Cyprus will not solve the climate crisis without climate justice

In Cyprus, the climate crisis is no longer something we meet in reports about the future. We meet it in shrinking water reservoirs, punishing electricity bills and a transport system that pushes people to only use their private cars.

Climate policy and actions need to start from these lived realities, otherwise it will fail.

These lived realities are being addressed by climate justice.

Climate justice asks the questions in the public debate that technocratic policy still avoids. For instance, who carries the heaviest burden of environmental breakdown, and who gets shut out of the solutions?

Let’s start with water scarcity. Climate related challenges in water management include increasing water scarcity and greater risk from droughts and floods. At the same time, we see structural and systemic weaknesses, including water losses, old and damaged water infrastructure and a water policy that does not include the most vulnerable and the most affected by water shortages.

A water policy based on climate justice must include fairness, planning and political priorities.

Who gets protected when water is scarce? Who pays more when desalination expands? Why do households and farmers face mounting pressure while leakage and inefficient allocation remain so entrenched?

Energy reveals the same injustice in a different form.

The European Environment Agency reports that energy poverty in Cyprus affects 50,290 households, or 15.1 per cent of the total.

If the move to clean energy does not lower bills, improve homes and give people real access to the benefits of clean and safe energy, then it is not just.

Beyond necessary technological fixes such as a stronger grid, storage and energy efficiency, Cyprus desperately needs energy justice. That means people must have access not only to cleaner energy, but also to ownership, participation and decision making.

Energy communities are critical because they can allow households, municipalities, small businesses and local groups to jointly produce and manage renewable energy, keep value within the community, and reduce dependence on a centralised and unequal model. This model is climate justice because it not only incorporates who consumes energy but focuses on who controls it and who benefits from it.

Transport is the third front where climate injustice becomes ordinary daily life.

Eurostat reported that 85 per cent of people in Cyprus did not use public transport at all in 2024, the highest share in the European Union. The numbers are expected, since transport is not designed within the framework of climate justice.

People cannot be asked to choose low carbon mobility when safe, affordable and reliable options barely exist.

A fair transport policy must include good buses, safe walking routes, protected cycling infrastructure and public space designed for access, not only for traffic flow.

Micromobility is one of the clearest forms of climate justice, however it is treated as a nuisance, ignored or politically targeted and contested. It is cheaper, flexible and accessible and must be efficiently integrated into safe streets and better public transport, as part of a wider just shift towards more environmentally friendly cities.

This is exactly why environmental organisations matter so much in Cyprus.

They are not simply commenting on the crisis – they are helping define what a fair response looks like.

Friends of the Earth Cyprus has made climate justice a formal focus area.

Through our work on micromobility we are building awareness and skills around sustainable urban transport. Through our climate justice and Fossil Free Cyprus work, we are arguing for a just transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable and safe energy that is affordable, accessible and democratically governed.

Cyprus cannot claim to be solving one environmental crisis by deepening another.

A just transition must protect people from poverty and exclusion, while providing technological fixes that improve our quality of life. Climate justice is not only about distributing the costs of climate change more fairly. It is also about making sure the transition itself does not reproduce environmental destruction in a new form.

What Cyprus needs now is not climate action that looks ambitious only in official plans.

It needs real climate action.

That means repairing leaking water networks as urgently as expanding supply. It means cutting energy poverty, not merely counting renewable megawatts. It means building a transport system people can actually use, not one they are told to imagine. And it means linking climate policy with justice on the ground.

The climate crisis is already here. The only question left is whether Cyprus will answer it with more inequality, or with fairness, democracy and courage.

Natasa Ioannou is Project Coordinator at Friends of the Earth Cyprus