The Interdisciplinary Observatory on Climate Change is proud to release the first in a series of editions of our Commentaries from the OIMC dedicated to publishing texts written by participants in the Operation COP 2024 – Young Climate Ambassadors project. Carried out in partnership with The Climate Reality Project Brazil and the Brazil Climate Centre, the initiative selected young students from various regions of Brazil and different areas of knowledge to undergo training in international politics, climate change and the development of skills, with an emphasis on negotiating issues with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP).

Opening the first batch of results from the partnership, this new edition presents the article Climate Justice is Trans Justice: Displacement, Environmental Transphobia and Climate Reparations, by Vesper Junqueira. In the text, the author analyses the ties between policies of climate denialism and policies of suppression of LGBT+ populations’ rights, focusing on the unequal impacts of extreme climate events on trans people, and highlights the importance of a special approach to vulnerable populations in the debate on climate reparations.

A graduate of the Law Faculty of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), with an exchange period at the University of Antwerp (UA – Belgium), Vesper Junqueira is a climate advocacy and litigation researcher at the DuClima Institute and a member of the Latin American Climate Lawyers Initiative for Mobilising Action (LACLIMA) network. His research is dedicated to the study of climate justice from human rights-based approaches to climate loss and damage and adaptation, with an emphasis on decoloniality, intersectionality and global (sustainable) development.