Vulnerability is intentionally defined using terms and figures that avoid incorporating human rights violations, inequalities, or the impacts of extractivist industries as key factors in increased vulnerability to climate change. Communities around the world bear the impacts not just of climate change, but also of extractive and polluting activities that are justified as “necessary” for economic growth.
Impoverished communities, dispossessed of their lands, territories, and rights by the capitalist, extractivist, patriarchal system, are the most vulnerable to climate change. Yet they hold real solutions to the climate crisis.
The concepts of vulnerability and risk must be redefined and given new meanings, in line with global climate justice principles.
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