The sixth IPCC report states that a proper conception of climate justice that can address the complexity of the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change as a whole requires considering not only one but rather three dimensions of justice today: redistributive, procedural, and recognition dimensions. In this article, my focus is on exploring the latter dimension, drawing special attention to climate policies addressing cultural-identity issues. In the first section, I illustrate how climate policies can be (...) connected to discriminatory practices against minority cultures and their identities. To do so, I take the struggles of Black movements against environmental racism and the struggles of Indigenous peoples against a colonialist cultural heritage as case studies. In the second section, I look into the most advanced normative model to address the dimension of recognition, its advantages, and how it addresses the so-called ‘institutionalization of cultural patterns’ in climate policies: the Nancy Fraser model. Finally, in the third section, I investigate an aspect that remains open. It concerns the matter of how to use institutional authority to ‘deinstitutionalize’ non-ecological cultural patterns, while respecting pluralism and avoiding falling into the risks of institutional paternalism. (shrink)

This paper argues that the democratic legitimacy of the Green Transition depends on acknowledging the plurality and conflictual nature of contemporary climate politics in the public sphere. While youth-led movements have revitalized climate justice discourse, emerging forms of dissent—such as No Farmers, No Food, No Future—show that many ordinary citizens are concerned about the heavy interference of political institutions into their daily lives in pursuit of climate targets. Drawing on McKinnon’s political conception of climate (...) class='Hi'>justice (Section I) and Habermas’s model of the public sphere (Section II), the paper contends that public reason must be complemented by communicative spaces in which citizens can contest and shape the meaning of a just transition. Incorporating post-Habermasian insights (Section III), it introduces the idea of climate counterpublics to capture the ambivalent yet democratically significant role of alternative voices, from a normative perspective. The paper concludes with institutional strategies for communicating the Green Transition, thereby fostering a more inclusive and legitimate path toward green transformation (Section IV). (shrink)

Much of the climate justice discussion revolves around how the remaining carbon budget should be globally allocated. Some authors defend the unjust enrichment interpretation of the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). According to this principle, those states unjustly enriched from historical emissions should pay. I argue that if the BPP is to be constructed along the lines of the unjust enrichment doctrine, countervailing reasons that might be able to block the existence of a duty of restitution should be assessed. (...) One might think that the duty to provide restitution no longer has moral weight if many benefits were already consumed, if the particular benefits obtained from historical emissions cannot be transferred from one country to another, or if present members of developed countries framed their life plans based upon the expectation of continued possession of those benefits. I show that none of these reasons negate the duty to provide restitution. (shrink)

Many suggest that we should look backward and measure the differences among various parties' past emissions of greenhouse gases to allocate moral responsibility to remedy climate change. Such backward-looking approaches face two key objections: that previous emitters were unaware of the consequences of their actions, and that the emitters who should be held responsible have disappeared. I assess several arguments that try to counter these objections: the argument from strict liability, arguments that the beneficiary of harmful or unjust emissions (...) should pay, and arguments from distributive justice. I argue that none of these successfully justify a backward-looking approach to the temporally remote portion of the climate burden. (shrink)

This Correspondence argues in response to Coolsaet et al. (2024) that there is an important role to play for stance-independent justice discussions that are not tied to specific social, political or critical perspectives. These can be valuable for climate research audiences, but also as a basis upon which to critically debate and research injustices.

Transforming the global economy’s energy basis from its longstanding dependence on fossil fuels to a system based on renewable sources is an immense and urgent undertaking. In 2024, world GDP exceeded $111 trillion, and according to the International Energy Agency, more than 80 percent of this economic activity is still powered by fossil fuels. This dependence must be reduced rapidly to limit the rise in global mean temperature to 1.5°C or, at most, 2°C. Meeting the 1.5°C target requires achieving net-zero (...) carbon emissions by 2050, while a 2°C pathway allows only a few additional decades. By way of comparison, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, it took roughly a century for coal to surpass traditional biomass as the favored mode of energy consumption. Today, however, the pace of transition to renewable energy remains far slower than climate targets demand. This paper draws on the arguments I make in Mobilizing Hope to discuss how philosophers should theorize climate justice in the present context, why activism is especially important in the effort to achieve net-zero emissions, why forms of technology that could supplement mitigation should be researched, and some of the moral considerations such technology raises. (shrink)

The images of human suffering from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina remain seared in our nation's collective memory. More than 8 years on, the city and its African-American population still have not recovered fully. This reality highlights an important truth: the disturbances that accompany climate change will first and foremost affect minority communities, many of whom are economically disadvantaged. This paper: (1) describes how Hurricane Katrina, an example of the type of natural disaster that will become (...) more prevalent with intensifying climate change, has impacted the black community of New Orleans; (2) explores the notion that African Americans, in the midst of racial oppression, have developed a unique and powerful brand of environmental thought that has much to contribute to mainstream environmentalism; and (3) argues that the voice of the black community, which has a vested interest in climate outcomes, is critically needed in today's climate debate. (shrink)

This article engages with Laura García-Portela’s Rectifying Climate Injustice: Reparations for Loss and Damage (2025), which defends a backward-looking approach to climate justice grounded in the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP). García-Portela’s “moderate integrationism” emphasises historical responsibility and the rectification of breaches of negative duties, while remaining attentive to political feasibility in the context of the climate emergency. I argue for a broader, “immoderate integrationist” framework, which retains her commitment to addressing past injustice but expands the scope (...) of historic wrongdoing and the range of actions demanded by rectificatory justice. This alternative challenges the compatibility of García-Portela’s preferred Continuity Account with her restricted focus on climate justice and sufficientarian distributive principles. While recognising the practical urgency of deploying any viable theory to mitigate harm, I contend that a more expansive integrationist approach has potential to play an important role in contemporary climate justice debates. (shrink)

A collection of original and innovative essays that compare the justice issues raised by climate engineering to the justice issues raised by competing approaches to solving the climate problem.

This paper tackles a highly relevant issue, namely the relationship between climate justice and democracy. The driving motivation of the paper is to ask what principles of climate justice demand from democracies. The paper explores intrinsic and instrumental arguments and develops a sufficiency account: citizens are entitled to the emissions necessary not only to realize their basic needs but to participate as equals in political decision making.

Based on three recently published books on climate justice, this article reviews the field of climate ethics in light of developments of international climate politics. The central problem addressed is how idealised normative theories can be relevant to the political process of negotiating a just distribution of the costs and benefits of mitigating climate change. I distinguish three possible responses, that is, three kinds of non-ideal theories of climate justice: focused on (1) the (...) injustice of some agents not doing their part; (2) the policy process and aiming to be realistic; and (3) grievances related to the transition to a clean-energy economy. The methodological discussion underpinning each response is innovative and should be of interest more generally, even though it is still underdeveloped. The practical upshot, however, is unclear: even non-ideal climate justice may be too disconnected from the fast-moving and messy climate circus. (shrink)

The latest news from our planet is threatening: climate change, pollution, forest loss, species extinctions. All these words are frightening and there is no sign of improvement. Simple logic leads to the conclusion that humanity has to react, for its own survival. But at the scale of a human being, it is less obvious. Organizing one’s daily life in order to preserve the environment implies self-questioning, changing habits, sacrificing some comfort. In one word, it is an effort. Then, what (...) justifies such an effort? The personal choice to act in order to preserve our environment is often made by simple altruism. This choice is based on our love for other human beings: our love for the others grounds our effort. Our moral values, our ethical reflections and our religious beliefs are the deep core of these choices. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15.12 NRSV). This Charter shows the moral and religious values that can help us react regarding the current environmental crisis and it should empower us to transcend the ideas of effort and sacrifice in order to consider the respect of the shared house, in a prophetic fulfillment of the being. (shrink)

Many agents have failed to comply with their responsibilities to take the action needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change. This pervasive noncompliance raises two questions of nonideal political theory. First, it raises the question of what agents should do when others do not discharge their climate responsibilities. (the Responsibility Question) In this paper I put forward four principles that we need to employ to answer the Responsibility Question (Sections II-V). I then illustrate my account, by outlining four (...) kinds of action that should be undertaken (Section VI). Pervasive noncompliance also raises a second question: Given the lack of progress in combating climate change, should existing governance structures be maintained or changed (and if they should be changed, in what ways)? (the Governance Question). The paper briefly outlines a methodology for addressing this question and outlines what a nonideal response to the existing institutional structures would be (Section VII). It does so with reference to the Paris Agreement, and in particular the creation of a "global stocktake" (Article 14, Paris Agreement) and the "facilitative dialogue" (paragraph 20 of the ‘Adoption of the Paris Agreement’). The aim, then, is to set out an account of a nonideal theory of climate justice. (shrink)

This paper makes two points. First, García-Portela (2025) is an excellent proposal to address climate injustices and guide climate policy. García-Portela determines climate change related loss and damage by identifying the relevant injustices and linking them to climate change. Her version of the polluter pays principle overcomes relevant objections. She ensures that her proposal is feasible by engaging with attribution science and tort law practice. Secondly, one dimension of rectifying climate injustice is nonetheless underdeveloped. Many (...) emissions happen(ed) with an attitude of disrespect for those likely to suffer from climate change. The relations between states responsible for the bulk of emissions and peoples likely to be worst affected are often already damaged through colonialism. The lack of climate action adds insult to injury. These relational climate injustices require rectification, too. García-Portela’s account is unsuccessful in grounding these but is well suited to be a part of a pluralist approach. (shrink)

Philosophers are beginning to pay attention to climate emotions -- emotions experienced in the context of the climate crisis. Psychologists have been studying these emotions for longer than philosophers and have highlighted that they are among the most important predictors of climate change-related judgments and behaviors (see Brosch, 2021 for a review of this literature). A central debate in climate psychology and communication is whether it is most beneficial to induce positive or negative emotions regarding (...) class='Hi'>climate change (Brosch 2021). For example, while despair may be justified given the current state of affairs, it may lead to inaction because agents become unmotivated to act as they consider the battle to already be lost. On the other hand, while some hope may be justified, it can make agents complacent and overly optimistic that change will arise without much effort. One emotion that has received surprisingly little attention in this psychological literature is anger (Stanley et al. 2021; Sabherwal et al. 2021). In philosophy as well, eco-anger has been neglected -- the dominant climate emotions studied are hope and anxiety (Moellendorf, 2022; Mosquera & Jylhä, 2022). This is perhaps particularly surprising in the context of philosophical research as the climate crisis is often characterized as an issue of justice, and anger is seen as the paradigmatic response to injustice. Our two main aims in this paper are, (i) to establish that eco-anger is a justified response to climate injustice and (ii) to argue that eco-anger is beneficial to the fight for climate justice. To make this argument we first make clear what is meant by ‘climate emotions’, and by the rationality of these emotions, before arguing that anger is non-instrumentally justified, i.e., fitting (because the climate crisis involves injustices and anger is an apt response to injustice), and instrumentally rational (because it can lead to beneficial individual and collective actions). In so doing we identify targets at which eco-anger should be directed and highlight climate obstructionists as the most pressing target. We end with recommendations for how to mobilize anger for climate justice. (shrink)

Representing unborn generations to more suitably include future interests in today's climate policymaking has sparked much interest in recent years. In this review we survey the main proposed instruments to achieve this effect, some of which have been attempted in polities such as Israel, Philippines, Wales, Finland, and Chile. We first review recent normative work on the idea of representing future people in climate governance: The grounds on which it has been advocated, and the main difficulties that traditional (...) forms of representation have encountered when applied to this particular case. We then survey existing institutional means to represent generations to come. We separate out representation in courts, in parliament, and by independent bodies, and review specific instruments including climate litigation, parliamentary commissions, future representatives, youth quotas, and independent offices for future generations. We examine the particular forms whereby each of these may suitably represent future people, including audience representation, surrogate representation, and indicative representation, and discuss the main challenges they encounter in so doing. (shrink)

This article explores and evaluates recent conceptual and theoretical developments in the literature on climate justice. Initially shaped by the first generation of IPCC reports and rooted in applied ethics, early climate justice debates framed the climate crisis mainly as a mitigation issue, exacerbated by global and intergenerational collective action dilemmas, requiring ethical principles for resolution. However, with increasingly dire climate forecasts and the policy inertia of the past three decades, climate justice (...) theories have shifted toward a political economy-centered approach. This shift reframes the issue from simply setting just emissions standards to addressing questions of productive justice within a historically situated global energy regime. The article concludes by addressing two critical challenges for production- focused climate justice theories: how to implement radical political action and how to reconceptualize our normative relationship with future generations. (shrink)

Review of Dominic Roser and Christian Seidel, Climate Justice: An Introduction (trans. Ciaran Cronin).

Rawls’s contractualist approach to justice is well known for its adoption of ideal theory. This approach starts by setting out the political goal or ideal and leaves it to non-ideal or partial compliance theory to map out how to get there. However, Rawls’s use of ideal theory has been criticized by Sen from the right and by Mouffe from the left. We critically address these concerns in the context of developing a Rawlsian approach to climate justice. While (...) the importance of non-ideal theory for climate justice is increasingly being understood, its strategic and institutional importance for a Rawlsian approach needs further elaboration. We focus on the role of the Kantian conception of the reasonable and rational powers of persons in Rawls’s work and show how this helps us to develop a partial compliance theory that focuses on the importance of institutions and strategic political action for achieving climate justice. (shrink)

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ admits many interpretations. In the philosophical literature on climate justice, it has typically been cashed out in terms of the following three principles: the ability to pay principle (APP), the beneficiary pays principle (BPP), and the contribution to problem principle (CPP). Many of these accounts have given prominence to the CPP and APP, but there are some who argue that the BPP deserves greater (...) consideration. In this paper, I want to ask whether the BPP must feature in any plausible account of remedial responsibility for climate change. I examine this question by looking at three different ways in which the BPP has been incorporated into accounts of climate burden-sharing. In each case, there are questions about the particular role that the BPP is assigned and it looks like either the BPP must be given equal prominence to the CPP, or the BPP might be redundant when it comes to specific task of remedying the injustices of climate change. I suggest in the conclusion one possible reason to maintain the BPP. (shrink)

Climate change and decarbonization raise complex justice questions that researchers and policymakers must address. The distributions of greenhouse gas emissions rights and mitigation efforts have dominated justice discourses within scenario research, an integrative element of the IPCC. However, the space of justice considerations is much larger. At present, there is no consistent approach to comprehensively incorporate and examine justice considerations. Here we propose a conceptual framework grounded in philosophical theory for this purpose. We apply this (...) framework to climate mitigation scenarios literature as proof of concept, enabling a more holistic and multidimensional investigation of justice. We identify areas of future research, including new metrics of service provisioning essential for human well-being. [Can be freely read by clicking the ReadCube link below.]. (shrink)

In line with Christopher Preston’s argument in the introduction to this volume, I argue here that, although it is helpful to identify potential injustices associated with SRM, it is also crucial both to evaluate how SRM compares to other available options and to consider empirical conditions under which deployment might occur. In arguing for this view, I rely on a distinction between two types of question: (1) whether SRM would produce just or unjust outcomes in some case and (2) whether (...) it would be just to deploy SRM in that same case. The former question pertains to whether some distribution of benefits and burdens is morally good or bad, whereas the latter pertains to whether some action or policy is morally permissible, impermissible, or obligatory. Although related, these two uses of justice do not come to the same thing. It may be that some climate policy involving SRM carries risks of substantial distributive injustice and yet is permissible or even obligatory. This is because, as I argue, considering what would be just to do should be comparative, taking into consideration both empirical conditions and the morally valuable and disvaluable features of alternative climate policies. (shrink)

Sabine Hohl and Dominic Roser argue that states that emit their fair share of greenhouse gases have a duty to step in for states that emit more than their fair share. In this comment I ask two questions: First, given that Hohl and Roser are right, how relevant is the duty to step in for the polluters in practice? Second, is there such a duty on more non-ideal approaches than the one taken by Hohl and Roser as well? I argue (...) that the duty to step in for the polluters is not very relevant (because of considerations of demandingness and fairness) and that on more extremely non-ideal approaches there may be only a limited duty to take up the slack, or no such duty at all (because the duty must be weighed against other duties, and because states are poorly motivated to act in conformity with it). (shrink)

Background Integrating justice enablers into climate-health adaptation planning reduces failed adaptation, prevents maladaptation, and facilitates transformative change in health systems. This is particularly necessary in South America (SA), where climate adaptation research and policy are financially constrained. By carefully considering differentiated climate-health risks and necessary trade-offs, National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Health National Adaptation Plans (HNAPs) provide forums for identifying just adaptation paths. This study assesses the integration of recognitional, procedural, and distributive justice enablers in (...) climate-health planning in SA. Methods Justice enablers were tracked within the actionable sections of the NAPs, HNAPs, or their Subsidiary Adaptation Strategies (SASs) of the South American countries. The level of integration of justice enablers was measured using keywords from the climate adaptation literature. Results There is a significant disparity among countries in the level of integration of justice enablers in national adaptation planning. There is also significant variation across countries in the integration of different dimensions of justice (recognitional, procedural, distributive). Most countries score higher on the integration of recognition justice than on procedural and distributive justice. Conclusion Comprehensive frameworks are required to integrate justice considerations into climate-health adaptation planning in a way that avoids failed adaptation or maladaptation. (shrink)

Obstacles to achieving a global climate treaty include disagreements about questions of justice raised by the UNFCCC's principle that countries should respond to climate change by taking cooperative action "in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions". Aiming to circumvent such disagreements, Climate Change Justice authors Eric Posner and David Weisbach argue against shaping treaty proposals according to requirements of either distributive or corrective justice. The (...) USA's climate envoy, Todd Stern, takes a similar position. In this article I explain the practical and theoretical drawbacks of Posner & Weisbach's welfarist perspective and propose an alternative. I show that their arguments fail to rule out John Rawls' non-utilitarian, political conception of international justice and human rights, the Law of Peoples. On this basis I develop a conception of climate justice that highlights implications of some of Rawls' principles and adds a principle for determining fair shares of climate -treaty-related benefits and burdens. I propose this conception as a moral framework for negotiating a treaty that would promote human welfare consistently with requirements of justice, and I argue that a treaty proposal satisfying these requirements could best satisfy Posner & Weisbach's own feasibility criteria. (shrink)

Should historical injustices always be repaired? Most public institutions and present holdings reveal links to past injustices, making reparation imperative. However, what if repairing historical injustices conflicts with distributive justice demands? Through discussions of post-colonial injustices against Indigenous peoples and of the injustices committed by the Global North against the Global South, particularly in the context of climate change, this book argues that repairing historical injustices can and must be reconciled with the imperatives of distributive justice.

This paper discusses two distinct questions of distributive justice raised by climate change. Stated very roughly, one question concerns how much protection is owed to the potential victims of climate change (the Just Target Question), and the second concerns how the burdens (and benefits) involved in preventing dangerous climate change should be distributed (the Just Burden Question). In Section II, I focus on the first of these questions, the Just Target Question. The rest of the paper (...) examines the second question, the Just Burden Question. To answer this question, I argue, it is necessary to address two important methodological questions (one concerning the choice between what I term Integrationism and Isolationism and the other concerning the choice between what I term Holism and Atomism). Sections III-V, thus, set out and explore these two methodological issues. Having done so, the paper then turns from methodological issues to substantive analysis, and in Section VI it examines three principles of distributive justice that, it has been suggested, should determine how the burden of addressing dangerous climatic changes should be distributed (the Polluter Pays Principle, the Ability to Pay Principle and the Beneficiary Pays Principle). (shrink)

Background: Integrating justice enablers into climate-health adaptation planning reduces failed adaptation, prevents maladaptation, and facilitates transformative change in health systems. This is particularly necessary in South America (SA), where climate adaptation research and policy are financially constrained. By carefully considering differentiated climate-health risks and necessary trade-offs, National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Health National Adaptation Plans (HNAPs) provide forums for identifying just adaptation paths. This study assesses the integration of recognitional, procedural, and distributive justice enablers in (...) climate-health planning in SA. Methods: Justice enablers were tracked within the actionable sections of the NAPs, HNAPs, or their Subsidiary Adaptation Strategies (SASs) of the South American countries. The level of integration of justice enablers was measured using keywords from the climate adaptation literature. Results: There is a significant disparity among countries in the level of integration of justice enablers in national adaptation planning. There is also significant variation across countries in the integration of different dimensions of justice (recognitional, procedural, distributive). Most countries score higher on the integration of recognition justice than on procedural and distributive justice. Conclusion: Comprehensive frameworks are required to integrate justice considerations into climate-health adaptation planning in a way that avoids failed adaptation or maladaptation. (shrink)

As our experience with this special issue shows, climate change is such a multi-faceted problem that interdisciplinary research is a necessity. This is much more easily said than done. In the course of the publication of this special issue there were many lessons to be learned. First of all we saw how the exchange between our authors allowed them to expand the focus of their respective disciplines. Philosophers considered literature from various fields they would not have touched upon in (...) their usual course of inquiry. Scientists and legal scholars became more sensitive to the normative dimensions and justice-related intricacies involved in their research. This enabled all contributors to open up to different vocabularies and standards of research. At the same time, however, several obstacles to the success of this issue emerged as well. For such an endeavor it is necessary to find researchers who are ready to engage with other disciplines and to take up ideas and comments which at first sight might not seem relevant and out of place from their disciplinary perspective. Due to the special format another challenge was to communicate the interdisciplinary character of this special issue to the reviewers and to put the reviews in context accordingly without risking to diminish the disciplinary quality of contributions. For the guest editors this came with a further challenge. We not only had to become familiar with different disciplinary vocabularies and standards of research but also had to judge the quality and relevance of contributions in the light of our overall aim as well as disciplinary standards of quality. (shrink)

Collective climate action hinges on the distribution of benefits and burdens of climate change mitigation. Yet assumptions relevant to distributional justice are frequently made only implicitly in climate change mitigation scenarios. Here, we introduce the patterns of the distributional justice framework that operationalize philosophical justice theories as quantitative requirements for scenario trajectories. We then apply this framework to the IPCC AR6 scenario database to assess the distributional implications of global climate change mitigation scenarios (...) across world regions. Focusing on scenario variables related to energy and meat consumption, we found a diversity of patterns of justice across scenario characteristics. The prioritarian perspective, which prioritizes improvements to those currently worse off, emerged as the most dominant pattern of justice. By contrast, futures with limited or reduced energy and meat consumption were the least represented in the database. Our research further indicates that most scenarios consistent with patterns of justice do not explicitly aim to model more just futures, suggesting that underlying scenario narratives—most often SSP2—largely determine the distributional outcomes. We therefore propose a stakeholder engagement strategy to make distributional justice assumptions in scenario development ex-ante more diverse and transparent. Overall, this study provides a practical avenue for developing justice-conscious scenarios that may be more likely to motivate collective climate action. [Open access]. (shrink)

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) exclude individual non-human animal welfare, despite clear evidence that climate change will harm billions of animals through habitat loss, extreme weather, and ecosystem disruption. We argue that this is a significant moral oversight. Further, incorporating animal welfare into IAMs is technically feasible, using traditional economic methods or novel ones. Crucially, accounting for animal welfare in IAMs need not undermine considerations of justice for humans.

The urgent importance of dealing with the climate crisis has led some influential theorists to argue that at least some demands for justice must give way to pragmatic and strategic considerations. These theorists (Cass Sunstein, Eric Posner, and David Weisbach, all academic lawyers, and John Broome, an academic philosopher) contend that the failures of international negotiations and other efforts to change economic policies and practices have shown that moral exhortations are worse than ineffective. Although Broome's position is similar (...) in these respects to that of Sunstein, Posner and Weisbach, it differs in other important respects, including his understanding of the idea of justice, his disagreement with the policy approach (which he calls "efficiency with sacrifice") favored by the economists Nicholas Stern and William Nordhaus, and his proposal for establishing a new international financial institution, a World Climate Bank, in addition to putting a price on carbon. Elsewhere I offer a critical analysis of the position taken by Posner and Weisbach in their book, Climate Change Justice. Their arguments against allowing principles of distributive justice (narrowly understood) to constrain treaty negotiations fail to rule out the principles of John Rawls' Law of Peoples (which is a conception of the moral basis of a just international order, including states' obligations to secure basic human rights for all). Therefore their arguments against shaping climate treaties to reflect any principles of justice do not succeed in supporting their position. Here I offer a critical analysis of Broome's position. I raise and discuss objections to Broome's proposal for a WCB, and I argue that the continued relevance of these objections is contingent on how the proposal for a WCB may get developed. (shrink)

Various understandings of “resilience” dominate debates on climate change without consensus on its ethical implications. Individualistic interpretations can conflict with ethical values like minimizing population harms and countering health inequities. More systemic, ecological interpretations may overlook justice concerns, such as who is more burdened or marginalized regarding climate impacts. This article argues for integrating a normative, justice-oriented approach to resilience, informed by feminist and intersectional theory. It outlines six principles: build in redundancies and diversification; foster knowledge (...) acquisition and sharing; increase social cohesion, connectivity and willingness to cooperate; improve participation and facilitate polycentric governance; protect regenerative capacities; and implement preventive measures. (shrink)

Can agents be duty-bound towards ends that are infeasible? Some scholars have endorsed a “feasibility constraint” on justice and answered that we cannot be duty-bound to bring about the infeasible. In this paper, I question whether the feasibility constraint on justice should still be endorsed and whether we are duty-bound to pursue some aims regardless of this constraint. I ask: Can an ethical agent be duty-bound to work towards bringing about a state of affairs that is desirable but (...) infeasible? I consider the climate crisis: climate justice may require us to work towards ends that may be infeasible, such as maintaining global climate warming below 1.5°C or mitigating climate change in a way that treats all people affected fairly. I argue that we may be duty-bound or obliged to work towards some desirable goals when faced with the infeasible and conclude that we should reject feasibility constraints on climate justice. (shrink)

We address an ethical challenge in climate change adaptation and global health research. The challenge stems from two pairs of intuitions about justice and responsibility in climate change and health. One pair assigns responsibility for adaptation research to high-income countries given their historical emissions, disproportionate share of resources and capacity to intervene. The other pair assigns responsibility to low- and middle-income countries given their agency, right to self-determination, local authority and legitimacy, and disproportionate burden of climate (...) and health risks. The intuitions create conflicting views: obligation and assistance pull in one direction, and agency and authority pull in another. To resolve the tension, we distinguish two forms of responsibility: (i) adaptation-enabling responsibilities; and (ii) adaptation-enacting responsibilities. The resulting division of labour reflects different forms of justice and aligns with the principle of subsidiarity’s core elements, namely: non-abandonment, non-absorption, and cooperation and coordination. We thus propose a framework that ascribes adaptation-enabling responsibilities to high-income countries, including adaptation financing, capacity-building and other forms of support; and adaptation-enacting responsibilities to low- and middle-income countries, including priority-setting in local adaptation research, and creation and implementation of their adaptation plans and policies. Our framework also suggests a third form of responsibility: shared adaptation responsibilities, which are jointly assigned to high-income countries, low- and middle-income countries and agents at multiple levels within them. We conclude that genuine collaboration in adaptation research, where high-income countries enable without dominating and low- and middle-income countries act without being abandoned, will be essential for just and effective adaptation to climate change. (shrink)

This book analyzes major ethical issues surrounding the use of climate engineering, particularly solar radiation management (SRM) techniques, which have the potential to reduce some risks of anthropogenic climate change but also carry their own risks of harm and injustice. The book argues that we should approach the ethics of climate engineering via "non-ideal theory," which investigates what justice requires given the fact that many parties have failed to comply with their duty to mitigate greenhouse gas (...) emissions. Specifically, it argues that climate justice should be approached comparatively, evaluating the relative justice or injustice of feasible policies under conditions that are likely to hold within relevant timeframes. Likely near-future conditions include "pessimistic scenarios," in which no available option avoids serious ethical problems. The book contends that certain uses of SRM can be ethically defensible in some pessimistic scenarios. This is the first book devoted to the many ethical issues surrounding climate engineering. (shrink)

One of the most attractive, but nevertheless highly controversial proposals to alleviate the negative effects of today’s international patent regime is the Health Impact Fund (HIF). Although the HIF has been drafted to facilitate access to medicines and boost pharmaceutical research, we have analysed the burdens for the global poor a similar proposal designed to promote the use and development of climate-friendly technologies would have. Drawing parallels from the access to medicines debate, we suspect that an analogous “Climate (...) Impact Fund” will increase the already very high scientific and technological supremacy of the developed world over the Global South. We advocate countering this dominance on the ground that countries with scarce research and development capacities will be in a difficult position to reject technologies and will not have a say on how such technologies should look like. Further, addressing global hazards should be an inclusive endeavour and not only a privilege reserved for the developed world. Incentivizing grassroots innovation would be a major step to promote scientific and technological inclusion. (shrink)

Political philosophers commonly tackle the issue of climate change by focusing on fundamental interests as a basis for human rights. This approach struggles, however, in cases where one set of fundamental interests requires one course of action, and another set of fundamental interests requires another course of action. This article advances an alternative response to climate change based on an account of global justice that gives weight to utilitarian, prioritarian, and luck egalitarian considerations. A practical application of (...) this pluralistic account is provided, which shows that it handles trade-offs between individuals’ interests in an appealing way, and that it supports an aggressive policy of climate change mitigation. This account provides a more plausible justification for rights against the harms of climate change. (shrink)

Early discussions of?climate justice? have been dominated by economists rather than political philosophers. More recently, analytical liberal political philosophers have joined the debate. However, the philosophical discussion of climate justice remains in its early stages. This paper considers one promising approach based on human rights, which has been advocated recently by several theorists, including Simon Caney, Henry Shue and Tim Hayward. A basic argument supporting the claim that anthropogenic climate change violates human rights is presented. (...) Four objections to this argument are examined: the?future persons? objection; the?risk? objection; the?collective causation? objection; and the?demandingness? objection. This critical examination leads to a more detailed specification and defence of the claim that anthropogenic climate change violates human rights. (shrink)

The emphasis on general distributive principles in the climate justice literature has left significant gaps regarding the problem of weak climate governance. The main contribution of this chapter is to show how normative theory can contribute to addressing the apparent political incapacity to respond to the threat of climate disruption. The chapter argues that a set of six underlying obstacles to effective climate change politics can serve as a framework around which ‘non-ideal’ normative theorizing about (...) climate politics can be organized. Policies and other tactics to mediate the six obstacles are shown to raise distinct normative issues in need of deeper analysis. (shrink)

Global climate change is one of the most widely discussed problems of our time. However, many libertarian thinkers have not participated in the ethical dimensions of this discussion due to a narrow focus on the scientific basis for concern about climate change. In this paper, I reject this approach and explore the kind of response libertarians should be offering instead. I frame the climate change problem as one which concerns potential rights-infringements and explore different ways in which (...) climate change might be thought to infringe upon rights. I conclude that there are some ways in which climate change might be expected to result in rights-infringements, but that some of the current concern about climate change cannot be reconciled with a rights-oriented paradigm. I close by outlining future directions for research, emphasizing that much remains to be done in order to formulate a complete libertarian perspective on climate change. (shrink)

In this work, we conduct a narrative review of pressing equity and justice issues within global modelled scenarios and propose a new research agenda to strengthen their consideration in future model developments and applications. We begin by introducing a typology of equity and justice limitations in climate mitigation scenarios, distinguishing among structural, methodological, and epistemological issues that shape what integrated assessment models (IAMs) can reveal at policy-relevant scales. Reflecting on these concerns, we develop a research agenda that (...) describes new avenues of work and draws together distinct emerging initiatives, ranging from incremental improvements to structural reforms and alternative participatory approaches. Drawing on reflexive insights from integrated assessment practitioners, this agenda prioritizes embedding equity principles directly into scenario design through differentiated effort sharing and finance flows, developing new frameworks that incorporate sufficiency and demand transformations while protecting decent living, and establishing genuine co-production with underrepresented communities beyond mere consultation. Underlying this research agenda is a recognition that modeling communities must engage more critically with the implicit assumptions in scenario and model design and use that have equity and justice implications. Achieving equitable climate futures will require transformative actions that integrate diverse justice concerns, advance sustainable development, and confront systemic inequities across both human and ecological dimensions. Although models will never capture all these aspects, these can be significantly enhanced to support more informed discussion and practical application. Our contribution proposes a way forward to achieving this goal. [Open access]. (shrink)

International aviation is consuming an increasing portion of the global carbon budget; already it consumes a disproportionate share, especially on a per capita basis, since most human beings do not participate in the international air transport regime. Does this state of a airs necessarily o end climate justice? Could humanity even hypothetically choose to put all its emissions eggs in the international air transport basket? If so, what principles and institutions would support such a decision? If not, how (...) can we make decisions about the sectoral distribution of the global carbon budget in a principled way? In this chapter I review some theoretical perspectives on climate justice and apply them to these questions. I nd that these perspectives concur in their condemnation of the status quo, but that they provide little gui- dance for moving towards climate justice. I propose an alternative perspective that recognizes the reality that decisions with implications about climate justice are being made at the sectoral level; a sectoral perspective on climate justice suggests a dynamic and adaptive perspective that would allow groups of human beings to make defensible decisions about their emissions behaviour. (shrink)

This introduction aims to describe some fundamental problems of intergenerational justice and climate change. It also intends to provide comments on improved versions of some of the best papers presented in the International Meeting “Intergenerational Justice and Climate Change: juridical, moral and political issues” that took place at Cordoba National University (Argentina), in September 2017. In that meeting, the discussion focused on these topics by considering the ideas of the two keynote speakers invited to the event: (...) Lukas H. Meyer and Alessandro Pinzani. I devote the last part of this essay to discuss two pressing issues concerning climate change whose practical solutions challenge our standard understanding of the notion of harm. I discuss, on the one hand, certain issues related with the non-identity problem. On the other hand, I try to identify what kind of obligation do we have when we talk about minimizing the number of people who will suffer harm as a result of the adverse effects of climate change. (shrink)

From a nonideal justice perspective, this article investigates liability and compensation intheir wider theoretical context to better understand the governance of climate loss anddamage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC). The usual rationale for considering compensation takes a backward-looking understanding of responsibility. It links those causing harm directly to its remedy. Thisarticle shows that, under current political circumstances, it is more reasonable to understandresponsibility as a forward-looking concept and thus to differentiate responsibilitieson grounds of (...) capacity and solidarity. The article argues that loss and damage entitlementsinUNFCCCgovernance should be understood as entitlements to a threshold of capabilitiesfor resilience. While compensation merely means redressing the situation ex ante a threat,entitlements to capabilities for resilience can entail more demanding responsibilities ofsupport. This means that Article 8 of the Paris Agreement has much more demandingimplications than it might at first appear. (shrink)

Discussions of where the costs of climate change adaptation and mitigation should fall often focus on the 'polluter pays principle' or the 'ability to pay principle'. Simon Caney has recently defended a 'hybrid view', which includes versions of both of these principles. This article argues that Caney's view succeeds in overcoming several shortfalls of both principles, but is nevertheless subject to three important objections: first, it does not distinguish between those emissions which are hard to avoid and those which (...) are easy to avoid; second, its only partial reference to all-things-considered justice means it cannot provide a full account even of climate justice; and third, it assigns to the poor very limited duties to meet climate change costs, even where they have created those costs, which may incentivise them to increase emissions. An alternative pluralistic account which avoids these objections is presented. (shrink)

Climate adaptation and resilience scholars are struggling to address distributive and procedural justice in climate resilience efforts. While the capability approach (CA) has been widely appraised as a suitable justice basis for this context, there are few detailed studies assessing this possibility. This paper addresses this gap by advancing discussions about the prospects of the CA for guiding justice work in climate resilience. With its emphasis on the final value and mutually irreducible character of (...) the concrete beings and doings of individuals, we find the CA relevant for tackling salient aspects of adaptation, such as the multi-faceted and locally specific nature of climate vulnerability. We also present and discuss a capability application that has particular relevance for including distributive and procedural justice considerations in climate resilience. On the other hand, we find that extant arguments in support of the CA neglect the limitations of the CA and some dilemmas involved in applying it, also overestimating the differences between the CA and other justice approaches, especially those based on resources and needs. These problems lead us to advise against treating the CA as a one-size-fits-all solution to the ills of climate resilience and they further raise a need for joining efforts with complementary approaches. (shrink)

Many have begun to despair that climate justice will prevail even in a minimal form. The affective dimensions of such despair, we suggest, threaten to make climate action appear too demanding. Thus, despair constitutes a moral challenge to individual climate action that has not yet received adequate attention. In response, we defend a duty to act in hope for a more just (climate) future. However, as we see it, this duty falls differentially upon the shoulders (...) of more and less advantaged agents in society. From arguments by Black thinkers like Derrick Bell, we draw a set of distinctions between two types of hope: one for ideal justice, and one for more modest change; and between two types of hopeful actions, those undertaken through formal political channels and those we call 'extra-political' actions; and between two sites of differential moral burdens, those of the privileged and those of the oppressed. Ours is a case for facing even bleak realities, demanding otherwise, and acting in hope to achieve a better future. (shrink)

Climate change, pollution, and deforestation have a negative impact on global mental health. There is an environmental justice dimension to this challenge as wealthy people and high-income countries are major contributors to climate change and pollution, while poor people and low-income countries are heavily affected by the consequences. Using state-of-the art data mining, we analyzed and visualized the global research landscape on mental health, climate change, pollution and deforestation over a 15-year period. Metadata of papers were (...) exported from PubMed®, and both relevance and relatedness of terms in different time frames were computed using VOSviewer. Co-occurrence graphs were used to visualize results. The development of exemplary terms over time was plotted separately. The number of research papers on mental health and environmental challenges is growing in a linear fashion. Major topics are climate change, chemical pollution, including psychiatric medication in wastewater, and neurobiological effects. Research on specific psychiatric syndromes and diseases, particularly on their ethical and social aspects is less prominent. There is a growing body of research literature on links between mental health, climate change, pollution, and deforestation. This research provides a graphic overview to mental healthcare professionals and political stakeholders. Social and ethical aspects of the climate change-mental health link have been neglected, and more research is needed. (shrink)

A range of developing countries and international advocacy organizations have argued that wealthy countries, as a result of their greater historical contribution to human-induced climate change, owe a ?climate debt? to poor countries. Critics of this argument have claimed that it is incoherent or morally objectionable. In this essay we clarify the concept of climate debt and assess its value for conceptualizing responsibilities associated with global climate change and for guiding international climate negotiations. We conclude (...) that the idea of a climate debt can be coherently formulated, and that while some understandings of the idea of climate debt could lead to morally objectionable conclusions, other accounts would not. However, we argue that climate debt nevertheless provides an unhelpful frame for advancing global justice through international climate negotiations ? the only existing means of resolving political conflict over the collective action problems posed by human-induced climate change ? due to its retrospective and potentially adversarial emphasis, and to problems of measurement. (shrink)