The relevance of climate justice for climate goals

Activity: Talks and presentations › Talk or oral contribution › Science to Science

Description

Philosophers argue that justice is not only a condition of right action, it also figures as an important normative frame for climate action. In particular, climate justice has several layers. It comprises distributive justice with respect to a fair share of emissions, restorative justice as compensation for climate harm, and egalitarianism with respect to an equal right of persons to use the atmosphere as a waste dump (Caney 2014, Singer 2002). Whether or not climate justice is helpful in framing climate action, or also hampers climate cooperation, has also been discussed recently (Gardiner and Weisbach 2016).
This paper argues that even though climate justice is an important concept, it should better be placed in a theory of joint climate action (Tuomela 2010). In particular, principles of justice need to be reasoned as (a) principles that enhance the conditions of cooperation among parties that subscribe to shared climate goals, and (b) as principles of a fair share of burdens that relate to climate goals. In sum, the principles of climate justice are helpful, but need to be re-explored as a fair share of responsibility for actors, including collective actors.
Period29 Aug 2019
Event titleKOSMOS Conference, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: Navigating the Sustainability Transformation in the 21st Century
Event typeConference
LocationBerlin, GermanyShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

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