16 Feb 2026 MD 2026/1 Editorial

According to the UK’s Natural History Museum:

“Climate justice recognises that climate change will not affect everyone in the same way, and that this will lead to inequalities between places, people and even generations. It moves climate change conversations beyond the science and the physical impacts, to questions of politics and ethics, such as who should bear responsibility for paying for the damage caused by climate change, or how much developed countries should help the developing world increase their energy use in a sustainable way.”

What this statement inadvertently omits is that, from the perspective of communication rights, the world also needs to pay attention to how communication and information deficits undermine the struggle for climate justice. Such deficits include limited access to information, a dearth of public interest journalism, a generalized lack of critical media literacy, and undemocratic media structures. Together they mean that the knowledge and ways of thinking of communities at the forefront of the climate crisis rarely form part of public debate and are, consequently, absent from policymaking.

As Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva observed before COP30, (The Guardian, 6 November 2025):

“People must be at the centre of political decisions about climate and the energy transition. We must recognise that the most vulnerable sectors of our society are the most affected by the impacts of climate change, which is why just transition and adaptation plans must aim to combat inequality.”

WACC’s own work with project partners in the Amazon region has demonstrated that a local-first approach helps to bridge communication and information deficits. It enables them to exercise their right to freedom of expression by sharing traditional knowledge and adaptation solutions. It helps to keep local decision-makers in check by enabling climate-oriented public interest journalism. It also challenges stereotypes about marginalized groups and creates avenues for people’s participation in the formulation of climate policies. And, perhaps most importantly, it helps tackle the generalized sense of voicelessness and invisibility that many climate change-affected communities feel.

UN Women has highlighted how the climate crisis is not “gender neutral”. Women and girls bear the brunt of its impacts, which amplify existing gender inequalities and pose unique threats to their livelihoods, health and safety. There is ample evidence that climate change is driving a surge in gender-based violence and is a “threat multiplier” worsening gender inequality in conflict affected-areas.

The Belém Gender Action Plan 2026-2034 approved at COP30 has responded with three key provisions:

(1) Promote the use of traditional media, social media, web resources and innovative communication tools to effectively communicate to all relevant stakeholders and the public about climate change and climate action, including their gendered aspects, targeting communications such that they reach different groups, particularly women and girls in vulnerable situations.

(2) Foster the full, meaningful and equal participation and leadership of all women and girls, particularly Indigenous women and women from local communities, taking into account multidimensional factors, by promoting capacity building initiatives for leadership and negotiation skills and by eliminating barriers for women in decision-making processes at all levels.

(3) Encourage gender-responsive climate policies, plans, strategies and actions.

There is a clear relationship between communication justice and climate justice. Writing in this issue of Media Development, Aniruddha Jena notes that the provisions of the recent World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) and its Global Digital Compact – if implemented in affordable and efficient ways – constitute a blueprint for the information needs of the climate emergency:

“The next twelve months should be judged by whether climate services reach people every day, in languages and formats they use, and whether systems keep people safe and provide remedy when things break. Progress is measurable: earlywarning channels that function at low bandwidth and in minority languages; entrylevel mobile plans that meet minimum quality standards; accessible by default design across alerting and consultation platforms; public, rights-preserving protocols for climatedata sharing; language-wise safety capacity and transparent appeal routes on major platforms; and fast, multilingual grievance mechanisms that resolve cases within stated timelines, with independent oversight and annual reporting.”

Climate change is the most pressing and complex challenge of our times. It demands a concerted, proactive, and holistic response – one that crucially includes the full exercise of people’s communication rights. A people-centred approach to resilience and preparedness focuses on how communities need to understand threats in order to adapt to them. At the very least, people and communities need to be active receivers and disseminators of truthful and reliable information.

And strengthening the capacity of local communities to anticipate and to prepare for the varied impacts of climate change must be a key part of any communication outreach. It is undeniable that climate justice – in the shape of fair and effective actions in response to the climate emergency – can only be achieved via communication justice – the capacity of everyone to speak their minds, express their opinions, and be heard in public.