How can the private sector contribute to delivering climate justice?

Climate justice seeks to address the unjust distribution of climate change costs (in other words the externalised costs of industrial development) by putting a human-rights based approach at the centre of international development initiatives. Globally, private sector investments have made huge contributions to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, but are largely failing to address the costs imposed on developing countries of adapting to climate change and achieving resilience. In Scotland, business people want to identify and evaluate a range of options for funds that could be put into climate justice programmes. The private sector will need scalable mechanisms with low transaction costs if their contributions are to achieve significant outcomes. Developments in Scotland’s Climate Justice Fund could present Scottish enterprise with a range of ways to make such contributions.