Climate Justice
Nurturing community-driven solutions to the climate crisis, which pave the way to a sustainable future for all
As climate disasters grow in frequency and severity, UUSC strengthens frontline communities bearing the worst burdens, ensuring they lead the way forward to recovery and advocating for climate reparations.
Image: Severe country-wide floods across the Solomon Islands
What’s really at stake
The climate crisis and its effect on human rights poses a grave danger to us all. Rising sea levels, intensified natural disasters, droughts, and widespread flooding are not just environmental concerns. The global impacts are vast to both people and planet — destroying homes, devastating crops, erasing of cultures, diminishing livelihoods, and more. These disasters, sometimes slow and sometimes sudden, are deepening already existing inequities, especially for Indigenous communities and frontline populations in the Global South.
How we move with communities
Together, we are urgently confronting one of the biggest threats to humanity’s survival.
Defending the right to stay and the right to relocate with dignity
As rising sea level erodes more land, many communities have already been forced to move to higher ground, and others must relocate soon. With partners like the Lowlander Center in the US and our network of grassroots partners across the Pacific, UUSC supports Indigenous self-determination as they face climate-forced displacement. For example, recently, the Lowlander Center hosted a landmark visit to Louisiana by the Special Rapporteur on Environmental Rights. It affirmed how climate change, fossil fuel extraction, and U.S. policy intersect to devastate Indigenous Peoples’ land and ways of life. The resulting report has been an effective tool to support their advocacy efforts in the region.
Co-creating global advocacy, from the local to the international
Through our ongoing collaboration with grassroots leaders, UUSC supports a robust presence of our partners at international decision-making spaces like the U.N. Conference of Parties (COP), an annual gathering that seeks to coordinate international action on climate change. In order to uplift our partners’ frontline solutions, we help co-organize side events, movement-created spaces that center grassroots voices in venues often dominated by corporate and government interests. Together, we advocate for fair climate finance and have contributed to progress on mechanisms like the Loss and Damage Fund.
Investing in communities to identify and respond to non-economic losses
Through our annual Pacific Rising convening, UUSC and nine regional partners continue to develop frameworks and strategies to address non-economic loss and damage — from cultural erasure to the loss of traditional knowledge. With funding from the Scottish government and the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, this initiative sets new standards for participatory grantmaking and culturally grounded adaptation in the region.
Advancing agroecology and food sovereignty in Haiti
UUSC supports grassroots movements in Haiti that are reclaiming food systems through sustainable, community-driven farming. By defending their right to grow food, Haitian small farmers overcome land exploitation and climate disruption, growing sustainable futures rooted in justice.
Meet the partners on the forefront of climate justice
UUSC is honored to work alongside visionary leaders who are restoring ecosystems and defending their ancestral homes. Their knowledge and courage lights the way forward, building new systems that end the harms the climate crisis perpetuates.
Explore our climate justice efforts
UUSC at Conference of Parties (COP)
UUSC attends COP annually to amplify the voices of its partners who are experiencing the most devastating effects of climate change.
Pacific Rising
UUSC’s Pacific Rising unites Pacific climate justice leaders to tackle non-economic loss and damage through decolonized, collective strategies.
ICJAO
The International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion is poised to issue a historic opinion on state climate obligations as driven by youth advocacy.
Help sustain communities
Your donation doesn’t just fund a response. It affirms our philosophy that those most impacted should shape their own future.
