Abstract
Climate reparations – the argument that industrially advanced countries must compensate the global South countries for the loss and damage they are experiencing because of the climate crisis – have gained momentum in recent years. Activists and popular media frequently equate climate reparations to the goals and strategies of climate justice. Kashwan offers a preliminary diagnosis of the reasons for and consequences of such conflation of climate reparations and justice. Drawing on interdisciplinary research on the workings of power in multi-scale institutional arrangements, Kashwan argues that loss and damage-centered climate reparations will prove grossly inadequate for the more ambitious goals of climate justice. Such a power-centric approach offers the tools necessary for realizing climate justice in a terrain pockmarked with pervasive inequalities.