Throughout this book,Mary Robinson has shed light on the fact that climate crisis is a crisis of humanity. She accounts for the lived experiences of vulnerable people who witnessed climate change and how some of the world’s courageous women are fighting such a crisis to save their communities. The stories of these women and their communities make us realise that fight against climate change is fundamentally about human rights and securing justice for the sufferers, that is why Robinson claimed that it is more about climate justice – sharing the burden, destiny and putting people at the heart of the solution.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, countries across Europe and the Americastransformed from agrarian to manufacturing ones, strengthening their economies backed by the usage of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil. As consumption grew so did global warming due to the magnified emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But we need to understand that climate change is notlimited to these factors. It extends to food shortage issues, poverty, and putting different vulnerable populations that play no role in climate change to risk.

Robinson sharesdifferent stories, including that of Constance Okollet, a small scale fourth-generation farmer and a community organiser from a small village in eastern Uganda. At a climate change conference, she represented her community by recounting how her small village is devastated by drought, flood and other extreme weather patterns since 2000. She stated “in eastern Uganda, there are no seasons anymore. Agriculture is gamble.” Nearly 70 percent of the crops are produced by millions of small and subsistence farmers across Asia and Africa and the majority of them are women like Constance. Seeing the starving situation of her community, Constance with the help of other women in her village decided to take matters into their own hands by forming a group known as ‘Osukuru United Women Network’. Every week she and the villagers gather to discuss their problems, and these problems are later presented to the local council. She even persuaded the council to pass a law to authorise planting of five trees for every single tree cut. These were little steps for Constance to voice her reality in different international conferences with a room full of world leaders and climate change activists. Whatever she learned about climate change she shared with the village people, urged them to follow small environmental measures. Uganda’s female farmer turned her everyday reality and local activism as the narrative of hope, a global voice and power for grassroots women.

Like Constance, the story of Vu Thi Hien from Vietnam is equally inspiring. Hien was set to establish her career in academics. In 1998 she packed her bags from Australia. She returned to her country to preservethe country’s natural forest and the ethnic minority communities whose livelihood depended on the forests. Vietnam’s coastal region and vast river delta region is prone to saltwater intrusion and sea-level riseand, it’s a natural forest with rich biodiversity has been disappearing since the 1940s. To preserve Vietnam’s rich and disappearing forestlands and fight climate change and reduce carbon emission, Hien established her own NGO ‘Centre of Research and Development in Upland Areas’ (CERDA) by engagingwith the indigenous communities. CERDA trained these community members on usage of GPS, creating forest inventory, and measuring carbon. Before the involvement of Hien’s NGO, women of these ethnic groups were denied access to forest management and land ownership. CERDA successfully encouraged these women to participate in forest conservation programs and took ownerships. Hien’s approach made it possible to empower women and their communities by placing them at the management’s heart.

In her book, Robinson also about Paris Agreement of 2015. The Paris Agreement was historic for binding rich and poor countries, no matter their GDP, to fight against climate change and reduce emissions to a safer level. The creators of the agreement acknowledged the importance of climate justice. They made commitments to help those sufferingat the forefrontof climate change, and commit to gender equality, a greener economy and an ‘agreement for humanity’. Paris Agreement recognised the significance of women’s work like Constance andHieu and many others from different parts of the world. Robinson argues that addressing climate change and promoting climate justice has acquired both urgency and determination. Therefore, the responsibility lies with everyone – governments, communities, business leaders, families, individuals – to provide for a cleaner, sustainable and just environment for  the Ugandan villagers, ethnic minorities in Vietnam, and people everywhere else.

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Ushoshi Bandyopadhyay has done her MA in Sociology from Presidency University, Kolkata.