Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit

UNSW Sydney Program Schedule  

June 5 2025
Local Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm AEST | UTC 01:00 – 03:00

11:00-11:05 | Welcome and Introduction

Joshua Wilkinson - UNSW Engineering & Social Sciences Postgraduate Student 
Sadia Khaja - UNSW Engineering Undergraduate Student  
 

11:05-11:15 | A Just Climate Transition 

Prof Jeremy Moss (UNSW Sydney)

For a climate transition to succeed it must, of course, reduce emissions. But what it must also do is ensure that the benefits and burdens of any transition – its financial cost, its lifestyle sacrifices, monetary benefits etc – are fairly shared within and between societies. Including a robust role for justice is vital to ensuring that vulnerable individuals and communities are not made worse off by any transition strategies. Without fairly sharing the burdens of climate transition policies the transition will very likely make existing harms worse or introduce new harms. Just as important for the success of a climate transition is sharing the benefits in the right way. We need a robust, integrated account of justice if the transition is to maximise and fairly share the many benefits it will create. Expanding the scope and reach of a transition, ensuring that it is comprehensive, timely, prioritised within net zero plans and embodies substantive principles of justice gets us a long way to ensuring that a climate transition will be a just one. 

11:15-12:10 | Transforming partnership to resilience building: A Global South Dialogue on indigenous communities and university engagement

Fengshi Wu (UNSW Sydney) | Heidi Norman (UNSW Sydney) | Andrea Loli (The Utility Regulatory Authority of Vanuatu) | Laylyn Toa (Fixim Solar) | Joyce Wu (UNSW Sydney) | Shanil Samarakoon (UNSW Sydney) | Srinjoy Bose (UNSW Sydney) | Sumit Kumar (Monash) | Arindam Banerjee (PDAG)

Forming authentic collaborative partnerships between researchers and communities, including First Nations Peoples and ethnic minorities, is critical for research aiming at social impact. This panel will draw on three case studies from the Asia-Pacific region to illustrate how relationships built on reciprocity and shared knowledge can support human rights-based climate and energy transitions.

12:10 - 12:15 | Reflections from Sharan Burrow AC, former  General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation and UNSW Alumna 

12:15 – 13:00 | At Any Price? The human rights impacts of Australia's fossil fuel exports

Gillian Moon (UNSW Sydney) | Emma Bacon (Sweltering Cities) | Dr Nicola Maher (Australian National University) | Dr Cybele Dey (UNSW Sydney) 

Presented by the Australian Human Rights Institute.  Australia is a major contributor to global warming and consequent human rights impairment, yet reasonable policy actions open to it which could be 'climate game changing' are not being taken. Ours is pioneering research 'translating' the science into human impacts in Australia, aiming to support multiple climate objectives: clarifying Australia's human rights law obligation to protect people in Australia from its own contribution to climate harms; equipping advocates and policy makers with robust evidence of impacts; and identifying reasonable and effective policy steps Australia could take immediately to comply with those obligations.