Expansive climate governance: advancing transformative climate justice through the six pillars of climate action

Existing frameworks within international climate governance present a largely binary understanding of the core strategies available to address climate change and related forms of inequality: mitigation and adaptation. Advancing climate justice in a transformative fashion requires a more expansive, nuanced, and comprehensive understanding of the types of climate-related actions that are available and feasible. The 'expansive climate governance' framework introduced in this article includes six governance pillars that extend across a continuum. On the left side of the continuum are mitigative strategies that are preventative of changes to the greenhouse, including 'restructuring' and 'decoupling'. In the middle of the continuum are stabilizing strategies to limit exposure to harm related to an altered greenhouse, including 'greenhouse restoration' and 'climate management'. On the right side of the continuum are adaptive strategies to adjust and respond to climatic changes and impacts, including 'adaptation' and 'restitution'. The article discusses the history of the existing pillars of climate governance, defines and describes each of the six pillars of expansive climate governance, presents four arguments for why this approach is needed to advance transformative climate justice, and outlines steps to utilize this framework in practice.