The climate movement has long been missing a critical ingredient. We have pushed countries—especially those most responsible for the climate crisis—to accelerate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They tend to focus on numerical targets, such as achieving net zero to limit temperature rise to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This kind of advocacy work is both necessary and insufficient, only the beginning of caring about climate change.

We won’t be able to mitigate emissions or adapt to a changing world if we do not plan for a just transition. But we need to start with a broader definition of what just actually means.

The just transition was originally defined around creating green jobs, providing retraining, and ensuring social protection for workers in fossil fuel-dependent industries and countries. Yet that is only part of the picture.

Half the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, which is the second-biggest contributor to the climate crisis, responsible for approximately one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. The sector is also the world’s biggest source of livelihoods.

That’s why effective climate action needs to be driven by the world’s smallholder farmers, fishers, and pastoralists—people who are experiencing climate impacts most directly and already stewarding nature and sustainable food systems. Without connecting global climate and biodiversity policies and funding to the daily realities of billions of people who work the land, we risk creating solutions that exist only on paper.

Worse, some climate action has been pursued at the direct expense of small-scale food producers and Indigenous Peoples’ rights—and not always by accident, contradicting how caring about climate change is caring about land rights. The scramble for critical minerals needed for solar panels and batteries is driving the opening of new mines, sometimes on Indigenous land or land that could otherwise be farmed.  Solar and wind installations have sometimes been deployed on land used by food-producing communities, often financializing it in ways that make it impossible for young people to enter farming. Offshore wind developments in parts of Africa have blocked small-scale fishers from waters their communities have relied on for generations. Pastoralists and Indigenous Peoples in Central Asia and Africa have found their traditional routes severed because land has been sold for carbon credits—without their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. These are symptoms of climate policies being designed without the people most affected at the table.

Read the full article about climate change and land rights by Marie Cosquer at Food Tank.