Book Launch: "Climate Justice Now: Crossing Disciplines to Combat Our Planetary Crisis"

ABSTRACT

Climate Justice Now: Crossing Disciplines to Combat Our Planetary Crisis, Edited by Rebecca Marwege, Nikhar Gaikwad, and Joerg Schaefer (Columbia University Press, 2026)

Climate change is not only an environmental crisis but also a catalyst for worsening socioeconomic inequalities, leading to widespread calls for “climate justice.” Even though this term has become increasingly common, there remains no universally accepted definition. This challenge is compounded by the limitations of traditional scholarly frameworks, which struggle to encompass the dynamic and pervasive impact of the climate crisis across global, national, and local levels. The scope of the crisis requires ethical, social, and political considerations alongside scientific and environmental insights in order to shape equitable responses by states and societies.

This multidisciplinary book offers a comprehensive exploration of debates on climate justice across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Synthesizing these divergent approaches, it develops a new conceptual framework that transcends disciplinary divides, providing a deeper and richer understanding of climate justice. Contributors make an urgent case that climate justice must be centered within and across disciplines, creating a roadmap for multidisciplinary research and pedagogy on the climate crisis. Featuring a wide range of voices and actionable recommendations, this timely book illuminates how scholarship on climate change can become a call to action.


BIOS

Editor - Rebecca Marwege
Rebecca Marwege joined the department of History and Politics in August 2025. At AUP, she teaches environmental politics and international relations. Prior to moving to Paris, she completed her Ph.D. in Political Science at Columbia University, with research focused on climate politics, social movements, and critical theory. At Columbia University, Marwege served as a Lecturer in Environmental and Climate Justice and as the Junior Director of Columbia’s Earth Network on Decarbonization, Climate Resilience, and Climate Justice - a four-year, interdisciplinary research network supported by Columbia Climate School. She is currently working on her book project, Climate Action, Movements and Political Change, which explores how youth climate movements are redefining climate justice and driving political transformation.

Contributor - Julia Lajus
Julia Lajus is a Core Fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Her research interests include environmental and technological history of biological resources, especially in marine and polar areas, and history of field sciences such as fisheries science, oceanography, and geophysics. Julia has published four books in Russian, as well as numerous chapters and papers in monographs and international journals. She has considerable experience in international projects, such as "History of Marine Animal Populations," led by Poul Holm, ESF EUROCORES “Boreas: Histories from the North” with Ronald Doel, “Assessing Arctic Futures: Voices, Resources and Governance” with Sverker Sorlin, and “Exploring Russia’s Environmental History,” with David Moon (funded by the Leverhulme Trust).

Elena Berg
Professor Berg joined the Department of Computer Science, Math & Science at the American University of Paris in January of 2014. She is a broadly trained evolutionary biologist interested in multidisciplinary questions about how behavior, morphology, life history, and genetics vary across different environments and spatial scales. As a professor at AUP, she is researching the behavior and life history of seed beetles. With the help of AUP students, Berg and colleague Professor Claudio Piani are currently conducting a long-term experiment investigating the adaptive capacity of seed beetles under projected changes in climate. Berg also conducts research on drinking water and the bottled water industry. She is a certified water sommelier and conducts taste tests with her students and other members of the AUP community.

Pierre Charbonnier
Pierre Charbonnier is a philosopher and CNRS research fellow at Sciences Po (Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics). He works on the history, epistemology, and forms of power associated with the government of nature in modern societies.His work first focused on the history of social anthropology and on the criticisms of the dualism of the natural and the social that structures classical sociological rationality. He is now working on a reflection on the adaptation of social protection systems to the economic consequences of the response to the climate crisis, and in parallel a study on the relationship between world powers and the climate threat.

Florence Faucher
Florence Faucher is Professor of political science at Sciences Po and Director of the Centre d’études européennes et de politique comparée (CEE). Her research has developed in several strands, connected by an interest in understanding the transformations of modes of doing politics in contemporary Europe. She has extensively worked on political parties in France and in the UK (green parties, centre right and centre left parties). She argues that an "anthropological imagination" can renew and stimulate analyses of contemporary political institutions and practices.