The Word Isn’t Tired, We Are: Opinion Piece on ICCJ 2026

Written by: Aleena Sebastian

Edited by: Ishanya

Graphic Designer: Roshini Reddy

Any time someone tells me that the word "climate justice" has turned into a buzzword, I briefly feel the urge to retort with what they ‘mean’ when they say that; but I debate internally about how to ask them politely about it first without appearing as ‘nosey’, ‘nerdy’ or ‘threatening’ in any way; Buzzword as compared to what? Something like "sustainability," which gets stretched out of shape so much that it's now used almost like a casual word on, say, everyday items like shampoo bottles or even in fast fashion advertisements that wish to project themselves as brands that ‘care for the environment’? Or to another trending word like "net zero," which oil companies love to use in the same everyday casual conversation as if talking about the acquisition of new drilling permits? 

If we measure ‘climate justice’ against the vast number of words that marketing departments have quite literally hollowed out because of the way it's ‘sold’ to people, it's actually doing pretty fine. What really annoys me, though, isn’t the term in itself, but rather the fact that some people use it badly, like saying it without doing anything to back it up. Examples could include a company adding the word "climate justice" to their mission statement while its supply chain hasn't changed at all, or using it as a stand-in for actual analysis, or even being tossed into a speech or presentation so that the audience feels the right things without being told anything specific. It is a different problem altogether, and it's so very much worth being precise about the difference, because it feels wrong to let everyone off the hook easily when they merge the two ideas in the same sentence, as if they aren’t two separate ideas on their own, but rather a synonym of sorts for each other. Yes, I've indeed been part of panels, discussions, and even large-scale conferences where moderators have quite literally used the word "climate justice" while stating their points across to the audience the way one would say "please" in an email they definitely don't mean at all, like a courtesy word or a box being ticked off before they start moving on to their actual talking points. Even more so, I've read corporate sustainability reports that mention it once, almost always towards the end, probably right after the section on carbon offsets, like a closing credit. It is a very real ‘habit’ that people have adopted, and I believe it's fair for me to be irritated by it. But a word being misused by people who don't fully understand it, don't want to, or have misconceptions or vague ideas about its meaning, isn't the same as the word losing its meaning. It just means that the word is so popular now that people feel the need to fake it into casual conversation for a vast number of reasons, the most prominent ones being to appear “intellectually literate/gifted” or to “follow the trending lingo”, especially if they are part of a generation that is quite famous for creating its own linguistic terms, aka Gen Zs. When I think about what climate justice actually covers, I notice the fact that the people least responsible for emissions that pollute the environment, like small island nations, subsistence farmers, or poor urban communities living next to industrial zones, are often the ones absorbing the worst of the damage first and the hardest. It is not an abstract idea, but a very real, specifically documented and mappable reality. Regions like coastal Bangladesh definitely did not cause the emissions that are swallowing their land. The term exists in the first place because the word "climate change" alone was letting people talk about melting ice caps and carbon parts per million, etc., without them ever having to talk about more minute but crucial details like who gets flooded first or who gets to relocate comfortably. That distinction matters a lot, and no other term does that specific job. I think the argument that "it's just a buzzword now" is actually a symptom of something else that people never really talk about-  discomfort with how uncomfortable the term is supposed to be. I don’t believe that ‘Climate justice’ was ever meant to be a pleasant phrase that could be used and thrown around so casually. It was meant to point towards a very specific structure of unfairness that entangles facts like colonial extraction, uneven industrialisation, or the fact that countries of the Global North produced most of the world’s pollution while the countries that are part of the Global South and considered ‘poor’ suffer most of its effects, despite their limited contributions to it. When a term like that is used at important large-scale conferences, like a UN conference, by a delegate who then flies back home in a private jet, it doesn’t make the term meaningless in itself, but rather highlights the contradiction between what that delegate said and what they did in real life. 

There's also a ‘lazier version’ of this buzzword complaint, and I think we should be honest about it. Sometimes, calling a term "overused" or “overrated” is nothing more than a convenient way to stop engaging with it seriously altogether. I believe that if climate justice is "just a buzzword," you don't have to ask why your own city's flood-prone neighbourhoods are also its poorest ones or why the people who draft adaptation policies rarely include anyone who has actually lived through displacement. Declaring a word as “meaningless” is more or less sweeping its implications under the rug. None of this means that the language can't get ‘tired’, or that writers and journalists shouldn't push themselves to be sharper and more specific than just dropping the phrase in as decoration. A term surviving doesn't mean it should be used carelessly. If anything, this is the moment to use it more precisely and prevent it from going void- name the actual mechanism of injustice instead of gesturing at the phrase and hoping it does the work for you; say which community or which policy, say who benefits and who pays, etc. So, I conclude this opinion piece by putting forward this: I don't think climate justice is dying, but rather it's being tested by and for the general public, the way any concept is tested once it moves from activist/political vocabulary into mainstream use. Words don't lose meaning just because more people are saying them, but they do when people stop asking anyone to mean it. That responsibility is not the job of the word itself to carry, but our responsibility, since we are the ones who can bring action and power to a word, not the word in itself. To end with a favourite borrowed fancy reminder of mine: Fear of a word and its meaning only increases fear of the reality it represents. (Adapted from Albus Dumbledore’s line in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in Chapter 17: The Man with Two Faces).