Climate Justice and Cultural Heritage in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

The broad principle of international climate justice was central to the original negotiation and development of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The text of the convention includes the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” which acknowledged the disparity in historic emissions between industrialized and developing nations ( UN, 1992 , xx). In 1997, this principle was operationalized through the Kyoto Protocol by requiring higher income countries to set and meet emission reduction targets and provide financial support for climate action to low- and middle-income nations ( UN, 1998 ). Climate justice was mentioned explicitly for the first time in the preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement, the instrument which enshrined the goal of holding global average temperature increase to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels ( UNFCCC, 2015 ).