Blockchain-Enabled Environmental Governance and Climate Justice

Abstract

Climate change and environmental degradation continue to expose deep structural weaknesses in how natural resources, emissions, and ecological benefits are governed, monitored, and distributed. Conventional environmental governance systems are frequently criticized for opacity, weak enforcement, fragmented monitoring, and unequal participation of vulnerable and indigenous communities in decision-making. Blockchain technology, with its properties of decentralization, immutability, transparency, and programmable smart contracts, has emerged as a candidate infrastructure for addressing these governance gaps. This manuscript examines how blockchain-enabled systems can strengthen environmental governance while advancing climate justice, understood as the fair distribution of environmental benefits, burdens, and decision-making power across communities. Drawing on verifiable peer-reviewed literature on blockchain applications in payments for ecosystem services, carbon credit markets, sustainable finance, and indigenous data sovereignty, this paper develops a conceptual framework linking blockchain architecture to justice outcomes. The paper also identifies persistent challenges including energy consumption, digital exclusion, regulatory uncertainty, and the risk of reproducing existing power asymmetries under a technocratic guise. The paper concludes that blockchain can meaningfully support environmental governance and climate justice only when its deployment is paired with inclusive institutional design, community consent, and policy safeguards, rather than treated as a purely technical fix.