ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the background of the climate justice movement (CJM) and its use of the concept of climate debt. In the 1970s and 1980s, grassroots environmental movements – often communities in direct struggle with states and businesses over their very means of livelihood – became a worldwide phenomenon. The seminal Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 is best known for the adoption of environmental conventions on climate change, biodiversity and desertification. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in Rio in 1992, but it took until 1995 before it was ratified and the first Conference of the Parties (COP) took place in Berlin. Ecological debt is viewed as mainly the result of unfair exchanges between countries. Climate debt, on the other hand, is primarily the result of the non-traded overuse of the carbon commons, imprecating adverse effects of climate change, and is referred to with extra-economic terminology, such as "appropriation" or "occupation".
