Climate justice is increasingly being framed not only as an international obligation but also as an urban survival question, as vulnerable communities face severe climate consequences despite contributing far less to global warming. Speaking at Tollygunge Club in Calcutta on Friday, Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee argued that the global response to climate change must connect fairness, financing and practical emissions reductions.
Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was addressing a programme titled “Just Economics: A Better Deal for People and Planet”. His argument placed unequal climate responsibility at the centre of the discussion. Countries and communities least responsible for global warming, he said, often face some of its harshest consequences.
That imbalance has a direct urban dimension. Cities concentrate people, housing, infrastructure, economic activity and public services in relatively small areas. When heat intensifies or climate-related damage increases, the effects are experienced through homes, workplaces, transport systems, public spaces and access to basic services. The material supplied for Banerjee’s address does not provide city-level temperature, mortality or infrastructure-loss data, but it establishes the broader distributional problem: those with fewer resources and lower historical emissions may face greater exposure and weaker capacity to respond.
The question is therefore not limited to how much the world emits. It also concerns who has benefited from high-emission development, who bears the resulting damage and who has the fiscal capacity to adapt. Banerjee’s intervention treated these questions as part of “just economics”, rather than as a separate moral issue outside economic policy.
A central figure cited in the address was the difference between the emissions associated with the wealthiest and poorest sections of the global population. The wealthiest 10 per cent account for an estimated 48 per cent of consumption-based emissions, while the bottom 50 per cent account for 11.5 per cent, according to the estimates highlighted by Banerjee. These figures refer to global consumption-based emissions and were presented as evidence of the unequal relationship between economic advantage and climate responsibility.
The distinction matters for urban policy because consumption and development patterns shape the demand for buildings, energy, transport, manufactured goods and land. At the same time, the impacts of rising temperatures and extreme heat do not fall evenly. Banerjee highlighted the particular threat to low-income countries, where climate-related deaths are projected to be disproportionately high. The supplied report does not specify the projection’s source, timeframe or country-level breakdown, so the figure cannot be used to rank particular cities. It does, however, underline the gap between exposure to climate risk and the ability to pay for protection.
For cities, that gap can appear in several forms. Lower-income communities may have fewer resources to improve homes, obtain cooling or relocate temporarily during extreme heat. Municipal systems may also have limited funds for adaptation. Public green spaces, drainage, water supply, healthcare and emergency response all require sustained institutional capacity, but the address did not provide a detailed assessment of any one city’s budget or service performance. The evidence supports a broader conclusion: climate vulnerability cannot be separated from income, public finance and the quality of urban institutions.
Banerjee also questioned the current structure of international climate assistance. He said support to developing countries has been slow and is frequently provided through loans, including to nations already burdened by debt. This raises a financing problem with clear implications for urban development. If climate support adds to existing debt rather than providing adequate grant-based assistance or compensation, governments may face difficult choices between funding adaptation and meeting other obligations.
The address cited estimates placing climate damage to low- and middle-income countries from emissions by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations at around $1.8 trillion. About $1 trillion of that damage was attributed to Africa. These figures were presented during the programme and are reported here as estimates highlighted by Banerjee; the supplied material does not provide the underlying methodology or identify the study that produced them.
The institutional issue is as important as the scale of the numbers. Climate negotiations are often conducted between national governments, while the effects of climate stress are experienced locally. Municipal authorities are responsible for many of the systems that determine everyday resilience, but they generally do not control international climate finance or global emissions policy. This creates a chain of responsibility in which the level that experiences the damage may not be the level that receives or allocates the resources needed to respond.
Banerjee’s proposed “climate grand bargain” attempts to address that gap through reciprocal commitments. Under the approach outlined at Tollygunge Club, wealthy countries would compensate lower-income nations for present and future damage arising from their current emissions. Participating developing countries would introduce carbon pricing. The proposed arrangement is intended to combine financial support for those most affected with stronger incentives to reduce emissions.
The proposal links two policy instruments that are often treated separately. Compensation addresses the distribution of harm and the financing needs of vulnerable countries. Carbon pricing addresses the economic incentives associated with emissions. The address did not set out a detailed mechanism for calculating compensation, identifying eligible countries, administering the funds or determining the design of carbon pricing. Those unresolved details are central to whether such a framework could operate in practice.
The proposal also highlights the difficulty of translating global climate commitments into local urban outcomes. Financial transfers alone do not automatically produce safer housing, cooler neighbourhoods, reliable water systems or protected green areas. They require administrative capacity, planning systems, project selection, monitoring and accountability. Conversely, carbon pricing can alter economic incentives, but its effects on households and businesses would depend on its design and implementation. The supplied evidence does not establish how Banerjee’s proposal would address these operational questions.
The Tollygunge Club setting added a local institutional dimension to the discussion. Brig V Ganapathy (Retd.), the club’s chief executive and managing member, said the talk resonated with what Tollygunge Club represents in the “teeming metropolis of Calcutta”, where every green lung matters. He described the club as the custodian of one such space and said its responsibility extended beyond members to the city and future generations.
That statement brings the global argument back to urban land. Green spaces are not only recreational assets; they are part of the physical environment in which cities absorb heat, support ecological functions and provide residents with relief from dense construction. The source material does not quantify Tollygunge Club’s environmental contribution or compare it with other green spaces in Calcutta. It does show how climate discussions are being connected to the governance of privately held or institutionally managed urban land and to the question of who benefits from such spaces.
The institutional responsibility is therefore distributed across several levels. International negotiations determine the broad framework for finance and emissions commitments. National governments negotiate, regulate and allocate resources. State and city authorities manage planning and public infrastructure. Institutions that control significant parcels of urban land influence the availability and continuity of green spaces. Communities experience the cumulative result through heat, safety, mobility, health and access to public amenities.
Banerjee’s remarks are significant because they challenge a climate response based only on aggregate emissions targets. The figures cited in the address indicate that responsibility is unevenly distributed, while the financing concerns suggest that the capacity to respond is also uneven. A policy that treats every country or community as facing the same starting conditions would miss the economic and institutional differences that determine whether climate action protects those most exposed.
The available evidence confirms three points. First, the burden of climate change is not aligned with historical or consumption-based responsibility. Second, climate finance remains contested because assistance may be slow and loan-based, including for countries already carrying debt. Third, any workable settlement would need to connect compensation, emissions reduction and implementation capacity rather than treating them as isolated objectives.
What remains unresolved is how a “climate grand bargain” would be financed, governed and enforced, and how international commitments would translate into measurable improvements in vulnerable cities and communities. Those questions will determine whether climate justice remains a principle expressed at public forums or becomes a functioning framework for urban resilience.
