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A zine by Tipping Point UK and Global Justice Now A zine by Tipping Point UK and Global Justice Now partners
Climate impacts disproportionately harm the communities least responsible for causing them—communities that have already been hurt by centuries of colonial oppression, enslavement and extraction. Governments and corporations in wealthy countries have deepened these inequalities and driven the climate crisis through decades of economic exploitation, all while doing everything they can to avoid accountability.But a growing movement is demanding climate reparations: a call for those responsible to stop causing harm and begin repairing the damage they’ve done.Why climate reparations?
Take Nigeria, where people are facing some of the worst consequences of climate breakdown despite having contributed little to its causes. In recent years, Nigeria has faced extreme heat, desertication, and devastating oods that have displaced hundreds of thousands and destroyed farmland, deepening poverty and food insecurity.These impacts are made worse by a long history of exploitation. Under British colonial rule, Shell-BP was handed control of Nigeria’s oil.Since then, Shell has extracted oil from the Niger Delta with catastrophic consequences: widespread pollution, oil spills, and gas aring have poisoned water supplies, ruined farmland, and devastated local communities, while the company has proted enormously.
In Pakistan, oods in 2022 killed over 1,700 people and displaced millions. Scientists estimated the disaster was made up to 50% more intense by climate change. These impacts hit hardest in countries that have done the least to cause the crisis and are now trapped by debt and under-resourced to respond.In Peru, mountain guide Saúl Luciano Lliuya fought a landmark legal battle against German energy giant RWE, arguing that its emissions contributed to glacier melt threatening his town with ooding. Although the case was ultimately dismissed, the court ruled for the rst time that major polluters can be held liable under German civil law for climate harms—an important legal milestone.
These cases reect a global injustice: Those least responsible for climate change are paying the highest price, while fossil fuel giants remain unaccountable. But climate injustice isn’t just happening far away. Here in the UK, communities are already feeling the devastating consequences of extreme weather. People like the residents of Churchtown, in Lancashire, who had to fundraise for their own ood defences after devastating ooding in 2015. Or farmers from Suffolk and Gloucestershire who watched helplessly as their crops dried up in summer 2022. Or villagers in Fairbourne, Wales, who have been told that their home will be underwater by 2054 due to rising sea levels.For many of us, poverty, loss, and displacement aren’t distant possibilities—they are daily realities, made even harsher by the growing impacts of extreme weather. Just this year, the UK had its warmest start to May on record.We all have a right to live in thriving communities where our wellbeing and safety matter—to spend time with family, stay warm in winter, breathe clean air, afford housing and groceries and connect with nature. But our system is rigged in favour of the rich and powerful.Big polluters like Shell and BP continue to fuel the climate crisisand rake in obscene prots from their fossil fuel empires, while ordinary people here in the UK and across the world, are left to pay the price.
Visions of repairSo what would it mean to truly repair our communities? How can we force polluters to take responsibility—and make them pay for the harm they’ve caused?Reparations aren’t just about compensation. True climate justice means addressing root causes and stopping harm at the source.Reparations must challenge an economy that puts corporate prot above people and the planet. They must address the inequalities that leave some communities far more vulnerable to climate impacts than others.In the UK, those already marginalised by racism, classism, ableism, and other forms of injustice—Black and Brown communities, working class communities, disabled people, women, LGBTQI people—often bear the brunt of air pollution, fuel poverty, and climate disasters. Renters, gig workers, and low-income families pay extortionate bills to heat poorly insulated homes. Fossil fuel infrastructure has harmed workers and communities alike, while enriching polluting companies.
Today, we have a chance to build a bold, people-powered movement—one that holds big polluters accountable and forces them to pay back what they owe our communities. Their prots should fund the care, wellbeing, and livelihoods of local people, and repair the climate damage they have caused across the world.By coming together, we can bring to life the ideas and solutions our communities envision:Strengthening hospitals, schools, and libraries; Building community-owned energy sources; Supporting workers through a just transition; Investing in public transport; Creating secure green jobs; and ensuring safe, dignied pathways for those forced to ee their homes. We can make polluters pay for the care and repair we all deserve.
Fossil fuel companies have knowingly driven the climate crisis while making obscene prots. The ve biggest private oil companies, Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Total, are responsible for over 11% of global emissions. In 2022, they made more than $170 billion in prot.In the UK, Shell paid no tax in 2024. Instead, it received £12.4 million back from the government due to a corporate loophole. BP scrapped its net-zero plans to boost fossil fuel investment. These companies make enormous prots while people across the world suffer the consequences.In the Global South, oods, drought, and crop failure are devastating lives. The cost of loss and damage—harms that cannot be prevented or adapted to—could reach $580 billion a year by 2030.In the UK, families face rising food bills, ooded homes, and heatwaves that fuel deadly wildres.Making polluters pay
Yet wealthy governments continue to drag their feet. The $100 billion per year they promised to support climate action in Global South countries has never fully materialised. What little funding exists often comes as loans, trapping countries in deeper debt.This is not just a funding gap. It’s a justice gap.Despite what the press tells us, the money exists. It’s sitting in the pockets of polluting companies and their shareholders. The UK has the sixth-largest economy in the world—it just isn’t distributed fairly. We must tax fossil fuel prots, close corporate loopholes, and redirect this wealth to communities on the frontlines.Movements like Make Polluters Pay are demanding that the wealth of polluting companies be used to fund repair and resilience. Their prots should pay for climate impacts wherever they are felt—from Lahore to Leicester.
The concept of climate reparations is informed by centuries of campaigning for reparations to address enslavement and colonialism.Visions of true repair must include sizeable transfers of wealth to the descendants of enslaved people and to formerly colonised nations alongside measures for satisfaction and rehabilitation. Reparations for enslavement and colonialism
In the UK, Stop the Maangamizi calls for recognition of the ecocide and genocide committed by British and European states against African people around the world. The campaign co-organises a yearly Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion. In the US, the Movement for Black Lives has drafted a comprehensive set of policy demands for reparations, including free education, restorative services for people impacted by incarceration, and access to food, housing, and land.The Caribbean Community of countries, CARICOM, has also demanded reparations from European countries for indigenous genocide and enslavement, including a full formal apology, as well as tangible support such as technology transfer, debt cancellation, and support for healthcare and education.There are also growing calls for corporations to pay reparations.The insurance market Lloyd’s of London, for example, was instrumental in insuring ships that transported enslaved people. Today, Lloyd’s contributes to environmental racism as one of the world’s largest insurers of the fossil fuel industry.
Freedom for PalestineThe same corporations fueling the climate crisis are proting from Israel’s genocide in Palestine.UK-based company BP is a key supplier of oil to Israel, and is the largest owner and operator of the BTC pipeline. Some of this oil is rened into jet fuel that supplies the IDF’s ghter jets as they commit war crimes. BP has also been granted gas exploration licenses in occupied Palestinian waters.BP is nanced by Barclays, Santander, HSBC, Natwest, and Lloyds, and insured by AIG. These nancial institutions make prots in the City of London while Israel kills and displaces Palestinians.Even before the genocide in Palestine, the Israeli occupation created water shortages that were only made worse by climate change. Climate reparations must include a free Palestine.This means a permanent ceasere and an end to the Israeli colonisation of Palestine.The Boycott Bloody Insurance campaign demands that insurers cut their ties to deadly fossil fuel, arms and detention companies due to their active role in the Israeli genocide in Palestine, climate chaos and border violence.
MigrationWe need fair migration policy that protects the human right to free movement and to safety. Increasingly, climate impacts are forcing people to leave their homes behind. Yet the UK government continues to implement racist “hostile environment” border policies which criminalise migrants and punish asylum seekers. Meaningful climate reparations would require dismantling the international system of borders that preserves global inequality at the expense of migrants and refugees. We also need more care and support for migrants once they arrive in the UK. Revoke works with young refugees, asylum seekers, and other underserved young people in the UK to provide trauma-informed care and advocate for their rights.
Trade and investmentTrade and investment rules incentivise climate destruction and freeze geopolitical power structures rooted in colonialism. They protect the power of corporations and rich countries, by hoarding intellectual property, deregulating environmental protections, privatising public services or breaking open new markets.One of the means of enforcement is via ‘corporate courts’ or investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). These secretive tribunals allow foreign corporations to sue governments for massive amounts. They were rst devised in the 1960s by fossil fuel corporations (notably Royal Dutch Shell) and other big business interests to protect their colonial control of resources in newly independent former colonies. Now, fossil fuel companies are turning to the system that was invented for them in the face of the anti-colonial struggles of 60 years ago, to use now in the face of the climate crisis—they are suing for billions in these secret tribunals over climate action.Reparative justice means overhauling the ways in which we trade with one another and putting an end to corporate courts. Global Justice Now is campaigning to stop corporate courts and make trade deals work for people and the planet.
DebtDebt has long been, and continues to be, used as a tool of global oppression, maintaining colonial power relationships and limiting attempts to achieve climate justice.Most lower income countries spend far more on debt payments than they do on climate adaptation or healthcare. In many cases, these debts are completely illegitimate, having been imposed on new governments after independence, or are grossly inated by high interest.Increasing amounts of global south debts are owed to huge nancial corporations, such as Blackrock, JP Morgan and Vanguard, which are also known for nancing fossil fuels and environmental destruction. Debt Justice and Debt for Climate are campaigning to cancel debts and provide climate reparations.
Land justiceThe hoarding of land by a wealthy few has pushed poor and indigenous people out of their lands for centuries. Dispossession forces people into poverty and robs them of their access to food, housing, and water. Thus climate reparations must include the return of land to the people from whom it has been stolen.Since the 1500s, indigenous communities in Turtle Island (colonially known as North America) have had their land stolen from them by colonisers. The Land Back movement demands the return of traditional lands to indigenous stewardship. The return of land is only part of the Land Back movement; organisers are working to revitalise indigenous languages and cultural practices as an act of resistance to white supremacy.In Palestine, colonialism represents not just a historical wrong but an ongoing struggle. We must support the return of land to those from whom it has been taken, and stand with movements resisting colonial rule in Palestine and beyond.In the UK, Seeding Reparations is a coalition advancing reparative justice in the food system—centring repair, challenging colonial structures, and embracing plural ecologies of people, food and land.
“Climate change and sea level rise are deadly, an existential threat to Tuvalu and low-lying atoll countries. […] Our islands are sacred to us. They contain the mana of our people, they were the home of our ancestors, they are the home of our people today, and we want them to remain the home of our people into the future.” -Simon Kofe, former Foreign Minister of Tuvalu
To win climate reparations, we must organise from the ground up: building power in our communities around the principles of care and repair.This means campaigning not just against fossil fuel expansion, but for the thriving, resilient communities we all deserve. It means demanding that the prots of polluting companies fund affordable housing, warm homes, clean air, accessible transport, good jobs and community care.We need a woven tapestry of campaigns to change public opinion, pressure governments, and build interim steps on the path to justice. Communities across the UK are already organising. Campaigns like Stop Rosebank have linked their ght against North Sea oil to the global call for reparations. Campaigns against fossil fuel expansion in the UK are also working in solidarity with campaigns around the world such as the Stop the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline campaign.Organising for community power
We have a duty to learn from movements that have come before us, and support the demands being made from the Global South for climate nance, debt cancellation, migrant justice, land justice, trade reform, Palestinian liberation and colonial reparations.Building a reparative movement means using an intersectional lens: understanding how racism, classism, ableism, sexism and other forms of oppression shape who is most impacted by climate breakdown. Climate justice must include racial, migrant, disability, and gender justice.We need inclusive spaces where people feel supported to take action. This includes reecting on power and privilege within our own organising spaces, and ensuring those most affected by injustice are leading.Education is key. We must build a political understanding of reparations—not as charity, but as justice—and bring this framing into every climate and social justice campaign.Local organising through workshops, canvassing, creative action and direct pressure on decision-makers can expose how polluters harm our communities and push for the care and investment we’re owed.By organising in every town, city and village, we can make climate reparations a mainstream demand, and build a world where our lives and wellbeing matter more than corporate prot.
Learn MoreClimate ReparationsClimate Reparations Network UK, a Tipping Point UK coordinated project. Contact us for active support on incorporating climate reparations in your campaigning! climatereparations.ukMovement Power Building Zine: Learn how to build your local power, take creative action, and build solidarity. tippingpointuk.org/resourcesMaking Polluters PayMake Polluters Pay Coalition: makepolluterspay.co.ukLoss and Damage Youth Coalition: ldyouth.org Climate JusticeStop Rosebank: stopcambo.org.ukRacial JusticeBlack Lives Matter UK: blacklivesmatter.uk Stop the Maangamizi: stopthemaangamizi.comMovement for Black Lives: m4bl.orgPalestinian Liberation:Boycott Bloody Insurance: boycottbloodyinsurance.orgMakan: makan.org.ukEnergy Embargo for Palestine: energyembargoforpalestine.comTrade and InvestmentGlobal Justice Now: globaljustice.org.uk/our-campaigns/tradeLondon Mining Network: londonminingnetwork.orgDebtDebt Justice: debtjustice.org.ukDebt for Climate: debtforclimate.orgMigrationMigrants Organise: migrantsorganise.org Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants: jcwi.org.uk Revoke: revoke.org.uk Land JusticeLand In Our Names: landinournames.communityLand Back Movement: landback.orgSeeding Reparations: linktr.ee/seedrep
ReferencesButmeh, A. (2019). Palestine is a Climate Justice Issue. Al Jazeera.CARICOM Reparations Commission. Ten Point Action Plan.Energy Embargo for Palestine. (2024). Pipeline to Genocide: BP’s Oil Route to Israel. Shado Magazine.Global Justice Now. (2022). Big 5 Oil Companies Slammed for Prots Bigger than Cost of Loss and Damage in Global South.Harvey, F. (2022). Pakistan Floods ‘Made Up to 50% Worse by Global Heating’. The Guardian.Kaur Paul, H. (2021). Towards Reparative Climate Justice: From Crises to Liberations. Common Wealth.Kaur Paul, H. (2022). Climate Change: IPCC Report Reveals How Inequality Makes Impacts Worse – and What to Do About It. The Conversation.Markandya, A., & González-Eguino, M. (2019). Integrated Assessment for Identifying Climate Finance Needs for Loss and Damage: A Critical Review. In Loss and Damage from Climate Change. Springer.Meager, E. (2021). The Energy Charter Treaty: How an Obscure Investment Treaty is Delaying Climate Action.Miller, T., Buxton, N., & Akkerman, M. (2021). Global Climate Wall: How the World’s Wealthiest Nations Prioritise Borders over Climate Action. Transnational Institute.Moloney, A. (2021). Human-Made Warming is Melting Peru Glacier, Says Study to Be Used in Lawsuit. Reuters.Movement for Black Lives. Reparations Policy Platform.Shah, S., & Kaur Paul, H. (2021). Lloyd’s of London’s Debt. New Internationalist.Taylor, M., & Watts, J. (2019). Revealed: The 20 Firms Behind a Third of All Carbon Emissions. The Guardian.UN General Assembly. (2006). Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation.Williams, O. (2020). Zambia’s Default Fuels Fears of African ‘Debt Tsunami’. The Guardian.Willis, D. (2022). Making Polluters Pay: Estimates for Corporate Climate Debt and Reparations. Global Justice Now.
This booklet was illustrated by B Mure