What does Aurora want?

The climate obligations of the Swedish state

The state must take sufficient climate action to effectively protect human rights to life, health, well-being, and quality of life from the serious effects of climate change. Climate action must be in line with the best available science and national and international legal commitments.

This means that the state must

• Do its fair share of the global climate measures needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels. This means reducing emissions from several sectors before 2030: at least 15 years before the current target.
• Protect and restore natural ecosystems that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, such as forests and wetlands. Much more than is currently planned must be protected: Sweden's current target means even less GHGs should be removed in 2030 compared to 1990.
• Reduce the total amount of emissions from all sources that Sweden can control. Today, the state has no plan whatsoever to reduce, for example, Swedish consumption-based emissions abroad (approx. 52 Mt CO2e per year) and emissions from the combustion of imported biomass (approx. 10 Mt CO2e per year) and international air and sea transport (approx. 7 Mt CO2e per year). 

Read more about the scientific and legal reasons for why Sweden has these obligations here! Full source references can be found in the lawsuit, available here.

 

Visions

Aurora’s understanding of climate justice/Earth system justice

*We mean the same thing with “planetary justice” as with “climate justice”. We use “Earth system justice” because the planetary crises, and the systems transformation that needs to happen, are about more than just the climate. Several planetary crises are occurring simultaneously, e.g. ocean acidification, and freshwater and land system change.

Earth system justice means that all our societal systems are fair and just for all. It entails all living creatures, including individuals of other species (interspecies justice) and coming generations (intergenerational justice), no matter where they live and what groups they belong to (intragenerational justice). 

To achieve Earth system justice, everyone should have the right to be free from oppression, exploitation, and that one’s self determination is limited without reason (negative substantive rights). Everyone should also have the right to have their needs satisfied and sufficient prerequisites to live a good life (positive substantive rights). These rights should not just exist on paper, but should also be realized through legislation and resources. To concretize rights, laws are needed that specify exactly how these rights should be fulfilled practically, e.g. by including exact amounts for support that an individual has a right to. Resources, such as education and healthcare, but also more concrete material resources, need to be given to the individual to ensure that their needs are met. 

In addition to substantive rights, everyone should also have the right to take part of information about decisions that can affect them or nature in large (procedural rights: information). Everyone who is affected by decisions should have a right to affect the decisions, either by themselves or through a loyal representative (e.g. an environmental organization) (procedural rights: participation). Everyone who is affected by a decision should also have the right to have the decision tried in court or by an authority (by themselves or through a representative) (procedural rights: access to justice). To make these rights possible practically, it is also required that the individual has access to the necessary resources, e.g. legal aid.

To satisfy everyone’s basic needs, a fair and just distribution of resources is required, because we have a limited amount of e.g. natural resources and labor force and everyone needs to take part of them. Through this, it should also be prevented that a small group of people become very rich and that there are large differences in people’s living conditions. A fair and just distribution of influence is needed, to control who has influence over different decisions. This distribution should be based on democratic principles, on the individual’s qualifications and relevant knowledge (especially scientific, local, and indigenous), and on how much the individual that is represented will be affected by the decisions.

Our distribution of responsibility when it comes to stopping the planetary crises should also be fair and just. E.g. every country should do its fair share of the global climate measures that are required to limit the warming to 1.5°C. The fair share should be based on historical and present responsibility. A recently (or not yet) industrialized country has lower historical emissions and so less historical responsibility than a country that has been industrialized for several hundred years. The fair share should also be based on ability. The more resources a country has, the more responsibility it has to invest these resources in stopping the planetary crises. 

In all this, extra focus should be placed on making sure that groups that in today’s society have limited power should be heard (emancipation and intersectionality).

Planetary justice should under all circumstances be prioritized above short-term economic profit and exploitation of nature, people, and societies. All decisions in the climate transition need to take planetary justice into account, and the transition cannot happen at the expense of the values and lives that planetary justice aims to protect. To achieve planetary justice, system transformations are needed.

See the pdf-document (in Swedish) for sources that our understanding has been inspired by.

Aurora’s understanding of systems transformation

Systems transformation means a drastic change in our values and behaviors to achieve planetary justice. Today’s societies are built upon destructive systems that are founded on exploitation of other people and of nature. These systems need to be torn down and at the same time we need to build new sustainable systems founded on planetary justice.

We have to transform our material and technical systems. We have to reduce our consumption and instead take care of what we own, use things until they break, and then repair them. We need to reuse and recycle the materials we have already created and we need to use renewable materials and energy for necessary consumption (e.g. food supply, healthcare, etc.). But it is not enough to only transform our material and technical systems. 

We also need to transform our economic, political, and judicial systems. A transformation of our economic systems is based on a shift in our focus from growth to sufficiency, and that all our production and consumption takes rights and sustainability into account. Natural resources are endless, and therefore we need to make sure that we do not use more than we need (by e.g. borrowing things from each other), and that what we take from nature, we take with care. We also already have a lot of extracted resources on Earth, and these we need to use and redistribute in a way that is fair to all and makes sure everyone’s basic needs are fulfilled.

To transform our political systems means to redistribute power so that those who are affected by a decision take part in making them. We do this by making sure that especially vulnerable groups have power over themselves, their property, and their lands. We also do this by e.g. having representatives for natural entities (such as forests, lakes, rivers, etc.) in the legislature (such as the parliament). 

A transformation of our legal systems means that everyone who is affected by a decision can have the decision tried in court. This requires not only that the law allows them to take it to court, but also that they have access to the necessary resources, e.g. legal aid. It can also mean recognising that nature, ecosystems, animals, plants, have rights just like humans do.

To transform all these systems, we first and foremost need to transform our cultural and social systems. We have to change what we consider desirable. We have to value health and happiness for ourselves, other people, and nature higher than gadgets and money. This can happen by e.g. working less so that we have less money to spend on consumption, but also more time and energy left over to do the kind of things that make us feel good (such as building human relationships and being out in nature). It can also happen by having a relation to the things we consume, e.g. by growing our own food and making our own clothes and things, so that we understand the labor that is required and therefore value them more.

See the pdf-document (in Swedish) for sources that our understanding has been inspired by.

 

Last updated 2026-02-06.