The Struggle for Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World (original) (raw)

Climate Change and Global Justice: Old Paradigm and New Actors Involved

It is widely recognized that Climate Change (CC) is a multidimensional, spatiotemporal and multi scale problem. These features raise an issue of framing: this means that it is difficult to conceptualize such a problem. Hence we shall discuss whether to approach it as a global or an international issue and whether or not it encompasses features of global justice. In order to do so we shall define a typical issue of Global Justice to see if CC falls into such a definition. The argument of this paper is that even though these two issues share some characteristics, the latter is a wicked problem that entails issues related to collective action and future generations. If the old paradigms have failed in recognizing such an aspect, then CC must be addressed through a new perspective into the larger framework of Sustainable Development (SD). Still a constructive debate on which actors should be involved is needed. The thesis of this paper is that if Global Governance has failed a new agent must be selected and this agent must be the community of people who is more efficient when pushing governments in acting against CC. At the end the problems related to our theory will be set forth.

The impossible necessity of climate justice

Melbourne Journal of International Law, 2009

It will be difficult to find an agreed solution to climate change that does not engage with climate justice. It is generally regarded as naïve, when considering international relations, to focus on justice, or to emphasise right over might. In the case of climate change -perhaps uniquelyeven the powerful need a genuinely global solution, which cannot be achieved without an engagement with justice. In this instance, might needs right. This think piece focuses on the North-South aspect of climate justice. It starts by unpacking the reasons why climate justice is important. It then argues that to assess whether a climate agreement or proposal is just, we need to examine four factors. Two are positive: that it should involve dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas concentrations; and that it should be fair and take into account both the varied current and historical responsibilities and the differing existing capacities of all involved. Two are negative: that it should not increase inequality; and that it should not increase the potential for international conflict. After outlining each of these components and why they are critical, I assess four broad proposals for dealing with climate change to see how they measure up. These are: equally-shared cuts in emissions; the 'contract and converge' model; the greenhouse development rights framework; and geo-engineering.

Climate Change and Non-Ideal Theory: Six Ways of Responding to Noncompliance

This paper examines what agents should do when others fail to comply with their responsibilities to prevent dangerous climate change. It distinguishes between six different possible responses to noncompliance. These include what I term (1) 'target modification' (watering down the extent to which we seek to prevent climate change), (2) ‘responsibility reallocation’ (reassigning responsibilities to other duty bearers), (3) ‘burden shifting I’ (allowing duty bearers to implement policies which impose unjust burdens on others, (4) 'burden shifting II’ (allowing some to protect peoples rights in ways which impose otherwise unjustified burdens on the duty bearers, (5) 'compromising moral ideals' (permitting agents to compromise non-justice ideals that they are otherwise bound by); and (6) ‘promoting compliance (implementing policies and creating institutions which reduce noncompliance). Having constructed a taxonomy of possible responses, I then outline the kind of normative and empirical considerations that would be needed to evaluate which responses should be adopted and by whom. I conclude by advancing 5 normative hypotheses about what should be done.

Climate Change and Global Justice

2014

Common but differentiated responsibilities: agency in climate justice

2019

Ethical challenges concerning climate change most often involve two issues that are tightly connected. The first is considerations about the just distribution of entitlements and burdens, and the second concerns the fair differentiation of responsibilities. The distribution of entitle-ments and burdens can be assessed by relying on one or combinations of principles of climate justice. Although the fairness of any differentiation of responsibilities must rely on these prin-ciples of justice, the applicability of these principles and the demands they make strongly de-pend on the agents bearing the responsibility and what policy domains are at issue. Not all agents can be ascribed the same responsibilities, and not all measures for climate action can or should be realized by the same differentiation of responsibilities. This paper examines how the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities depends on the domain and level of climate policy. It is not only the subjects of responsibility that may change, depending on whether mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, or geoengineering policy is at issue. The different policy domains also determine different objects of responsibil-ity. Since the responsibility bearers are embedded in complex nets of responsibilities, the level of climate policy defines different institutions and principles of accountability. Common but differentiated responsibilities is not only the starting-point of climate justice but also shapes what combinations of principles of justice are most appropriate, depending on the domain and level of climate policy at scrutiny.

Climate Justice under the Paris Agreement: Framework and Substance

Carbon & Climate Law Review, 2021

The Paris Agreement is the first treaty under the global climate regime to mention 'climate justice' as a concept. Given this unprecedented legal turn of the concept, the article reports a sociolegal study of climate justice, framing and assessing the substantive issues arising from the post-Paris negotiations of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) leading to the Glasgow COP in 2021. Gleaned from these framework and issues, how does climate justice look under the Paris Agreement? Drawing on the author's lived, legal practice and civil society experience, carrying out a doctrinal analysis of the UNFCCC and its instruments, and reviewing pivotal and representative literature and policy documents, the article claims that climate justice faces the fundamental challenge of state sovereignty. The author creates the conceptual and policy framework to identify the substantive issues converging on this fundamental challenge, assessing four of them: state self-centredness in addressing adaptation, state influence on the progress made on loss and damage, state autonomy and discretion in providing finance, and state-based policy-making that undermines inclusive decision-making. State and non-state actors are addressing some of these substantive issues already under the UNFCCC and beyond, and litigation has become a cross-cutting remedy. However, the fundamental challenge of state sovereignty remains.

Climate justice and the international regime: before, during, and after Paris

WIREs Climate Change, 2016

With a focus on key themes and debates, this article aims to illustrate and assess how the interaction between justice and politics has shaped the international regime and defined the nature of the international agreement that was signed in COP21 Paris. The work demonstrates that despite the rise of neo-conservatism and selfinterested power politics, questions of global distributive justice remain a central aspect of the international politics of climate change. However, while it is relatively easy to demonstrate that international climate politics is not beyond the reach of moral contestations, the assessment of exactly how much impact justice has on climate policies and the broader normative structures of the climate governance regime remains a very difficult task. As the world digests the Paris Agreement, it is vital that the current state of justice issues within the international climate change regime is comprehensively understood by scholars of climate justice and by academics and practitioners, not least because how these intractable issues of justice are dealt with (or not) will be a crucial factor in determining the effectiveness of the emerging climate regime.

Responsibility for Climate Change as a Structural Injustice

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016

This chapter critically explores the political and moral challenges involved in understanding the harms of climate change as the product of structural injustices with a specific focus on political responsibility. The chapter stages a critical encounter between Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility, and the debate among climate justice theorists on how to assign responsibility for mitigation and adaptation to citizens and states. This encounter demonstrates the value of a hybrid approach that includes, and bridges, forward looking shared responsibility and backward looking liability models, but also reveals a major predicament. The more that structural injustices based on historical responsibility are backgrounded, the easier it becomes to reach agreements between the world’s most vulnerable and most privileged. Yet doing so accelerates the skewed distribution of climate vulnerability toward the least privileged, diminishing the common ground needed to achieve an eq...

The Struggle for Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World (original) (raw)

Related papers