1. Climatic justice and the fair distribution of atmospheric burdens.
- Author
-
Page, Edward A.
- Subjects
- *
CLIMATE change , *ECOLOGICAL impact , *ENVIRONMENTAL impact charges , *INTERNATIONAL cooperation ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
Global climate change raises profound questions for political theorists. The human impacts of climate change are sufficiently broad, and generally adverse, to threaten the rights and freedoms of existing and future members of all countries; and they will almost certainly exacerbate inequalities between rich and poor countries despite the limited role of the latter in their origins. This article focuses on the question of how the burdens associated with selecting and implementing a robust global climate response ought to be distributed. This problem has two key features: identifying the nature and extent of the burdens; and identifying the agents who should shoulder these burdens. Identifying in a fair and transparent fashion the agents that should take the lead in combating climate change, as well as the precise burdens they must bear in terms of mitigation, adaptation or compensation, will be a key feature of the next generation of global climate policies. The paper argues that only a principled and philosophically robust reconciliation of three approaches to burden sharing ('contribution to problem', 'ability to pay' and 'beneficiary pays') can generate a satisfactory mix of theoretical coherence and practical application. At the time of writing, no proposal designed to replace the existing, Kyoto-based, climate architecture on its expiry in 2012 appears to meet this challenge. The paper considers, however, three climate proposals that offer some useful insights as to how the burden-sharing problem might be solved in future proposals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009