Articles

Ethical And Moral Dimension of Climate Change; A Path to Climate Justice Case Study: Susan Bay’s Community, Freetown

2023 has been recorded as the hottest year ever. Sierra Leone is ranked among the 10% of countries that are prone and most vulnerable to climate impacts globally and Susan Bay is bearing the brunt of climate change impacts, including rising sea levels and flooding. Biodiversity is being impacted by human unethical behavior, wrong perceptions, and unhealthy activities. This has resulted to global surface temperatures reached 1.1°C. However, to address the situation UNESCO and COMEST proposed guidelines for Governments in their mitigation and adaptation strategies an ethical tool to achieve climate justice.

An integrative review was employed to examine existing literatures. Also, key words were used to search popular databases, including Web of Science, Google Scholar, and PubMed, from the years 2010 to 2023 with a total of 53 articles.  We argued that the most affected population should receive financial compensation from G20 countries responsible for majority of the Green House Gas Emissions. Therefore, the paper proposed for the Government of Sierra Leone to ensure policy regulation and enforcement, community development and empowerment, and community protection and resilience in their actions, missions, and visions from our analytical framework.

The paper recommends for the GoSL to integrate ethical and moral values into climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, in line with UNESCO and COMEST recommendations with emphasis on: Prevention of harm; scientific integrity; and justice and equity. Inadequate financial resources and technical expertise hinders the GoSL in implementing these recommendations. To address these challenges, the study suggests that G20 nations should provide climate finance and scientific support to help the GoSL efficiently develop and execute its climate mitigation and adaptation strategies a path to climate justice.