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overview climatechangeandglobaljustice darrell moellendorf in this article i examine matters concerning justice and climate change in light of current work in global justice i briey discuss some of the most ...

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                     Overview
                   Climatechangeandglobaljustice
                   Darrell Moellendorf∗
                                   In this article, I examine matters concerning justice and climate change in light
                                   of current work in global justice. I briefly discuss some of the most important
                                   contemporary work by political philosophers and theorist on global justice and
                                   relate it to various considerations regarding justice and climate change. After
                                   brieflysurveyingtheinternationaltreatycontext,Icriticallydiscussseveralissues,
                                   includingclimatechangeandhumanrights,responsibilityforhistoricalemissions
                                   and the polluter-pays principle, the ability to pay principle, grandfathering
                                   entitlements to emit greenhouse gasses, equal per capita emissions entitlements,
                                   the right to sustainable development, and responsibility for financing adaptation
                                   to climate change. This set of issues does not exhaust the list of considerations of
                                   global justice and climate change, but it includes some of the most important of
                                   those considerations. ©2012JohnWiley&Sons,Ltd.
                                                                           Howtocitethis article:
                                                     WIREsClimChange2012,3:131–143.doi:10.1002/wcc.158
                   CLIMATECHANGEANDGLOBAL                                                      The section on Global Justice summarizes some
                   JUSTICE                                                              of the recent work in global justice that is relevant
                                                                                        here. The section on The UNFCCC Treaty discusses
                   Anthropogenicclimatechangeiswidelyrecognized                         features of the international treaty context in which
                         as a global problem affecting the lives and                    climate change negotiations are occurring. After that
                   well being of millions of people, the stability of                   the section on Climate Change and Human Rights
                   ecosystems, and the existence of many natural species.               discusses the relationship between climate change and
                   Myassumption in this article is that justice involves                human rights. The section on Responsibility for His-
                   moral considerations regarding relationships between                 toric Emissions discusses responsibility for historical
                   peopleorbetweenpeoplemediatedbyinstitutionsand                       emissions and the polluter-pays-principle. The section
                   policies, and that therefore this is the case with global            on Ability to Pay discusses the ability-to-pay prin-
                   justice as well. There are important moral questions                 ciple. The section on Grandfathering discusses the
                   regarding the effects of climate change on ecosystems,               idea of grandfathering, namely that a state’s entitle-
                   biodiversity, and species.a But I shall not discuss these            ment to emit CO should be based on its historic
                   as matters of global justice.                                                              2
                                                                                        levels of emissions. The section on Equal Emissions
                          My goal here is to review the most important                  Entitlements discusses the claim that each person has
                                                                                  b
                   issues concerning climate change and global justice.                 an equal entitlement to emit greenhouse gases within
                   Thisis by no means, however, an exhaustive survey of                 the limits established by the aims of mitigation in
                   this growing and important literature. I cannot hope                 general. The section on The Right to Sustainable
                   to provide that here. In summarizing and commenting                  Development summarizes an account of the right to
                   on the various issues, my aim is twofold: the first is                sustainable development. And, the section on Adap-
                   to introduce the issues to readers who are unfamiliar                tation is devoted to a discussion of global justice and
                   with them; the second is to stimulate both readers                   adaptation policy.
                   who are already familiar with some of these debates
                   as well as those who are just becoming familiar with                 GLOBALJUSTICE
                   them to further critical reflection.
                                                                                        Efforts to develop and criticize theories of global jus-
                   ∗Correspondence to: dmoellen@mail.sdsu.edu                           tice have recently developed into major research pro-
                                                                                                                                                       c
                   Department of Philosophy, San Diego State University, San Diego,     gramsforseveralpoliticalphilosophersandtheorists.
                   CA,USA                                                               It is impossible adequately to summarize all of the
                   Volume3,March/April2012                            ©2012JohnWiley&Sons,Ltd.                                                      131
                                                                                                             wires.wiley.com/climatechange
              Overview
             important details in the debates that have been occur-        that they are either less strong12 or less demanding.10
             ring, but I shall point to a few areas where those            The content of the latter position is similar to one
             debates are important to the concerns of justice and          offered by some cosmopolitans, who defend only
             climate change.                                               duties to meet minimum needs.2 Many cosmopoli-
                   The kind of justice in philosophical debates            tan positions take duties of distributive justice to
             about global justice that is relevant to our theme is         require significantly more than that. One family of
             best thought of as social justice. Several closely related    such positions holds that natural resources are right-
             questions taken up in these debates seem directly             fully commonly owned by all the Earth’s inhabitants,
             relevant to climate change policy. These include the          notmerelysomeofthosewhowereluckyenoughtobe
             following: Do robust duties of justice exist between          born near or on top of them; and that therefore some
             people that do not live in the same country? In virtue        or all of the revenues collected from resource extrac-
             of what(if anything) are there such duties? And which                                            1,6,17
                                                                           tion should be shared globally.          Other positions
             principles best characterize those duties?                    include a version of equality of opportunity applied
                   Cosmopolitansarguethatrobustdutiesofjustice                       3,5
                                                                           globally.    Still others maintain that the difference
             exist between noncompatriots.1–9 Noncosmopolitans             principle, which John Rawls famously defends for
             of various stripes either deny the existence of such          domestic justice, and which requires that inequalities
             dutiesofjusticeorassertthattheyaresubstantiallyless           in wealth and income maximize benefits to the least
             robust than those between compatriots.10–16,d There                                                 1,4,6
                                                                           advantage people, applies globally.
             are a variety of reasons for the noncosmopolitan posi-              Millions of people are already at risk of extreme
             tion but four have attracted the most attention. One          weather and flooding. Currently around 344 million
             is the claim that duties of egalitarian distributive jus-     people are exposed to tropical cyclones, 521 million
             tice exist between people only if they are subject to a       to floods, 130 million to droughts, and 2.3 million to
             commoncoercivelegal structure,10,14,16 and currently                      18
                                                                           landslides.    Climate change is expected to increase
             states are the only structures of this sort. Another is       these numbers very significantly. About 10% of the
             that the content of duties of egalitarian distributive        world’s population lives at an elevation of 10 m or
             justice can be provided only by a cultural understand-        less above sea-level.19 Hundreds of millions of people
             ing of goods, which understanding only nations are            are at risk of inundation from tropical storms and
                                     11
             capable of providing.       A third is that egalitarian       rising sea levels. But the poor living in the mega deltas
             distributive justice would conflict with national self-        of North Africa and Asia are particularly vulnerable.
                             11
             determination.     And the fourth is that state policy        ‘People living in the Ganges Delta and lower Man-
             remainsthemostimportantfactorinthewell-beingof                hattan share flood risks associated with rising seas
                      15
             persons.   Thesearenotmutuallyexclusivepositions.             levels. They do not share the same vulnerabilities. The
             And noncosmopolitans sometimes affirm more than                reason: the Ganges Delta is marked by high levels of
             one of these.                                                                                                         19
                                                                           povertyandlowlevelsofinfrastructuralprotection’.
                   There are also a variety of cosmopolitan posi-          Thedevastationcausedbydroughtandfloodingcould
             tions, providing different resources for responding to        result in long term setbacks to human development in
             the noncosmopolitan positions. Some cosmopolitans             manypoorsocieties.18
             hold that duties of social justice are owed by each                 Climate change related threats are not simply
             person to all other persons, in which case the limits of      acts of God, but the result of energy use and mul-
             state coercion and commonnationalculturesestablish            tiple uncoordinated energy policies in countries and
             noprincipled limit to duties, although the latter might       provinces throughout the world. Historically, how-
                                               3,8,9
             affect their content somewhat.         A variant of this      ever, greenhouse gas emissions have been highest in
             viewfocusesprimarilyonhumanrights,whichpropo-                 theindustrializedworld.‘WhenpeopleinanAmerican
             nents take to be universal and to include rights to sub-      city turn on the airconditioning or people in Europe
             sistence, which are violated by international practices       drive their cars, their actions have consequences.
                                                                      7
             thatrecognizethelegitimacyofcorruptgovernments.               Thoseconsequenceslinkthemtoruralcommunitiesin
             Other cosmopolitans accept that duties of social jus-         Bangladesh, farmers in Ethiopia, and slum dwellers in
             tice are not owed to everyone, but that the set of            Haiti’.18 Energy use brings tremendous benefits, but
             people bound by duties of justice is larger than merely       whenfossil fuels are used it also brings significant cli-
             those who are subject to the same framework of legal          matechangerelatedcosts.Theprivilegeofusingfossil
             coercion; it includes also those who are members of a         fuels has mostly fallen to the relatively rich of the
             commoneconomicassociation,whichexistsglobally.5               world, while the burdens of climate change are falling
                   Some noncosmopolitans believe that duties of            more heavily on the poor. The question of who is
             distributive justice exist between noncompatriots but         responsible for the costs of climate change, including
             132                                           ©2012JohnWiley&Sons,Ltd.                         Volume3,March/April2012
                    WIREsClimate Change                                                                  Climate change and global justice
                the costs of adapting to it, would appear then to be a     the adverse effects of climate change’.21 Paragraph 4
                significant concern of global justice.                      opens by invoking ‘a right to...sustainable develop-
                      Any effective international treaty for climate       ment’ and closes by requiring international policy to
                changemitigationwillhavetolowerglobalCO emis-              take‘intoaccountthateconomicdevelopmentisessen-
                                                                2
                sions very dramatically. Emissions must be 50–85%          tial for adopting measures to address climate change’.
                below2000levelsby2050inordertosecureareason-                    These principles guide the course of subsequent
                able chance of keeping planetary warming to 2 ◦C.20        deliberation with the net effect that acceptable
                (Whether this warming limit is a morally appropriate       additional  treaties  under the auspices of the
                one is a question of how much climate change we            UNFCCC must lay heavier burdens on developed
                should avoid and ultimately a question of intergener-      country parities and be especially solicitous of the
                                                                     e
                ational justice and beyond the scope of this article. )    development needs of developing parties. This is fully
                To do this the cost of fossil fuels relative to renew-     consistent with accounts of global just that require
                ables will have to increase. But human development         either eradicating severe poverty or reducing global
                is very energy intensive. Electrification makes possible    inequalities. A group of developed country parties is
                hospitals and schools with modern equipment. Man-          compiled in Annex I of the Convention. This group
                ufacturing uses energy but also provides better paying     includes 40 states and the European Union, including
                jobs than can usually be had in rural areas. Transport     the western Europeanstates, the USA, Canada, Japan,
                of manufactured goods consumes massive amounts             Australia, and New Zealand. This same set of states
                of energy. A second important concern of global jus-       is listed in Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol. Only
                tice then is how an international treaty will assign       the states in Annex B are assigned binding emission
                mitigation costs, and in particular whether costs will     reductions under the Protocol.
                be assigned in a way that constrains poverty eradi-             Cosmopolitans are likely to favor distinguishing
                cating economic growth in the developing and least         the burdens of responding to climate change in a
                developed countries.                                       waythatprovidesallowancestodevelopingcountries.
                                                                           The Convention applies to a world characterized
                THEUNITEDNATIONSFRAMEWORK                                  by extreme poverty and global inequality. Economic
                CONVENTIONONCLIMATECHANGE                                  development can eradicate poverty but it is energy
                TREATY                                                     intensive. Given current technology and energy
                                                                           markets, the cheapest sources of energy are usually
                The United Nations Framework Convention on                 fossil fuels, coal in particular. A climate change
                Climate Change (UNFCCC), formed by international           treaty that raises energy prices in the developing
                treaty in 1992, is the international institution in        world threatens to slow, or prevent, the process by
                which, to date, all significant attempts to come to an      which billions of people may be raised out of extreme
                international agreement dealing with climate change        poverty. Fundamentally, the Convention’s principles
                haveoccurred. Both the treaty and the institution that     distinguishing burdens of the developed and the
                developed as a result of the treaty are called ‘The        developing states is not about resource redistribution,
                                                                                                                        22
                United Nations Framework Convention on Climate             then, although it has been maligned as such.   Rather
                Change’. To distinguish these, I refer to the former as    such principles serve to ensure that neither climate
                ‘the Convention’ and the latter as ‘the UNFCCC’.           change nor a climate change treaty worsen the
                      The UNFCCC provides the institutional setting        prospects for development for poor countries.
                forinternationalnegotiationsandtheConventionpro-                The list drawn up in 1992 at the time of writ-
                vides a deliberative framework in a set of guiding         ing of the Convention, however, does not include all
                norms.Article3setsoutseveralprinciplestoguidethe           of the states that are now among the group of most
                achievement of the Convention’s objective. Paragraph       highly developed. But any commitment to human
                1stipulates that efforts should be distributed differen-   development needs in developing and least developed
                tially. It affirms assigning burdens to parties ‘on the     countries will necessarily place very heavy burdens
                basis of equity and in accordance with their common        on developed states. Energy supply, industry, and
                but differentiated responsibilities and respective capa-   transport comprise over 50% of all greenhouse gas
                bilities’. Paragraph 1 also states that, ‘the developed    emissions. While forestry practices, including defor-
                                                                                                                         20
                country Parties should take the lead in combating          estation, and agriculture comprise over 30%.    Emis-
                climate change and the adverse effects thereof’.21         sionsinallofthesecategoriesareaffectedbyeconomic
                Paragraph 2 requires full attention to ‘The specific        development and rising populations in the developing
                needs and special circumstances of developing Parties,     world. In the absence of adopting additional miti-
                especially those that are particularly vulnerable to       gation strategies, emissions are projected to increase
                Volume3,March/April2012                    ©2012JohnWiley&Sons,Ltd.                                           133
                                                                                                           wires.wiley.com/climatechange
              Overview
                                                                   23       living for himself and his family, including adequate
            byanadditional40–110%between2000and2030.
            Twothirdstothreequartersoftheincreaseisexpected                 food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous
                                                                                                            25
            to come from developing countries, where both eco-              improvement of living conditions.
            nomic and population growth are highest.23 Even
            if global justice requires laying heavier burdens on               Simon Caney argues that a central and
            developed countries, an international treaty that ade-       fundamental wrong of climate change is that it
                                                                                                                              26 g
            quately mitigates climate change will eventually have        will cause significant human rights violations. ,
            to constrain the emissions of non-Annex I countries.         Caney make this argument in relation to three key
                                                                         rights: The right not to be arbitrarily deprived of
                                                                         one’s life, the right not to have others cause serious
            CLIMATECHANGEANDHUMAN                                        threats to one’s health, and the right not to have
            RIGHTS                                                       others deprive one of the means of subsistence.
                                                                         These are broadly accepted rights, less demanding
            In the absence of mitigation, climate change is pro-         and less controversial than the rights enumerated
            jected to have profound, often devastating effects,          in the paragraphs of the human rights documents
            on hundred of millions of people by the end of this          cited above. Hence, Caney’s point is on the face of it
            century. Human health is expected to suffer signifi-          plausible.
            cantly. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on                Human rights have figured prominently in the
            Climate Change (IPCC), ‘The health status of mil-            recent literature on global justice. Many cosmopoli-
            lions of people is projected to be affected through, for     tans have defended the importance of human rights
            example, increases in malnutrition; increased deaths,        in contrast to claims of states to sovereign control
            diseases and injury due to extreme weather events;           over the affairs within their borders.4 Others, as
            increased burden of diarrheal disease; increased fre-        noted above, have argued that human rights form
            quencyofcardio-respiratorydiseases...andthealtered           the basis of duties to reform the international state
                                                               20
            spatial distribution of some infectious diseases’.   For     system to eradicate desperate poverty. So an account
            hundreds of millions of people access to water and           of the moral problems of climate change in terms of
            food will become more difficult. By 2020 from 75 to           the threats that it poses to human rights is consis-
            250 million Africans are expected to suffer increased        tent with a broadly cosmopolitan approach to global
            water stress; and yields on rain fed farms may be            justice.
                                   20
            reducedbyupto50% (p.50).AccordingtoaUnited                         There are, however, features of the employ-
            Nations Human Development Programme (UNDP)                   ment of human rights in the context of climate
            review of climate change projections, ‘Overall, cli-         change that bear special scrutiny. As invoked by
            mate change will lower the incomes and reduce the            Caney, and several others, human rights are meant
            opportunities of vulnerable populations. By 2080,            to account as much for our duties to future genera-
            the number of people at risk of hunger could reach           tions as to people currently living in other countries.
            600million—twice the number of people living in              That is to say, human rights are said to account for
                                                    18
            poverty in sub-Saharan Africa today’.                        our duties of intergenerational justice. There several
                  The calamities caused by climate change are            important questions about whether human rights are
            pertinent to protections offered by international            the best way to account for our duties of intergen-
            human rights documents. For example, Article 25,             erational justice, but they elude the scope of this
            paragraph 1, of the Universal Declaration of Human           article.h
            Rights states that,
               Everyonehastherighttoastandardoflivingadequate            RESPONSIBILITYFORHISTORIC
               for the health and well-being of himself and of his       EMISSIONS
               family, including food, clothing, housing and medical
               care and necessary social services, and the right to      Both considerations of global justice and the
               security in the event of unemployment, sickness,          Convention’s language of ‘common but differentiated
               disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of           responsibilities’ have led some people to conclude
               livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.24
                                                                         that a morally acceptable international treaty should
                  Article   11 of International Covenant on              distribute various responsibilities of states according
            Economic, Social and Cultural Rights holds that,             to their historic contribution of greenhouse gasses,
                                                                         especially CO2 (because of its long atmospheric
               The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize      residence time), to the atmosphere.i This view invokes
               the right of everyone to an adequate standard of          aprinciple from other aspects of environmental policy
            134                                          ©2012JohnWiley&Sons,Ltd.                        Volume3,March/April2012
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...Overview climatechangeandglobaljustice darrell moellendorf in this article i examine matters concerning justice and climate change light of current work global briey discuss some the most important contemporary by political philosophers theorist on relate it to various considerations regarding after brieysurveyingtheinternationaltreatycontext icriticallydiscussseveralissues includingclimatechangeandhumanrights responsibilityforhistoricalemissions polluter pays principle ability pay grandfathering entitlements emit greenhouse gasses equal per capita emissions right sustainable development responsibility for nancing adaptation set issues does not exhaust list but includes those johnwiley sons ltd howtocitethis wiresclimchange doi wcc climatechangeandglobal section summarizes recent that is relevant here unfccc treaty discusses anthropogenicclimatechangeiswidelyrecognized features international context which as a problem affecting lives negotiations are occurring well being millions peopl...

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