accelerate the climate crisis and make it harder to finance adaptation and a just transition. To escape this vicious cycle, ActionAid concludes that it is time for debt cancellation to become a central demand of climate justice advocates everywhere.
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"Covid, Climate, Chemicals and Debt: The Perfect Storm that hit Sri Lanka"
Dr. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya International. June 2022.
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"We need to get behind the smoke and mirrors of climate finance"
Carola Mejía, Meta. February 2023.
“Achieving climate and economic justice requires structural reparations, countering debt generation traps and coordinated action,” writes Carola Mejía from LATINDADD, who spoke at our 2024 summit.
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“Greenwashing” Structural Adjustment: Should the IMF lead the global energy transition?"
Lara Merling, Phenomenal World. October 2024.
“In a global financial system underpinned by the US dollar, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes can push much of the global South to the brink of a full-blown debt crisis. The exposure of Southern countries to such external risks, as well as their need to incur dollar-denominated debts, result from an uneven and broken international financial architecture.”
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7 Joint Principles for Finance System Transformation
Climate Action Network-International (CAN). April 2023.
The world’s largest environmental network offers seven principles to transform a global financial system that is failing the people and the planet. To paraphrase, we must:
* Reverse the flow of wealth out of developing countries into higher-income countries
* Urgently increase truly additional money for developing countries to address the climate crisis
* Urgently and equitably phase out fossil fuel finance
* Dismantle colonial structures of international financial institutions
* Advance debt justice and debt cancellation
* Advance tax justice and new finance on a polluter pays basis
* Ensure all climate finance reaches climate-vulnerable countries and communities -
"United States of America Fair Shares Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)"
Natalie Lucas, Tom Athanasiou, Kelly Stone, Karuna Jaggar, Isatis Cintron, Jessica Olson, Victor Menotti, Ceecee Holz, Hailey Campbell, Jacob Johns, Daphne Wysham. September 2024.
Co-authored by progressive international policy organizations across the United States, this document outlines a comprehensive plan for the U.S. to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance climate action in an equitable way both domestically and internationally.
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"Canada's Fair Share of 1.5 °C-Consistent Global Mitigation Through 2035"
Ceecee Holz. Climate Equity Reference Project. April 2024
This technical report serves to outline the methodological and normative-ethical choices taken by members of Climate Action Network Canada – Réseau action climat Canada (CAN-Rac) in deriving their current position on Canada’s fair share through 2035 towards a global mitigation effort consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C, based on the findings of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6).
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"Rich countries could raise $5tn of climate finance a year, study says"
Fiona Harvey, The Guardian. September 2024.
Research by Oil Change International shows that rich countries could raise five times the money that poor countries are demanding in climate finance, through windfall taxes on fossil fuels, ending harmful subsidies and a wealth tax on billionaires.
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"On the Offensive: How Canadian Companies Use Trade and Investment Agreements to Bully Foreign Governments for Billions"
Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. May 2022.
Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, a speaker at our 2024 summit, explains how large Canadian corporations uses investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) to target environmental policy and resource management decisions in developing nations. -
Shift Storm: Transforming Work in a Changing Climate [Newsletter]
A newsletter on work and climate change by Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, senior researcher at the Canadians Centre for Policy Alternatives (and speaker at our 2024 summit)
Mertins-Kirkwood breaks down all the latest research and news related to green jobs, a just transition and industrial policy from Canada and around the world.
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"Taxes and the path to a green economy"
DT Cochrane and Katrina Miller. Canadians for Tax Fairness. October 2023.
This report written by Katrina Miller and 2024 summit speaker DT Cochrane, confronts a contradiction: the Canadian federal government both uses the tax system to try and incentivize emission reduction and clean production by Canada’s at the same time as it subsidizes the fossil fuel sector – our largest source of emissions.
They argue that the federal government will need to reach beyond market oriented tax measures toward direct public investment in key sectors.
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"An Equitable Phaseout of Fossil Fuel Extraction: Towards a reference framework for a fair and rapid global phaseout"
Civil Society Equity Review. December 2023.
This cutting-edge report by Civil Society Equity Review proposes science- and equity-based dates by which different countries should end coal, oil and gas extraction to limit warming to 1.5°C , and argues that substantial amounts of international support are needed to make this possible in poorer and more fossil fuel production-heavy countries.
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"The 2023 Fair Shares Deficit: A Civil Society Equity Review of the NDCs and 2035 Mitigation Fair Shares"
December 2023.
Another seminal report from Civil Society Equity Review provides thorough review of whether countries are doing their fair share to tackle the climate crisis and finds that collective ambitions fall significantly short of what is needed to steer the world on a path to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. In particular, it finds that most developing countries are much closer to their fair shares than high-income countries, which must do more both domestically and internationally to meet Paris Agreement temperature goals.
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“Reparations for global climate justice?” [Twitter thread]
Jason Hickel, professor at ICTA-UAB, summarizes a paper that quantifies the compensation that over-emitting countries may owe the rest of the world for the appropriation of the atmospheric commons, co-written by Andrew Fanning (Doughnut Economics Action Lab).
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"Adaptation Gap Report 2023"
UN Environment Programme. November 2023.
In 2023, temperature records toppled, while storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves caused devastation. UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2023: Underfinanced. Underprepared – Inadequate investment and planning on climate adaptation leaves world exposed finds that progress on climate adaptation is slowing when it should be accelerating to catch up with these rising climate change impacts.
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"Just Transition: A Climate, Energy and Development Vision for Africa"
Youba Sokona, Yacob Mulugetta, Meron Tesfamichael, Fadhel Kaboub, Niclas Hällström, Matthew Stilwell, Mohamed Adow, and Colin Besaan. Power Shift Africa. 2023.
The Just Transition Report provides a fresh outlook on Africa’s development agenda, with sustainable and innovative approaches that could liberate the continent from structural traps that have held it back for decades. Crucially, it spotlights renewable energy as a critical component of development, universal food sovereignty for a healthy continent and industrialisation that is powered by Africa’s wealth of natural and technical resources.
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"Joint submission from the Debt and Climate Working Group for the 11th Technical Expert Dialogue (TED11) of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) process"
Debt and Climate Working Group. September 2024.
One of the primary outcomes of COP29 will be the agreement on a post-2025 climate finance goal (NCQG or New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance).
To help guide the process of developing this goal, the Debt and Climate Working Group co-led by Eurodad, APMDD, LATINDADD, CAN-International, Debt Justice UK, Demand Climate Justice and Recourse, submitted the following document of recommendations to the UNFCCC on the NCQG. It urges that the process recognize the huge climate debt owed to the Global South, and the historical, ethical and legal responsibility of the Global North to repay the said debt with urgency.