24 April 2025 – Yesterday CISL and CCI hosted an event to celebrate the launch of Just Earth: How a Fairer World Will Save the Planet, the latest book by Tony Juniper CBE.
Just Earth shows how inequality underpin the biodiversity and climate crises which are ravaging our planet – and the crises cannot be solved unless society deals with the unfairness and injustice faced by our most vulnerable communities.
Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England and CISL Fellow, began by explaining how he came to write the book: “[Carbon emissions] have been going up year on year, despite 30 years of data gathering, analysis, campaigning, arguments and exchange of views through very complex negotiations.
“Cogitating on that... led me to believe that actually the biggest environmental issue of all is not necessarily climate change or biodiversity loss. There's something deeper still that lies behind it, and that is different manifestations of social inequality.
"You see a strong relationship between income inequality... and an index of various health, social and environmental questions. We know that these things are connected. The big issues really are about how they're connected and the extent to which this is working at multiple levels.
“One thing which struck me as being quite important is the extent to which the people who take the most important decisions that affect environmental outcomes - whether they be investors, chief executives of companies, policymakers, or those making spatial planning decisions - these are, by and large, not the people who suffer the environmental consequences that result. They're insulated from it. There's an inequality of power which lies behind the perpetuation of some of these big environmental issues.”
Tony gave multiple examples of how climate change and biodiversity crisis are already affecting communities around the globe:
“The Maldives, one of the lowest lying countries on Earth, is subject to significant climate change impacts already seen in the bleaching of the nation's coral reefs caused by rising sea temperature, but also acidification of the ocean. Those coral reefs are, of course, the source of much of the country's food, and also its tourism revenue.
“That country now is having to spend more and more of its annual budget on desalination of seawater... and they're having to spend more money on coastal defences as a result of more serious storms and also sea level rise. That is money that otherwise they would have been spending on health and education and on institution- building.
“During the course of [researching] the book I spoke to the Environment Minister of the Maldives, who told me that these impacts of climate change were a material risk to their emerging democracy because they can't do the things they need for social cohesion, because the budget is being diverted into dealing with the consequences of global warming.”
Professor Melissa Leach, CCI’s Executive Director, welcomed a rapt audience to the fully-booked event, held at the David Attenborough Building. Attendees included members of conservation and sustainability organisations and Cambridge students.
A panel discussion and question and answer session examined some of the key points of the book and rounded off the presentation. Tony Juniper was joined for the discussion by Melissa Leach, Lindsay Hooper (CEO, CISL), Victoria Leggett (Senior Advisor to Union Bancaire Privée and CISL’s Investment Leaders Group Co-Chair), Annette Green (political ecologist and Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Cambridge Department of Geography) and Susan Smith, (Honorary Professor of Social and Economic Geography, University of Cambridge (and soon to be President of the British Academy)).