For centuries, Indigenous communities around the world have fought against settler colonialism as a way to defend their rights to sovereignty and to conserve traditional practices to connect with nature. In this sense, they have been the leaders of what nowadays (and since the 1970s) we call Environmental Justice (EJ).

EJ is a movement to fight against the disproportionate exposure to different sources of pollution (air, water, soil) that affect Indigenous people, communities of color, and low-income populations. It also considers equal access to the benefits, such as access to nature. For example, access to nature can mean access to healthy and fresh food, green spaces, and more biodiverse spaces that have a direct influence on the quality of our air, water, and soil. 

The video in this section produced by the Intersectional Environmentalist, explains what we mean by environmental justice.

Climate Justice (CJ) is a movement to address the 1) unequal effects of the climate crisis, often reflected in extreme weather events, and 2) the transition away from the use of fossil fuels due to an extractive economy, and in consequence, from emitting greenhouse gases that cause climate change.  It takes into account how structural and global inequities result in an unequal distribution of power and resources that affect how communities and countries can mitigate (reduce carbon emissions and other polluting activities to reduce their advance) and adapt to the effects of climate change (improve the level of preparedness to more extreme weather events and other climate hazards that can result in faster recovery times) equitably and inclusively. 

The video in this section, produced by Amnesty International gives more details on how climate justice is a human rights movement.