In the run up to CoP26, Tesla became the first electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer to have a market value of over $1 trillion. Whilst this shows the rising demand for EVs, fuelled by climate-anxiety, the question of whether its production of EVs currently mitigates carbon emissions is highly questionable. Two countries in which Tesla seeks to rapidly expand are China and India, with Tesla announcing that it would set up a factory in the south Indian state of Karnataka, a state which the UN IPCC finds will suffer increasing flooding and rainfall over the next decade. China and India are two countries that have been declining to agree to national carbon emission targets, continuing to heavily rely on coal, with the Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, unlikely to attend CoP26 and the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s attendance focussing on compensation for historic carbon emissions. With there being no technological solution to global warming whilst the most-polluting industries opportunistically move to the global south, what can CoP26 do to tackle the biggest human rights and environmental challenge facing us as humans?

The Sundarbans Climate Justice Project may provide us with perspectives on how the challenge of global warming and its effects cannot be separated from the challenge of achieving access to justice for those who have been and continue to be most affected.

One of the main barriers in our understanding of global warming is the lack of specific knowledge of its localised causes and effects. Without this information, it makes it more difficult not only for people across the world to connect intellectually and emotionally to the plight of those affected by global warming, but also to understand what the possible remedial measures might be and to replicate them in similar situations. For instance, whilst the phenomena of island loss in the Sundarbans area have been attributed to air-temperature and sea-level rise for several decades, the effect of this on livelihoods, migration and human rights and environmental violations has not. Consequently, one of the first tasks of the project was to undertake a baseline survey amongst those affected by island loss, conducted as field-visits’ questionnaires by law students from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) and Jadavpur University (JU), Kolkata. The results were illuminating in showing that pressure on livelihoods has led to both internal and external migration from the Sundarbans, leading to destruction of the fragile eco-system and pushing people into low-paid insecure work, sex-trafficking, and an increase in debt-induced child marriages. It also revealed that the local State response was only to the acute humanitarian crises, such as the ever-increasing cyclones. There was no real business response. The interviewees did not consider that one of the reasons for the cause of loss of livelihood could be global warming, instead focusing on the immediate cause, or that the responsibility could lie with any state or non-state actors in failing to curb carbon emissions. Additionally, law students from King’s College London (KCL) were able to research and identify mechanisms and opportunities for using the findings of the survey to engage Indian and non-Indian businesses, and their respective states. Future cross-training and surveys will build on the positive response from interviewees, with the ultimate objective of having a continuous assessment of the multiple violations and the responses, through legal clinics set up for that purpose.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the project is the decolonised approach to the partnership and its approach to bottom-up research, knowledge-sharing and ultimately relief. We aim to be inclusive of the local perspectives and the genuine interests of the stakeholders. We absolutely feel that this is the only way in which there can be any tangible progress on global warming and its effects. In short, it is by understanding the effects of global warming on those without access to justice, learning about and supporting how they are adapting to it, can we ever hope to avoid its most catastrophic effects.

As Europe moves to putting in place laws which require businesses to ascertain the effects of their business activity and to remedy directly or indirectly any violations that are found, the project provides an indication of what may be required to do this. Tesla may wish to include such mechanisms as part of setting-up its factory in Karnataka. Further, the parties to CoP26 may also agree to mandate a global response to those affected by global warming, through transfer of resources and a proper human rights due diligence requirement for their home companies. Legal responses alone will not stop global warming but listening to those who have already been affected by it, sometimes for decades, and then acting upon it, is a sine qua non in doing so.

The launch of the Sundarbans Climate Justice Project will on Monday 1st November 2021 at 13.00 GMT/18.30 IST.

Krishnendu Mukherjee is a barrister and Indian advocate, working with the most vulnerable and marginalised, especially from the global south, through his trans-national practice of immigration, environment and business and human rights.