Climate Justice
Across Oceania

The academic literature reflects the search strategy where we looked for academic papers focusing on Oceania, with an emphasis on the perspectives of communities most affected by climate change: 30% of papers were focused on the Pacific, 27% on Australia and 24% Aotearoa/New Zealand. While these findings are generalised across the regions, climate justice and pathways can look different across Australia, Aotearoa and Pacific Islands contexts and within the different communities themselves.

This report summarises findings from a review of 67 academic papers to address the following key questions:

1. How do researchers and experts define 'climate justice'?
2. What pathways to climate justice have been proposed in academic literature?
3. Are there geographic and time trends in how climate justice is understood?
4. What are the key themes and community variations in climate justice research?
5. What are the gaps and recommendations for pathways to climate justice?

This literature review (Part B) complements Climate Justice Report A (a landscape analysis of public reports) and supplementary spreadsheets that provide summaries of all resources identified for the consultation.

How is Climate Justice Defined?

Academic researchers understand climate justice as multi-dimensional, requiring action across several areas simultaneously:

What Pathways Have Been Proposed?

The research identified six major types of pathways, with practical tools for each:

1. Indigenous Authority in Climate Governance — Moving from stakeholder consultation to Treaty partnership (Aotearoa) and genuine power-sharing, with Indigenous peoples controlling decisions affecting their lands and waters.
2. Climate Finance Reform — Redesigning how climate money flows, particularly in Pacific contexts, to reduce barriers, respect customary governance, and ensure communities (not just consultants) control funding decisions.
3. Rights-Based Migration and Relocation — Ensuring that when people must move due to climate impacts, they have consent-based processes, secure land tenure, dignity, and genuine choice (including the option to stay and adapt in place).
4. Just Transition for Workers — Protecting workers and communities dependent on fossil fuel industries through retraining, economic diversification, and democratic participation in energy system governance.
5. Urban Adaptation with Customary Governance — Particularly in Pacific urban contexts, respecting hybrid customary-state governance systems rather than importing Northern city planning models.
6. Policy Assessment Tools — Frameworks like the Indigenous Climate Justice Policy Analysis Tool (Jones et al., 2024) and Aotearoa's Just Transition Framework (White & Leining, 2021) provide concrete checklists to evaluate whether climate policies deliver justice.

Geographic and Time Trends

Geographic patterns emerged clearly:

• Australia: 28 papers (39%) with strong focus on First Nations justice, disaster-affected communities (bushfires/floods), and fossil fuel phase-out.
• Aotearoa/New Zealand: 18 papers (25%) where Treaty of Waitangi framework shapes all climate justice work; iwi-led strategies and mātauranga Māori integration are standard.
• Pacific Islands: 15 papers (21%) where existential urgency dominates; emphasis on loss and damage, adaptation over mitigation, and youth leadership particularly visible.

Temporal trends (noting 50 papers, 69% published 2020–2025):

• Shift from mitigation-only focus to centring adaptation and loss & damage.
• Growing emphasis on Indigenous-led frameworks and sovereignty.
• Increased attention to intersectionality — recognising how race, class, gender, disability, and geography intersect.
• More explicit attention to power redistribution rather than just improving consultation.

Key Themes and Community-Specific Variations

Seven dominant themes cut across the literature:

1. Indigenous sovereignty is foundational (31 papers, 46%) — Climate justice cannot be achieved without Indigenous leadership and self-determination.
2. Participation requires power, not just consultation (48 papers, 72%) — Inclusive processes without decision-making authority merely reproduce inequality with a participatory veneer.
3. Intersectionality is essential (45 papers, 63%) — Climate vulnerability and capacity are shaped by intersecting factors including race, class, gender, disability, and geography.
4. Place-based solutions beat one-size-fits-all (multiple papers across contexts) — National visions must adapt to regional, local, and community contexts.
5. Multiple pathways are needed simultaneously — No single approach addresses all justice dimensions; successful action combines policy reform, finance redesign, community leadership, legal strategies, and coalition-building.
6. Implementation gap is significant — Research is rich in theory but only ~20% of papers track whether implemented policies actually delivered justice outcomes.
7. Finance governance matters enormously (15 papers) — Who controls climate money, how it flows, and whose knowledge shapes funding decisions determines whether justice is achieved.

What's Missing from Academic Research

The literature has significant gaps that the 350.org Australia consultation can address:

• Implementation evaluation: Most research proposes frameworks but doesn't track whether they delivered justice in practice.
• Underrepresented voices: Youth (8 papers, 11%), disability justice (1 paper, 1%), LGBTQI+ perspectives (4 papers, 6%), working-class voices beyond just transition.
• Pacific voices likely undercounted: Only 15 papers (21%) focus on Pacific Islands, likely due to English language bias and publication access barriers.
• Academic gatekeeping: Only 25 papers (35%) include substantial direct community input; most interpret community needs through academic lenses.
• Rural and regional contexts: Limited coverage outside Pacific Islands; insufficient attention to mining/extractive industry regions.

Recommendations for the 350.org Australia Consultation

Based on the academic evidence, the consultation should:

1. Centre Indigenous sovereignty as foundational — not optional or one stakeholder among many, but the basis for all climate action in Oceania.
2. Resource meaningful participation — recognition and procedural justice require funding, time, capacity-building, and actual decision-making power.
3. Use intersectional approaches — design engagement to reach people at intersections of multiple marginalised identities.
4. Prioritise place-based engagement — ensure strong regional representation; what works in urban Sydney differs from rural Queensland, Torres Strait, or Pacific contexts.
5. Bridge theory and implementation — emphasise concrete, measurable pathways with clear indicators for tracking justice outcomes over time.
6. Learn from Pacific methodologies — consider using talanoa and other Pacific deliberative methods that centre relational ethics and collective decision-making.
7. Fill the gaps — intentionally centre youth, disability justice, working-class perspectives, and rural/regional voices that academic research underrepresents.
8. Create space for different framings — recognise that Indigenous communities, workers, disaster-affected communities, and Pacific Islanders may define justice differently; seek common ground while respecting these differences.
9. Plan for evaluation from the start — design mechanisms to track whether the visioning process delivers actual justice outcomes, not just better consultation processes.

This bibliography was compiled through systematic analysis of academic literature on climate justice with Oceania relevance, conducted between August–October 2025 as part of the 350.org Australia Climate Justice Visioning consultation process.

Scope and Geographic Focus

Oceania-Focused Papers: Approximately 43 papers (60%) have substantial Oceania focus, including Australia (28 papers), New Zealand/Aotearoa (18 papers), Pacific Islands (15 papers), and regional Oceania perspectives (8 papers).

Methodologies Employed

The corpus employs diverse methodologies:

Publication Timeline

Papers span from 2012 to 2025, with notable acceleration post-2020: 50 papers (69%) were published between 2020–2025, reflecting increased scholarly attention to climate justice.

Key Themes Found Across the Corpus

The 67 academic papers reviewed don't provide a single unified definition of climate justice. Instead, they reveal a consistent multi-dimensional framework where justice requires addressing several interconnected elements simultaneously.

The Four Core Dimensions

Indigenous and Decolonial Perspectives as Foundational

A particularly significant finding is that 29 papers (43%) centre Indigenous and decolonial perspectives as foundational to climate justice in Oceania, not supplementary. These papers argue climate justice cannot be separated from:

• Indigenous sovereignty — Indigenous peoples' authority over their lands and waters.
• Decolonisation — addressing how colonialism created both dispossession and climate change.
• Indigenous knowledge systems — mātauranga Māori, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, talanoa.
• Treaty partnership where applicable (Jones et al., 2024; Parsons & Crease, 2024; Morgan & Petrou, 2023; Trundle & Organo, 2023; See et al., 2024).

Epistemic Justice — Whose Knowledge Counts

Eighteen papers (27%) explicitly address epistemic justice (also called cognitive justice), examining whose ways of knowing are treated as valid:

• Indigenous knowledge systems must be valued equally with Western science, not treated as supplementary.
• Local and community knowledge counts as legitimate expertise.
• Decision-making processes should incorporate Indigenous methods like talanoa, not only Western consultation models (Anantharajah & Naisilisili, 2023; Morgan & Petrou, 2023; See et al., 2024).

Key Comprehensive Definitions

Rather than treating each paper individually, the research reveals several dominant themes that cut across the literature. Understanding these themes provides insight into what academic research emphasises as critical to climate justice in Oceania.

Participation and Procedural Justice — 48 Papers

Participatory mechanisms are the most commonly discussed governance feature across the literature, appearing in 48 papers. However, the research emphasises that participation only delivers justice when it includes:

• Genuine decision-making power (not just consultation).
• Adequate resourcing for participation.
• Sufficient time for deliberation.
• Accessible formats.
• Visible action following from what communities said.

Parsons et al. (2025) conducted a systematic review of participatory approaches to climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation across 63 studies. Their review reveals significant gaps between participation rhetoric and reality. Many processes labelled "participatory" actually involve consultation where decisions are already made, or token community involvement without real influence. They identify successful participatory approaches as those where communities shape research questions, co-design interventions, and have authority over implementation — not just provide input for others to interpret.

White & Leining (2021) developed a comprehensive Just Transition Framework for Aotearoa that includes an Inclusive Decision-Making Tool providing step-by-step guidance for designing participatory processes. The tool includes specific requirements for honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi through Treaty partnership, ensuring affected workers and communities co-design transition plans, and coordinating across government departments. Their Social Resilience Assessment tool helps identify who faces harms or benefits across cultural, disability, economic, intergenerational, racial, and worker justice dimensions and includes measurable Progress Indicators to track whether transitions deliver justice over time, with triggers for course correction when they don't.

Intersectionality — 45 Papers

Forty-five papers (63%) employ intersectional approaches, recognising climate vulnerability isn't single-axis. People at intersections of multiple marginalised identities (race, class, gender, disability, geography) face compounded vulnerability.

Amorim-Maia et al. (2022) provide a conceptual pathway for intersectional climate justice in urban adaptation, published in Environmental Science & Policy. They demonstrate how adaptation planning must address how different forms of oppression interconnect — for example, a disabled Indigenous woman in a rural area faces different vulnerabilities than an able-bodied urban Indigenous man, and different again from a disabled non-Indigenous urban woman.

Mikulewicz et al. (2023) call for synergy between intersectionality and climate justice scholarship, arguing these frameworks must work together rather than remaining separate academic conversations. Published in WIREs Climate Change, their analysis shows how intersectional analysis reveals power relations and structural inequalities that single-axis approaches miss.

Indigenous Sovereignty and Decolonisation — 31 Papers

The prominence of Indigenous perspectives across the literature signals this is foundational, not optional, for climate justice in Oceania.

Jones et al. (2024) developed an Indigenous Climate Justice Policy Analysis Tool specifically designed to assess whether climate policies respect Indigenous rights. The tool examines five dimensions — relational, procedural, distributive, recognition, and restorative justice — and rates policies as transformative, incremental, or inadequate on each. It's designed for national policy appraisal but is adaptable to other scales. Critically, it shifts assessment questions from "have we consulted Indigenous peoples?" to "do Indigenous peoples control decisions, benefit from outcomes, and see their sovereignty strengthened?"

Parsons & Crease (2024) analyse how Aotearoa/New Zealand climate law perpetuates "misrecognition" of Māori by treating them as stakeholders rather than Treaty partners. Their analysis of the Zero Carbon Act shows how seemingly inclusive policy language actually reproduces marginalisation. They argue Māori must have shared authority over climate decisions (not advisory roles), control over climate actions affecting their territories, and adequate resourcing to participate meaningfully.

See et al. (2024) examine traditional and Indigenous climate adaptation knowledge from Fiji, Vietnam, and the Philippines, demonstrating how Eurocentric approaches to climate adaptation marginalise effective Indigenous practices. Their research shows Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) systems provide sophisticated understanding of environmental change and adaptation strategies, but these are systematically excluded by technocratic climate governance that privileges Western scientific expertise.

Diprose et al. (2024) identify practical steps local governments in Aotearoa can take to enable genuine mana whenua (Indigenous authority) participation. They emphasise councils must reallocate resources — providing dedicated funding and staffing support rather than expecting unpaid volunteer participation from iwi (Māori tribal groups). They advocate for standing co-governance forums with real decision-making authority, not ad hoc consultation.

Urban Adaptation in Pacific Contexts — 22 Papers

Twenty-two papers address urban climate adaptation, with several providing specific guidance for Pacific contexts where cities blend customary and state governance systems.

Trundle & Organo (2023) examine urban adaptation in the "Blue Pacific Continent," published in Urban Geography. Their research shows Pacific cities face unique governance challenges because many settlements operate through hybrid customary-state governance — customary leadership alongside formal councils, communal land tenure, kinship-based resource sharing, traditional reciprocity. Imported "Northern" city planning models often fail because they don't account for these realities. They argue for working with hybrid governance systems, leveraging endogenous resilience (traditional knowledge, social networks, customary resource management), decolonising urban planning by respecting how settlements actually function, and integrating ecosystem services (urban gardens, traditional fishing, mangrove connections).

Steele et al. (2015) propose capabilities framework and earth jurisprudence approaches for urban climate justice. Published in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, they argue urban adaptation must enable people to flourish (meeting threshold requirements for health, safety, livelihood, social connection) and recognise that cities include more-than-human species with their own rights. This requires protecting biodiversity, recognising intrinsic value of nature (not just instrumental value), and considering non-human species' rights in planning decisions.

Seven papers discuss nature-based solutions for urban adaptation, four papers address informal settlement adaptation, and thirty-two papers discuss urban equity and justice considerations.

Climate Finance Reform — 15 Papers

How climate money flows — who controls it, how it's accessed, what counts as success — fundamentally shapes whether climate action delivers justice.

Morgan & Petrou (2023) provide the most comprehensive analysis of climate finance in Oceania, identifying systematic problems with how finance flows in Pacific contexts. Their research shows current finance systems exclude Pacific communities through complex application processes, extensive English-language documentation requirements, and technical expertise requirements that international consultants possess but communities don't. This means consultants capture much of the funding while communities receive less. They propose five design principles: reduce access barriers, respect customary governance, prevent commons enclosure (ensuring carbon schemes don't privatise communal lands), institutionalise participatory practices like talanoa throughout funding cycles, and prioritise community control over funding decisions.

Anantharajah & Naisilisili (2023) conducted detailed ethnographic research on energy and climate finance governance in Fiji between 2018–2021, demonstrating how to operationalise epistemic justice in funding systems. Published in The Contemporary Pacific, their research shows how talanoa and 'iluvatu (Fijian deliberative processes) can become formal requirements in project assessment and approval, not optional consultation. They analyse how gatekeeping practices — the criteria, committee composition, and evidence standards used to evaluate projects — systematically privilege Western technical knowledge over Indigenous knowledge. Achieving epistemic justice requires transforming these decision-making processes, not just adding Indigenous voices to existing Western procedures.

• Fourteen papers address loss and damage compensation frameworks, particularly important for Pacific Island communities facing existential threats from sea level rise. These papers discuss how compensation should be calculated, whether it should go to governments or directly to affected communities, and how to avoid creating dependency while genuinely supporting communities.
• Two papers explore community-controlled funding mechanisms that give communities direct control over climate finance rather than filtering money through multiple intermediaries (international agencies, national governments, consultants) that each extract administrative costs.

Just Transition for Workers and Communities — 12 Papers

Twelve papers address just transition — ensuring the shift away from fossil fuels protects workers and communities dependent on these industries.

White & Leining (2021) provide the most comprehensive just transition framework for Oceania contexts. Their framework emphasises worker protections and retraining (comprehensive, fully-funded programs with income support), regional economic diversification (new industry development, government investment, local enterprise support), democratic participation in energy governance (worker representation with decision-making power, union engagement, community ownership models), and quality job creation (decent wages and conditions, not precarious low-wage work).

Wrigley et al. (2025) demonstrate how to create openings for climate justice policy even in fossil fuel-dominated contexts, based on research in Western Australia published in Climate Policy. Their work on relational organising shows the importance of building communities of practice across health, climate, and justice sectors, using diverse advocacy coalitions, creating policy windows through sustained relationship building, and applying intersectionality to address overlapping inequalities. This research doesn't just critique injustice — it shows how to create change in difficult political contexts.

Eight papers discuss community energy initiatives and models for community ownership and control of renewable energy. Fifteen papers address energy poverty and access, emphasising that energy transition must ensure affordable energy for low-income households.

Climate Mobility and Migration Justice — 8 Papers

Eight papers address climate-related mobility, with particular attention to Pacific contexts where rising seas and intensifying storms force difficult decisions about relocation.

Farbotko et al. (2022) provide the most comprehensive framework on climate mobilities, rights, and justice. Published in Regional Environmental Change, their work identifies five key pathways: consent-based planned relocation (community-led with genuine choice, not imposed), secure land tenure at destinations (particularly important given customary land systems), legitimacy of staying in place (in-place adaptation deserves support), labor mobility with protections (non-exploitative conditions, pathways to residency), and multi-scalar responsibility (clarity about who's responsible at local, national, and international levels).

Neef & Benge (2022) provide critical analysis of how Aotearoa/New Zealand has handled Pacific climate mobility, published in Regional Environmental Change. They document how New Zealand shifts responsibility to Pacific Island nations for "adaptation in place" while failing to provide adequate support or migration pathways. The government denied asylum claims from climate-affected Pacific peoples (the Teitiota case from Kiribati) through narrow legal interpretations. They argue for reparative obligations — fair migration intake aligned with New Zealand's historical emissions and capacity, recalibrated legal frameworks recognising climate displacement, and genuine adaptation support that doesn't create dependency.

Four papers emphasise "migration with dignity" — ensuring climate-related movement respects people's agency and choices, maintains cultural identity and community connections, and recognises historical responsibility of high-emitting nations rather than treating migrants as victims needing rescue.

Legal Pluralism and Customary Governance

Multiple papers, particularly those focused on Pacific contexts, emphasise legal pluralism — recognition that multiple legitimate systems of law and governance coexist, particularly where customary governance operates alongside state law.

Farbotko et al. (2022) and Trundle & Organo (2023) both emphasise that customary governance systems (traditional leadership, customary land tenure, kinship-based responsibility, Indigenous protocols) must be respected alongside state governance systems (legislation, individual property rights, bureaucratic processes, formal courts). Climate solutions that work only within state law but ignore customary governance will fail because communities don't recognise state-only authority, and such approaches destroy social systems that provide resilience and mutual support.

This theme connects closely to Indigenous sovereignty — recognising that imposing state-only solutions that erase customary governance reproduces colonialism by demanding Indigenous peoples abandon their governance systems.

The brief asks whether themes vary between communities in ways that matter for 350.org Australia's visioning process. The research reveals both common themes across Oceania and important geographic and community-specific variations.

Temporal Trends

Sixty-nine percent of papers (50 papers) were published 2020–2025, reflecting increased scholarly attention to climate justice. The research shows a shift from mitigation-only focus toward centring adaptation and loss & damage, increased attention to intersectionality over time, growing emphasis on decolonisation and Indigenous sovereignty (particularly post-2020), and more explicit attention to power redistribution rather than just improving consultation.

Geographic Patterns

Community-Specific Perspectives

Perspectives With Significant Gaps

LGBTQI+ Perspectives: The specific experiences and vulnerabilities of LGBTQI+ communities remain significantly underrepresented in the academic literature, with explicit mention in only 4 papers of the corpus. While the overarching theme of intersectionality is strong, targeted analysis on how climate change exacerbates discrimination in disaster response, increases risks of exclusion from services, or affects migration experiences due to family rejection or social stigma is largely absent.

Working Class Beyond Just Transition: Working-class perspectives appear in just transition literature but are limited beyond fossil fuel industries. There's insufficient attention to how class shapes climate vulnerability and adaptive capacity across sectors — how working-class families face different barriers to adaptation than middle-class families, regardless of employment sector.

The research identifies multiple pathways to climate justice, not a single route. These pathways can be grouped into five major categories, each with specific tools, frameworks, and examples from the literature.

Key Frameworks — Pathway 1

Jones et al. (2024) provide the Indigenous Climate Justice Policy Analysis Tool designed to assess and advance Indigenous authority. The tool examines five justice dimensions (relational, procedural, distributive, recognition, restorative) and rates policies as transformative, incremental, or inadequate. Transformative policies fundamentally shift power to Indigenous peoples. Incremental policies make improvements without challenging underlying power structures. Inadequate policies fail to deliver justice or worsen it. The tool can be used prospectively to design policies that deliver justice, or retrospectively to assess existing policies.

Parsons & Crease (2024) outline what Treaty partnership requires in Aotearoa climate law: Māori representation with decision-making power (not advisory roles) on climate governance bodies, Māori control over climate actions affecting their territories and resources, adequate resourcing for meaningful participation, and mātauranga Māori positioned as foundational knowledge. They demonstrate how the Zero Carbon Act's language of "stakeholder" consultation perpetuates misrecognition, and how shifting to genuine partnership requires legislative and institutional change.

Diprose et al. (2024) provide practical guidance for local government implementation: dedicated funding and staffing (not expecting unpaid iwi participation), standing co-governance forums with real authority (not ad hoc consultation), culturally appropriate engagement methods, and national enabling frameworks that require and resource these practices across all councils.

Key Frameworks — Pathway 2

Morgan & Petrou (2023) provide five design principles for Pacific climate finance: reduce access barriers (simplify applications, reduce documentation requirements, remove hurdles favouring international consultants), respect customary governance (align with existing authority structures rather than imposing external models), prevent commons enclosure (ensure carbon schemes don't privatise communal lands), use participatory practices (institutionalise talanoa throughout funding cycles), and prioritise community control (communities make funding decisions, not just governments or consultants).

Their analysis shows current systems fail because complexity excludes communities, Western governance models override customary systems, documentation requirements privilege those with technical writing skills, and multiple intermediaries extract administrative costs before money reaches communities. Reform requires structural change in funding architecture, not just better community engagement within existing structures.

Anantharajah & Naisilisili (2023) demonstrate epistemic justice in Fiji's climate finance through three mechanisms: institutionalising talanoa and 'iluvatu as formal requirements in project assessment and approval (not optional consultation), reworking gatekeeping practices (changing criteria, committee composition, and evidence standards so Western technical knowledge doesn't automatically override Indigenous knowledge), and co-defining success metrics (communities determine what counts as successful projects, not external funders imposing definitions).

Their ethnographic research between 2018–2021 reveals how seemingly technical decisions about project evaluation criteria actually embody epistemological choices about whose knowledge counts. Changing these technical mechanisms is essential for epistemic justice.

Supporting mechanisms: Fourteen papers consider content related to loss and damage compensation frameworks, particularly urgent for Pacific Island communities. Key questions include: Should compensation be calculated based on actual losses, replacement costs, or other metrics? Should payments go to governments or directly to affected communities? How can compensation avoid creating dependency while genuinely supporting communities? How are non-economic losses (cultural sites, traditional practices, sense of place) valued and compensated?

Some papers also explore community-controlled funding mechanisms that bypass traditional intermediaries. Models include direct community grants with simplified accountability, community foundations managing pooled funds, community-controlled investment funds, and participatory grant making where community members make funding decisions.

Key Frameworks — Pathway 3

Farbotko et al. (2022) provide the most comprehensive framework on climate mobilities, rights, and justice. Their work identifies five pathways:

• Consent-based planned relocation: Communities lead relocation decisions with genuine choice, not government or external agency imposition. Processes provide transparency about what relocation involves, what alternatives exist, and what support is available. Free, prior, and informed consent means communities can refuse relocation without losing support for in-place adaptation.
• Secure land tenure at destinations: Relocated communities need guaranteed land access with clear tenure — particularly important given customary land systems where communal tenure differs from individual property ownership. Land must support livelihoods (space for gardens, fishing access, resource gathering) and maintain cultural practices (sacred sites, gathering spaces, connection to Country/whenua). Communities need protection from subsequent displacement by development.
• Legitimacy of staying in place: In-place adaptation is valid and deserves support. Not everyone facing climate risks wants or can relocate — forcing movement violates dignity and self-determination. Relocation-only approaches that provide no support for those choosing to stay present false choices. Adaptation funding should support community-led strategies for staying as well as moving.
• Labor mobility with protections: Where people choose work-related migration as climate adaptation, conditions must be non-exploitative (fair wages, safe workplaces, reasonable hours), protection from recruitment abuses and debt bondage, pathways to residency or rights to return with dignity, and family reunification options. Current Pacific seasonal worker schemes sometimes involve exploitation that climate pressure makes worse.
• Multi-scalar responsibility: Local governments support immediate relocation logistics. National governments provide legal frameworks, funding, and coordination. High-emitting nations have particular responsibilities given their contribution to climate change causing displacement. Regional frameworks need human rights safeguards. International bodies provide funding and accountability mechanisms.

Neef & Benge (2022) use New Zealand's approach to Pacific climate mobility as case study of what not to do, and what's needed instead. Problems include shifting responsibility to Pacific nations for "adaptation in place" while failing to provide adequate support or migration pathways, denying asylum claims from climate-affected Pacific peoples (Teitiota case) through narrow legal interpretations that don't recognise climate displacement, and rhetoric about partnership while avoiding responsibility.

What's needed: reparative obligations (fair migration intake aligned with New Zealand's historical emissions and capacity as high per-capita emitter), recalibrated protection thresholds (legal frameworks recognising climate displacement as grounds for protection, updating outdated refugee definitions), fair migration pathways (humanitarian visas, community sponsorship, predictable processes), and donor-independent adaptation support (genuine financial and technical support that doesn't create dependency).

Key Frameworks — Pathway 4

White & Leining (2021) provide one of the most detailed just transition frameworks for Oceania contexts. Their framework includes three integrated tools:

• Inclusive Decision-Making Tool: Step-by-step guidance for designing participatory processes giving workers and communities genuine influence. Includes requirements for honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi, ensuring affected workers co-design transition plans from the beginning (not just comment on pre-made decisions), and coordinating across government departments so different agencies don't pursue conflicting agendas. The tool emphasises early engagement — workers involved before major decisions are made, not after.
• Social Resilience Assessment: Diagnostic tool identifying who faces harms or receives benefits from energy transition across multiple dimensions — cultural justice (protecting practices and identity), disability justice (including disabled workers), economic justice (protecting livelihoods and creating quality jobs), intergenerational justice (protecting future generations), racial justice (addressing how race shapes vulnerability), and worker justice (supporting workers through industry transitions). This comprehensive assessment prevents narrowly economic evaluations missing important justice dimensions.
• Progress Indicators: Measurable indicators tracking whether transitions deliver justice over time, with mechanisms triggering course corrections when outcomes fall short. For example, if indicators show renewable energy jobs going to people who already had good jobs rather than displaced coal workers, that triggers review and adjustment of training and hiring programs. Indicators include employment rates in affected regions, wage levels in new jobs compared to lost jobs, participation rates in retraining programs, worker satisfaction with transition support, and regional economic health metrics.

The framework includes detailed case study demonstrating how these tools would apply in Taranaki, a fossil fuel-dependent region. The case study shows specific steps: mapping who's affected and how, identifying regional strengths for diversification, designing retraining programs aligned with regional opportunities, creating governance structures with worker decision-making power, and establishing indicators for monitoring progress.

Wrigley et al. (2025) demonstrate how to create openings for climate justice policy in fossil fuel-dominated contexts through relational organising in Western Australia. Their research shows the importance of building communities of practice across health, climate, and justice sectors (bridging different movements and constituencies), using diverse advocacy coalitions that can speak to different audiences, creating policy windows through sustained relationship building (turning crises or reviews into opportunities for change), and applying intersectionality to ensure strategies address overlapping inequalities (race, class, gender, disability). Their work documents how a community of practice spanning community organisations, health sector actors, and sympathetic government officials created space for climate-health policy development despite Western Australia's fossil fuel dependence. This provides practical guidance for organising in difficult political contexts.

A number of papers address just transition with common elements: fully-funded comprehensive retraining programs (not short courses but substantial education with income support maintaining living standards), recognition of prior learning and transferable skills (coal miners have safety training, equipment operation, and other skills valuable in renewable energy), job placement assistance (not expecting workers to find jobs independently), government investment in regional economic diversification (not expecting markets alone to create alternatives), community ownership models for renewable energy (workers and communities owning renewable projects, not just working in them), and union rights maintained (renewable energy jobs with collective bargaining, not anti-union employers).

Other papers discuss community energy initiatives showing how communities can own and control renewable energy projects, keeping economic benefits local rather than extracting wealth to distant corporations. Some papers also examine how to address energy poverty and access, emphasising energy transition must ensure affordable energy for low-income households. Rising energy costs during transition can harm those least able to afford it — justice requires mechanisms keeping energy affordable.

Key Frameworks — Pathway 5

Trundle & Organo (2023) examine urban adaptation in the "Blue Pacific Continent," providing guidance for Pacific cities. They identify four key principles:

• Work with hybrid customary-state governance: Many Pacific urban settlements operate through customary leadership alongside formal councils, communal land tenure rather than individual property ownership, kinship-based resource sharing and decision-making, and traditional reciprocity and collective responsibility. Climate adaptation must work with these systems, not try to replace them with Western municipal governance models. This means engaging customary leaders as authorities (not just stakeholders), respecting communal decision-making processes, and aligning adaptation strategies with customary resource management.
• Leverage endogenous resilience: Pacific communities possess traditional knowledge about weather patterns, disasters, and recovery; social networks for mutual support during crises; customary resource management practices; and existing community-based disaster response mechanisms. Rather than imposing external "resilience-building," adaptation should strengthen these existing capabilities. This requires understanding what communities already do effectively and providing resources to enhance those practices.
• Decolonise urban planning: Rather than imposing Western city planning models, start from understanding how settlements actually function. Respect customary governance authority rather than undermining it through formal planning processes. Design solutions working with informal systems, not against them. Avoid "slum upgrading" approaches that erase customary practices while formalising property relations. This means planners learning from communities rather than teaching communities "proper" urban development.
• Integrate ecosystem services: Pacific settlements often maintain urban food gardens and fruit trees, traditional fishing access and practices, and coastal and mangrove ecosystem connections. These provide both climate adaptation benefits (flood protection, food security, cooling) and livelihoods. Formal planning often sees this as "underdeveloped" land needing different use. Climate adaptation should protect and enhance these ecosystem connections rather than replacing them with infrastructure.

Steele et al. (2015) propose capabilities framework and earth jurisprudence for urban climate justice. Their capabilities approach ensures urban adaptation enables people to flourish — meeting threshold requirements for health, safety, livelihood, and social connection, not just preventing deaths or reducing damage. Their earth jurisprudence and "wild law" approach recognise cities include more-than-human species with their own rights. Urban adaptation should protect biodiversity and habitat, recognise intrinsic value of nature (not just instrumental value to humans), and consider rights and needs of non-human species in planning decisions. This challenges adaptation focused only on human infrastructure protection.

Supporting mechanisms: A number of papers discuss nature-based solutions for urban adaptation — using natural systems (wetlands, urban forests, green roofs, coastal vegetation) rather than only grey infrastructure (seawalls, drainage pipes, air conditioning). Nature-based solutions often align better with customary practices and provide multiple benefits (biodiversity, livelihoods, cultural connection, adaptation). Some papers address informal settlement adaptation specifically, emphasising solutions must strengthen communities rather than displacing them. Forced relocations often break social networks and customary connections that provide resilience. Upgrading in place while respecting customary governance is more just than clearance and formal development. Other papers discuss urban equity considerations — ensuring adaptation doesn't worsen inequality by protecting wealthy areas while neglecting poor neighbourhoods, by creating green gentrification that displaces communities, or by designing solutions that work for able-bodied middle-class people but exclude disabled people, elderly people, or low-income families.

Supplementary and Emerging Pathways

The research also identifies several additional pathways and approaches beyond the five main categories:

Beyond the pathway-specific frameworks discussed above, the research provides additional tools that cut across multiple pathways and can be immediately applied.

Assessment and Evaluation Tools

Participation and Decision-Making Tools

Finance and Resource Tools

Legal and Accountability Tools

Knowledge Integration Tools

Cross-Cutting Approaches

The academic literature reviewed provides sophisticated frameworks and practical tools for climate justice, with particular strength in Indigenous perspectives and Oceania contexts. However, it also reveals significant gaps between theory and implementation, and underrepresents certain voices. Understanding these strengths and limitations helps identify how the 5,000-person consultation can complement academic research.

Strengths of the Academic Literature

Critical Limitations and Gaps

Underrepresented Community Perspectives

Beyond geographic gaps, certain communities are barely present:

• Youth (8 papers, 11%): Despite youth prominence in Pacific climate movements and school climate strikes, youth voices appear in only 8 papers. Intergenerational justice is discussed theoretically but youth perspectives are limited. Youth need decision-making power, not just consultative forums.
• Disabled people (1 paper, 1%): Only one paper substantially addresses disability and climate justice, despite disabled people facing heightened vulnerability through evacuation barriers, inaccessible shelters, disrupted health services, and heat sensitivity. Disability justice is largely absent from climate justice frameworks.
• LGBTQI+ people (4 papers, 6%): Queer and trans perspectives on climate justice are rarely explored, despite facing specific vulnerabilities including discrimination in disaster response, exclusion from services, and family rejection during climate displacement.
• Working class beyond just transition (limited): Workers and unions appear in just transition literature, but working-class perspectives beyond fossil fuel industries are underrepresented. Insufficient attention to how class shapes climate vulnerability and adaptive capacity across sectors — how working-class families face different barriers to adaptation than middle-class families regardless of employment sector.

Rural and Regional Gaps

Beyond Pacific Islands, rural contexts receive limited attention. Insufficient coverage of mining and extractive industry regions (beyond specific just transition cases), limited research on agricultural workers and farming communities, rural and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities underrepresented, and regional town perspectives limited. Most research focuses on Pacific contexts or major urban areas (Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland), missing much of rural and regional Oceania.

Academic Gatekeeping

Only 25 papers (35%) include substantial direct community input where communities shaped research questions and interpretation. Most papers interpret community needs through academic lenses, extract information from communities for academic purposes, speak about or for communities rather than amplifying community voices directly, and publish in journals communities cannot access without expensive subscriptions.

This means even climate justice research often reproduces hierarchies where academic "experts" define and interpret justice for communities, rather than communities defining it themselves.

Limited Ex-Post Evaluation

Few studies return to evaluate whether policies claiming to deliver justice actually did so years later. No longitudinal studies track justice outcomes over 5–10 years. Limited assessment of whether procedural justice reforms led to distributional justice improvements. Few studies compare promised versus delivered outcomes. Missing documentation of unintended consequences.

Additional Gaps

Oceans and blue carbon (Morgan & Petrou, 2023 note limited coverage of ocean-based climate action and blue carbon standards), insurance affordability and climate risk, critical minerals for renewable energy (justice dimensions of mining lithium, cobalt, and other minerals), transmission infrastructure siting (who bears costs), and loss and damage finance modalities (principles discussed but operational details underdeveloped).

The academic literature provides sophisticated frameworks and tools, deep Oceania grounding, and strong Indigenous perspectives. But it underrepresents Pacific voices, youth, disabled people, working-class perspectives, and rural communities. It's strong on theory but weak on implementation evaluation.

The literature review indicates there is a unique opportunity for the 5,000-person consultation to achieve many goals that will advance climate justice work in the future:

These research findings suggest a number of effective pathway design processes:

Offer Multiple Participation Methods

Don't assume one consultation method works for everyone. Pacific communities may prefer talanoa. Māori communities may prefer hui. Youth may prefer online engagement. Elderly people may prefer in-person kitchen table conversations. Disabled people may need various accommodations depending on disability type. Working-class people may need evening or weekend timing. Offer multiple pathways for participation and let communities choose what works for them.

Provide Adequate Resources for Participation

The research consistently shows that under-resourced participation reproduces exclusion. Provide transport and childcare, communication support (translation, Auslan interpretation, plain language), technology access for online participation, compensation for time (particularly for people taking unpaid time from work), food and refreshments at events, and accessible venues meeting various accessibility needs. Don't expect communities to participate for free, especially communities already bearing climate impacts. Meaningful participation costs money — budget adequately.

Allow Time for Genuine Deliberation

Rushed consultations violate justice. Communities need time to deliberate internally before responding to 350.org Australia. Indigenous communities may need to consult with elders and hold hui or community meetings. Pacific communities may need multiple talanoa sessions. Disabled people may need additional time to access information in accessible formats. Working-class people may need time beyond work and family responsibilities. Build timelines allowing genuine deliberation, not extracting quick responses. Be prepared to extend timelines if communities need more time.

Respect Collective Decision-Making Processes

Western consultation often assumes individuals provide opinions that organisations aggregate. Many Indigenous and Pacific communities make decisions collectively through deliberative processes. Respect these different processes by: allowing collective rather than only individual responses, recognising customary authorities and governance structures, using deliberative methods like talanoa and hui (not only surveys), and accepting that different communities may arrive at different answers. Don't force communities into Western consultation formats that violate their decision-making practices.

Build in Accountability Mechanisms

Academic research shows the gap between consultation promises and delivered outcomes. Create accountability by being explicit about what 350.org Australia will do with consultation results, establishing mechanisms tracking whether consultation commitments are met, building in opportunities for participants to review and challenge 350.org Australia's interpretation of consultation findings, and creating ongoing relationship beyond one-time consultation where communities can hold 350.org Australia accountable. Consultation isn't just information extraction — it creates ongoing obligations and relationships.

Address Geographic Diversity

Research shows climate justice looks different in Australia, Aotearoa, and Pacific Islands. Consultation design should reflect these differences:

Acknowledge and Address Power Imbalances

350.org Australia has organisational power, resources, and capacity that many consultation participants lack. Address these power imbalances by being transparent about 350.org Australia's own positions and commitments, sharing power over consultation design (letting communities shape questions and methods), providing resources participants need (not expecting unpaid participation), being accountable to participants (not only to funders or board), and recognising consultation serves communities.

Plan Evaluation from the Start

Don't wait until after consultation to think about evaluation. Build it in from the beginning by establishing what success looks like (how will we know if consultation delivered justice?), creating indicators for tracking process quality and outcome achievement, building in feedback loops where participants can assess whether process is working, being prepared to adjust consultation approach based on feedback, and planning for longitudinal follow-up (tracking whether consultation commitments translate to action).

Literature Search Approach

This review analysed 67 academic papers on climate justice with Oceania relevance, identified through systematic searches of academic databases between August–October 2025. Search terms included "climate justice," "environmental justice," "just transition," "climate adaptation," "climate mobility," combined with geographic terms for Oceania regions. The search focused on peer-reviewed academic publications in English.

Analysis Framework

Each paper was analysed using a structured framework examining document characteristics (authors, year, type, geographic focus), climate justice definitions, key themes, community perspectives, proposed pathways, cross-cutting tools, sectors addressed, scales of governance, research methods, evidence base, strengths and limitations, and geographic/temporal trends. The analysis was undertaken in a two-stage approach; first, a team of ARN volunteers read and summarised key elements from each article. Second, coding against the themes was completed by an LLM accessed through a Python API.

Limitations of This Review

• The review is limited to English-language academic publications, likely underrepresenting Pacific perspectives published in Pacific languages or in grey literature.
• The review focuses on papers with Oceania relevance, potentially missing global literature with applicable insights.
• Analysis was conducted over a compressed timeframe (August–October 2025), limiting depth of engagement with each paper.
• The review synthesises existing research rather than conducting new primary research.

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