Common Paper on Climate Change and Global Justice LUISS Guido Carli University 2014 Beatrice Fabri Samantha Lena Figueroa Olivia Lopez Curzi Adriana Lori Giuseppe Macca Angelo Mazzetti Alessio Raccagna Filippo Scolaro Lodovichi ABSTRACT 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. 1 INTRODUCTION The issue of Climate Change is a multidimensional problem that can no longer be ignored. The question of how to cope with it is a controversial theme of discussion that forces the actors involved to wonder whether it is a global issue and whether or not it should be reframed in a Global Justice perspective. For this purpose we shall try to further examine other aspects of the problem. Indeed an analysis of who are the victims of CC and who is responsible for them, and hence of who should pay for the damages provoked is needed. First of all we should try to see whether, if at all, Climate Change should be addressed as a global task. According to the IPCC1:“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased. Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1). In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years (medium confidence).” As it can be inferred from this statement, CC brings about widespread effects dispersed both in time and space, and whose consequences are reflected not only on the ecological, but also on the economic and political field. Thus it is clear that these challenges do transcend the single Nation States and cannot be faced merely at a domestic level. The international approach then presents some flaws, because such entwined issues show a deeper interconnection amongst the actors. Thus CC is a global problem in which not only States (to which traditional theories of Interdependence look at because of their coercive powers), but several others agents are involved. Such other agents are: 1. Institutions, who are essential for framing adequate policies to tackle climate change. 2. Businesses and Corporations who massively polluted and whose influence over policymakers represents an obstacle to a concrete solution of the problem.2 1 IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. 2 Harvard Business School and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have identified corporate influence on climate policy as presenting a major stumbling block to progress. And as Paul Polman Unilever CEO has said, if we don't get this right "the gains in prosperity that many in the world have enjoyed over the last century could be severely curtailed". 2 3. Individuals whose key role has been highlighted by scholars such as Broome.3 At the same time we shall also focus on who actually suffers the consequences of CC, namely the poor4 and it is now that an issue of Justice is raised. After having singled it out as an international justice matter, it is time to probe if it replicates traditional issues of global justice. The following section will investigate if climate change causes inequality, if this is unjust and in the case it is, which actors have to carry on responsibility. First of all it can be affirmed that climate change causes inequality, due to the unequal distribution in the amount of emissions. Emissions are in conjunction with industrialization. Different degrees of industrialization determine the country’s income, which in turn affects well being. It follows that inequality may be understood in terms of inequality of welfare, resources or even human rights. Secondly this inequality is unjust because climate change has nothing to do with people choices. Hence, if inequality exists and it is unjust, who has to carry out the responsibility? In dealing with responsibility one challenging task is: according to which principles should we assess responsibility? How should it be divided among the actors? Different authors have come up with different principles that can be used. The Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) affirms that the party who polluted should pay for the haram caused. The underlying idea is that usually responsibility is to be assigned taking into account fault. Contrary to the fault based approach Strict Liability states that an actor is held responsible for the harm he or she caused, no matter if he or she is at fault. The main idea is that it is too difficult to prove fault when considering the environmental context because it is very complex to trace emissions to harm. Another no fault based approach is the Beneficiary Pays Principle (BPP). Indeed this approach affirms that agents who benefited from historic polluting should bear the cost for dealing with the problems caused by climate change. On last principle is known as Ability to pay (ATP). According to the latter only those who have to possibility should pay for the cost of reducing climate change. In the end, assigning responsibility is challenging because of the collective action issue. Indeed, with climate change we face a gigantic global intergenerational issue because the consequences are 3 Broome, John. Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Not only individuals suffer the effects of CC, indeed also Nature and other animal species are affected. Herein these issues will not be discussed. 4 3 both now and in the future. From this point, it is evident that climate change cannot be considered as a traditional issue of global justice because, for example, future generations are involved. Further, as it has been highlighted previously, climate change is a wicked and multi-dimensional issue and its consequences are dispersed both in time and space.5 Given that, new paradigms must be used in order to face this issue. According to us, Climate Change should be encompassed in the larger outlook of Sustainable Development. At this point the question to be raised is how to face climate change through this new perspective? Who should be the actors in charge of dealing with it? According to our idea, neither States nor global governance, as the Rio failure has demonstrated6, are the appropriate agents for tackling climate change. OUR APPROACH When talking about moral obligations for tackling climate change we believe that Individuals are the ones responsible for it. However, acting as a single unit they might not end up being the most efficient actor in solving the issue. Indeed, their efforts may end up being useless. A clear example of this is Al Gore’s experience: had enough resources, time and incentives but still did not attain his goal. It is possible to argue then, that governments are the ones who must fix climate change.7 The problem is that the policies they should have to pursue are too demanding on the population and not politically attractive. For this reason, we have come to a different conclusion. In order to fight climate change we should look at the Community of People. By gathering they are able to put together more resources, time and energies. So we can obtain effective and concrete outcomes. Since we have introduced the concept of Community of People, the following section will specify what we mean by that and why. First of all, the Community of People is a community in which individuals share the same standard of fairness and equity. It is possible to share the same standards by the fact that individuals 5 “Wicked problem means describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize”. Jamieson, Di Paola,“Climate change and global justice: New Problem, Old Pardigm?”, 2014. 6 The Rio conference of 1992 was a multilateral attempt to face the issue with the proposal of diminishing emissions. However, since then on, global emissions have increased. 7 4 create relations within the community. Moreover we believe that people also identify themselves thanks to the presence of the other. Indeed the person recognize himself by the fact the he is not “the other”. Fairness and equity are two key elements in order to obtain an idea of Justice. Our opinion is that the idea of Justice is a relationship-wise oriented concept in the sense that it originates from the relation among people within a community. So, by getting in contact with one another, people create connections thanks to which they set forth shared standard of fairness and equity that fill out the content of justice. Hence, justice is not due to a prior knowledge but it is the outcome of a relation among people. We opted out Global Community because at a global level it’s impossible to share the same standard of fairness and equality. It will surely be better and easier if worldwide people would share the same standards, but it is not likely to be realistic. Rather, are we so sure that it will be better that everyone would have the same viewpoint on life? Back to the community of people, sharing standards might lead to the development of a shared interest. The individuals of the community put together their resources, time and energies to pressure their own government. It is intuitive that acting together is more efficient that acting by ourselves. The governments are now legitimized to invest resources in facing the problem. This approach has the aim to combine a bottom-up flow, fundamental to give legitimization, and a topdown one, since the states are the only one which handle the resources and the means to tackle the issue in an effective way. More results they achieve, both global but also tangible results of adaptation investments, more people will agree on investing resources on the problem, so that a virtuous circle should be generated. On a parallel plane, there will probably around the world communities that share similar standards, or at least similar interests. Should they just act locally, or could they join efforts? Indeed, to extend the effects of climate policies on a global level, you need more than one state applying them. So, the different communities should join in “global green organizations”, coordinating their efforts and sharing results. The internet of course can be a perfect tool for sharing know how, coordinating all the different groups, to demonstrate what can be done and last but not least to generate virtuous circles in other countries. 5 At last we will pay attention to the weaknesses and obstacles for implementing our approach. As a first criticism, one might argue, why should the first community come up with the interest of tackling climate change? It is clear that if this does not happen, the virtuous circle will never begin. However, we do know that climate change is an issue that is already provoking harm. The communities that are harmed right now, and the one who will suffer in the short term will probably be the one who could start the process. Indeed it is almost worldwide accepted that we must fight climate change. Another challenge would be the lack of democracy around the world. Indeed in order to let communities of people to push the government through system of representation, we need better democratic institutions where democracy exist and the building of democratic institutions where democracy does not exist. It is also true that a non-democratic country does perform well due to a particularly enlightened elite, for instance China. However it is an isolated case, and we believe that a form of democracy, or at least of accountability of local governments to its people must be required to set up the mechanism explained above. Finally, it could be argued that this idea of community of people might be obstructed by the current economic system, which is built on the idea of endless economic growth. This issue may be outdated only through a utter market restructuring shifting the logic of the endless growth towards a more sustainable one. Some scholars have developed the paradigm of prosperity without growth and it is now at the centre of the sustainable development debate.8 However this argument entails a wider dissertation on the global economic system and it would go beyond the purposes of this paper. CONCLUSION We first tried to frame the issue of climate change, trying to understand if it can be defined as a problem of global justice. We ended up saying that for sure it is a global issue, even though it detach himself consistently from a classical issue of global justice. Indeed climate change it has been defined as a wicked problem. Another complex aspect of the topic is the one regarding the 8 See “Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy”, Tim Jackson, Sustainable development commission 2009. 6 actors involved. Traditional paradigms have tried to encompass either individuals or states, other kind of theories claimed that also private companies and international institutions are involved. However the result has not been positive. In fact, since from Rio 1992, the emissions have not decreased. In the final part of the paper we proposed an alternative view, which had as main actors the community of people who have to install strict relations with their governments to generate virtuous circles of legitimacy and investments aimed in fighting the effects of climate change. At the end we hypothesized some logical criticism and tried to answer in best way we could think of. We hope not to stimulate the debate on climate change, but also that communities share the opinion of fighting climate change and actually start associating and being more demanding with their governments. 7 BIBLIOGRAPY “The Hartwell Paper: a new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009”, Institute for Science, Innovation & Society, University of Oxford, 2009 Bostrom and Ćirković, “Global Catastrophic Risks”, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008 Broome, “Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World”, New York: W.W. Norton, 2012 Caney, “Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility and Global Climate Change”, Leiden Journal of Internation law,18, 2005 Di Paola and Pellegrino, “Climate Change: Who Does What, Why, and How”, in Canned Heat: Theoretical and Practical Challenges of Global Climate Change, ed. 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