Online Debate 1: Taking a Historical View of Climate Reparations: Addressing Climate Debt

The first in a series of online debates examined how historical responsibility influences today’s climate challenges and explored actionable steps toward a fair and sustainable future. This initial discussion focused on the urgent need to address historical climate debt and its implications for our shared path forward. Human rights lawyer and environmental justice advocate James Gondi, with over 15 years of experience in transitional and climate justice, joined the conversation alongside Aditi Shetye, an environmental lawyer who leads the Legal Advocacy and Academic Taskforce at World's Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ) as well as conducts research in Public International Law and Environmental Law at British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL). Together, they highlighted the critical issues of climate reparations and climate debt, emphasizing that as the global community increasingly acknowledges the historical role of industrialized nations in accelerating the climate crisis, the call for climate debt reparations becomes ever more urgent.