The Struggle for Climate Justice: Three Indian News Media Coverage of Climate Change

Climate justice involves two crucial matters, namely, ensuring that rich nations take responsibility for their past emissions and supporting developing nations’ efforts to protect vulnerable people from climate disasters. Although there is a growing interest in climate justice from a global standpoint, this concept has yet to receive due critical attention from a local perspective. This study focuses on the local perspective and examines how climate justice was represented in three Indian newspapers during COP21 (Paris, 2015) and COP22 (Marrakech, 2016). It utilizes the selected Indian news media content and reveals that the newspapers have emphasized on the harm avoidance justice during the international climate conferences when an emphasis on the burden sharing dimension was instead expected. The publications strongly criticize rich countries for the emissions but less vigorously criticize the local authorities who are responsible for containing pollution and emissions. This finding along with the emphasis on the harm avoidance signifies the growing importance of local environmental issues in global deliberations.