Abstract
The need for more comprehensively just and historically responsive climate action could not be more urgent. In the face of a global energy crisis occasioned by decades of over-reliance on fossil fuels but super-charged by war, the world continues to warm. Meanwhile, imperialist aggression and burgeoning defence budgets feed the fossil fuel industry, driving emissions ever higher while destroying lands and waters that both support critical livelihoods and serve as invaluable carbon sinks. Just as worryingly, global economic inequality continues to increase, as countries and communities that have long been on the receiving end of Euro-American colonialism and neo-colonialism continue to bear the brunt of intensifying climate violence. Worse still, the main international forums in which these injustices are being discussed have been largely coopted by corporate stakeholders; much of the Global North has failed to unite in opposition to rising fascism and reinvigorated settler-colonialism; and many countries are walking back their net zero commitments.
And yet, there are many promising efforts afoot. In March 2026, at the initiative of President Mahama of Ghana, the UN General Assembly passed a much-lauded resolution recognising the transatlantic slave trade as ‘the gravest crime against humanity’ for which reparations are long overdue. While this resolution did not make the connections between reparations for the slave trade and climate reparations for which legal scholars and activists have recently been calling, it followed two other lesser-known pan-African proclamations in which reparations were explicitly linked to climate justice. In December 2025 the African Union endorsed the Algiers Declaration – a landmark declaration focused primarily on reparations for colonialism but one that also makes sustained and explicit reference to the climate crisis, calling for a continent-wide audit of the impacts of colonialism, and urging ‘the states historically responsible for the environmental damage that has caused climate change, particularly the former colonial powers, to assume their moral and political responsibility’. This declaration came just five months after the ICJ’s 2025 Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, which clarified for the first time that States which violate international obligations to prevent climate harm can be held responsible for ‘full reparation’ (including restitution, compensation and satisfaction).
Perhaps more promisingly still, in April 2026 Colombia and the Netherlands co-convened the first ‘coalition of the willing’ in Santa Marta to move towards a phaseout of fossil fuels – a conversation that has been repeatedly pushed off the table at the annual COP meetings. Despite resistance from the large emitters, 60 countries, including Australia, were in attendance. In the lead-up to this conference, countries from across the Pacific also issued a declaration for a ‘Fossil-free Pacific,’ insisting on compliance with the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion. While the language of reparations does not feature in this declaration, arguably the most important and far-reaching reparative action that can be taken at the present moment is the immediate cessation of all fossil fuel extraction, an end to fossil fuel expansion and subsidies, and a managed decline of all existing production.
In this special issue, while not shying away from the political and economic obstacles that continue to impede a global just transition and to divert both political will and financial capital from one of the most pressing justice issues of our time, we take inspiration from this diverse range of reparative efforts.
This issue on ‘Climate Reparations in Australia’ comes out of a workshop on the theme, held on 15–16 May 2025 at The University of Melbourne, and convened by Julia Dehm and Erin Fitz-Henry, the co-editors, together with Sanam Amin, of this Special Issue. The workshop brought together interdisciplinary scholars from the social sciences and law, legal professionals, policy advocates and climate justice organisers to begin to develop an agenda for Australia’s role in advancing climate reparations internationally, regionally and domestically.
The issue opens with an Opinion by Harjeet Singh, a prominent climate justice organiser. He makes the case for moving away from paradigms of international ‘aid’ which have long been critiqued for their persistent coloniality towards understandings of the reparative obligations owed by the former colonial powers. Importantly, he also highlights the many ‘cultures of reparation’ that are being nurtured in communities all over the world – ‘cultures’ that may become increasingly critical to deepening and extending grassroots pressure for reparations.
The first article by Julia Dehm and Erin Fitz-Henry outlines key themes and questions for a broader research agenda on climate reparations in Australia. Building on the growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship on ‘reparative world-making’, it calls for more concrete work on the translation of reparative demands into domestic, regional and international policy in Australia. It also insists that all climate reparations discussions in Australia must be situated within much broader efforts to push for reparative transformations of settler-colonial law.
Rachel Killean’s article considers the lessons that can be learnt from the transitional justice scholarship. She highlights some of the characteristics of successful reparative mechanisms for addressing climate harms, including ‘victim participation, multifaceted redress, and credible guarantees of non-repetition’. In so doing, she provides important starting points for thinking about how these demands might be operationalised in the Australian context.
Killean’s article is followed by two contributions focused on Australia’s international obligations – the first, on compensation for climate loss and damage (L&D) and the second, on climate-induced displacement. Nina Araneta-Alana looks at what regional opportunities for compensation are presented by the coming into effect of the international Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Exploring the continued contestation around the Fund’s operationalisation, she shows the challenges it currently faces as it attempts to navigate a particularly politically charged terrain without being co-opted, diluted or rendered excessively technocratic.
Lauren Nishimura goes on to explore the international obligations of Global North countries such as Australia in relation to climate-induced migration – a problem that is rapidly intensifying. While discussions of adaptation are often separate to discussions of reparations, she argues for the facilitation of migration as a form of reparations and as a means for meeting adaptation obligations within the international climate regime.
Turning to domestic legal frameworks, Joanna Kyriakakis examines the temporal assumptions that shaped the recent Federal Court decision in Pabai v The Commonwealth (2025). This decision found that the Australian government did not owe a duty of care to Torres Strait Islanders for climate mitigation or adaptation. In exploring how this decision was arrived at, Kyriakakis raises questions about the politics involved in deciding which time frames are relevant in the assessment of responsibility for climate harms – questions that are particularly acute in settler colonial contexts. The Legal Studies column by Robert Corr complements this article and proposes three classroom activities for secondary school Legal Studies students to deepen understanding of the possibilities and limits of tort-based climate justice litigation.
Djarra Delaney, a Quandamooka person from Southeast Queensland and a climate change adaptation practitioner, highlights the need for climate mitigation and adaptation to ensure the sovereignty of First Nations communities and to push against ongoing colonial violence, epistemic and otherwise. Offering a warning about how Indigenous knowledges are currently being co-opted by the settler state, he encourages advocates of reparations to see them as only one part of a much broader reckoning with ongoing occupation.
Finally, the last two contributors shift our gaze from the State to the private sector, exploring what climate reparative obligations might be owed by the business corporations that have created and profited from the climate crisis. Stephanie Collins, a moral philosopher, outlines four philosophical principles underlying the obligations of fossil fuel companies for the harms they have caused, highlighting the roles that shareholders might play in inducing corporations to enact their obligations.
Moving from theory to implementation, Marco Grasso proposes a novel framework for determining the differential contributions and thus liabilities of different members of the ‘fossil bloc’ – a transnational coalition of fossil fuel producers, investors, political enablers and ‘epistemic agents’. Distinguishing between material, monetary and symbolic reparations, his model provides clear pathways forwards for quantifying the climate reparations owed by differently positioned actors within the fossil bloc.
The issue also features an article by Liam Grealy on how inadequate housing in the Northern Territory can be a significant social determinant of death, specifically focusing on how the systems charged with ensuring habitable housing contribute to housing’s disrepair and associated harms. In April 2026 residents of the remote community of Papunya, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 40 degrees Celsius, have brought a legal action against the Northern Territory government alleging that it has failed to provide climate-safe public housing. Increasingly, housing justice and climate justice are unavoidably intertwined.
We are pleased to also include in this Special Issue’s Law & Culture section a book review and a film review that relate to the overarching themes of climate harm and justice that are so essential to the grounding of climate reparations: Kate Auty’s review of A Frances Johnson’s poetry collection, controlled burn, and Andrei Martin Diamante’s review of the documentary Floodlands which explores climate trauma and community resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 Lismore floods. Sean Mulcahy reviews Queer Judgments, a collection edited by Nuno Ferreira, Maria Federica Moscati and Senthorun Raj which invites you on a queer dance through 26 judgments and commentaries. The regular ‘Sit Down Girlie’ column highlights the leadership of women in progressing climate action, but also how women and girls are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, demonstrating the importance of bringing an intersectional lens to all climate justice work.
We are honoured to close with a Last Word from poet and environmentalist Georgina Woods, who rounds out the many rhizomatic threads of climate reparations in ‘The art of repair’, by highlighting the need for collective, creative experiments with form and process. She reads poetry by the Borroloola collective Diwurruwurru and Jorie Graham as transformative challenges to the problem of modernity and offers hope that the ‘radiance’ of art and creative expression might support not just repair, but also renewal and regeneration.
We are grateful for the support of the Alternative Law Journal for this special issue, and especially for the enthusiasm, commitment and persistent good cheer of Consulting Editor Deb Candy. We also acknowledge the support of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DE240100131) for this work.
Taken together, these contributions provide the first comprehensive overview of climate reparative possibilities and obligations in Australia. At a time when novel coalitions are emerging around both reparations and the phase-out of fossil fuels, we hope this special issue contributes to the growth and deepening of discussions about climate reparations. As Australia prepares to assume the role of President of Negotiations at COP31 in Türkiye, and to participate in the pre-COP meetings in Fiji and Tuvalu later this year, it has an opportunity to provide ground-breaking leadership on reparative climate action. The foregrounding of the voices of those most directly impacted by the climate crisis – especially those who continue to survive colonial and neo-colonial occupation – will be especially crucial.
