Reparations: Lessons for the Climate Debate

The brief explores how transitional justice frameworks for reparations—including restitution, rehabilitation, compensation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition—can be applied to the climate context. It emphasizes that addressing the needs of those most impacted is essential for building a legitimate global climate regime and suggests a combination of material and symbolic reparations to repair relationships and foster collective solidarity.

• Transitional justice offers five types of reparations that can be adapted for climate change: restitution for specific losses like land lost to sea-level rise; rehabilitation through social services for systemic harms or displacement; material compensation for loss and damage; satisfaction through symbolic measures like apologies and truth-seeking; and guarantees of non-repetition via pro-poor, low-carbon development.
• Claims for reparations from communities facing historically rooted harms are persistent and unlikely to disappear; therefore, addressing these claims is critical for establishing a climate regime seen as genuinely legitimate by those previously excluded or harmed.
• Effective reparations must be designed through the participation of recipients to ensure they address self-identified needs, potentially using site-specific scoping studies and bottom-up governance.
• A comprehensive approach to climate reparations should combine multiple material and non-material forms—such as debt forgiveness, capacity building, and formal apologies—and must be framed as acts of repair rather than exchanges for mitigation efforts.

APA

Klinsky, S. (2016). Reparations: Lessons for the Climate Debate. Climate Strategies. https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Brief-3-Reparations.pdf

Chicago

Klinsky, Sonja. Reparations: Lessons for the Climate Debate. Climate Strategies, 2016. https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Brief-3-Reparations.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Klinsky |first1=Sonja |title=Reparations: Lessons for the Climate Debate |publisher=Climate Strategies |date=November 2016 |url=https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Brief-3-Reparations.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{klinsky2016reparations, author = {Klinsky, Sonja}, title = {{Reparations: Lessons for the Climate Debate}}, institution = {Climate Strategies}, year = {2016}, month = nov, url = {https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Brief-3-Reparations.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }