Intergenerational Justice and Climate Change

Palgrave Macmillan eBooks, 2014

South Africa depends heavily on climatic resources and environmental assets; thus it is vulnerable to global climate change. At present, there is massive exploitation and utilisation of various resources in unsustainable paths. This might compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own developmental needs and values. This research paper contributes to the discussion surrounding South Africa as part of the African continent which is prone to the negative impact of climate change as a result of its carbon footprints. The article argues that government's efforts to foster intergenerational justice is compromised because of the need to grow the economy by using climatic resources and environmental assets. This notwithstanding, to some extent, the government has taken some pragmatic steps through implementation of policies, strategies and measures that address climate change. Numerous role players, stake holders and the judicia ry are being proactive in the promotion of intergenerational justice and fight against climate change in order to bequest clean and healthy environment to future generations.

Intergenerational Justice, Oxford, 2009

Because present actions will shape the world inherited by our children and by later generations, we can influence their lives for good or for ill. Anthropogenic climate change and the resultant environmental damage presents an especially pressing instance of this influence. There is now no room for serious doubt that human activities, especially those that have occurred over the past fifty years, have warmed the earth and influenced the global climate. Evidence of this influence is not difficult to find: data indicate that the surface temperature of the earth is rising, as are sea levels. Recent decades have seen dramatic increases in the rate of retreat of glaciers and polar ice and permafrost. Biologists record the migration of species up the slopes of mountains and farther from equatorial latitudes as their environment has changed as a result of global warming. In addition to these indicators of change, we have substantial data documenting increased levels of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere, and good evidence that these increases are the result of human activities. Finally we have a plausible hypothesis linking warming trends to the presence of these gasses in our atmosphere. Under the circumstances, it would be surprising if we found that anthropogenic emissions were not influencing global climate.¹ FN:1

Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2023

In this article we argue that duties towards future generations are situated on the collective level and that they should be understood in terms of collective responsibility for structural injustice. In the context of climate change, it seems self-evident that our moral duties pertain not only to the current generation but to future generations as well. However, conceptualizing this leads to the non-identity problem: future persons cannot be harmed by present-day choices because they would not have existed if other choices had been made. Recently, Charlotte Franziska Unruh has proposed a solution that places the duties not on the individual level but on the collective level. The current generation has a responsibility for future generations as a whole. This solution is promising, but we argue that it problematically overlooks the existence of unjust relations within the contemporary collective, as we all contribute differently to bringing future generations into existence. Therefore, we propose to graft Iris Marion Young's Social Connection Model, which is concerned with structural injustice, on to the discussion of responsibility for future generations. Our proposal incorporates the strengths of Unruh's arguments, while also allowing for a differentiated responsibility based on different implications in unjust structures.

Climate change creates unprecedented problems of intergenerational justice. What do members of the current generation owe to future generations in virtue of the contribution they are making to climate change? This books presents arguments in three key areas: Mitigation: the current generation ought to adopt a strong precautionary principle in formulating climate change policy in order to minimise the risks of serious harm from climate change imposed on future generations. Adaptation: the current generation ought to create a fund to which members of future generations may apply for compensation if the risks of climate change harm imposed on them by the current generation ripen into harms. Triage: future generations ought to keep alive hope for a return to the framework of justice for social cooperation between future people less burdened by climate change.

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 2016

Approaches to justice are an infrequent phenomenon in the analysis of global change policies pursued by states and international organizations but are writ large in global civil society protests and advocacy. I hope to initiate, through this paper, a different conversation concerning theories of climate justice (TCJ) in the offing and ask questions about how different TCJs may be from theories about global justice (TGJ) and environmental justice (TEJ). These approaches are all related of coursebut the questions that interest me pertain to the distinctions and differences between them. Although TEJs remain tethered to domestic and regional social orderings, they generally come closer to TCJs than TGJs do. I argue here that another important difference between TEJs and TCJs concerns the notion of 'generations' in TCJs. This goes beyond the three generations (past, present and future) in most accounts of TGJ to encompass infinite generations. In addition, I examine the notion that there is a human right to do harm and the ways in which TCJ may address harm prevention as the cornerstone of a new planetary approach to justice.

Italian Papers on Federalism, 2024

This paper compares various philosophical approaches to the rights of future generations with the solutions adopted by national courts in climate litigation. It argues that two opposing visions emerge from this comparison: one that recognizes the rights of future generations as those of indeterminate groups of people, and another that views these rights as future projections of the rights of present individuals.

2006

This chapter considers two questions of distributive justice that arise when we face dangerous climate change. The first (the Just Target Question) concerns what balance to strike between ensuring that moral subjects are not harmed by climatic changes and ensuring that the policies required to prevent harmful climatic changes are not unduly onerous. The second (the Just Burden Question) concerns how the costs involved in combating dangerous climate change should be distributed among duty-bearers. The chapter identifies several methodological issues we need to confront to address these questions. In addition to this, it outlines how one might answer the Just Target Question, and evaluates several leading accounts of how to answer the Just Burden Question. One central finding is that the issues of justice raised by climate change cannot be treated in isolation but must be analysed as part of a more general global and intergenerational account of justice.

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2012

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 briefly surveying the international treaty context, I critically discuss several issues, including climate change and human rights, responsibility for historical emissions 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.

Climatic Change, 2015

Climate change is an extraordinary, multi-faceted challenge for mankind and the scale of the challenge is reflected in the breadth and depth of issues of justice it confronts us with (Gardiner et al. 2010). First of all, given the long time spans involved, this includes questions of intergenerational justice (Page 2007): Since a large share of the effect of present emissions will only arise after a significant time lag, it is necessary to consider what type and level of climate actions we owe our descendants. Such a discussion on intergenerational justice necessitates, in turn, extensive debates about risk: Given that there is and will always remain significant scientific uncertainty about the precise future effect of present emissions, determining appropriate margins of safety is crucial (Gardiner 2006; Hartzell-Nichols 2013). Of course, our descendants are not the only relevant stakeholder in these debates: Effects of climate change on the present generation, on animals, and on the rest of nature are grounds for climate action as well (Palmer 2011; Nolt 2011). Another issue of concern is rather about justice within the present generation, as decisions to be made not only involve the overall amount of climate action, but they also need to answer the question on how to split up the burden of taking this action (Caney 2012; Miller 2009). Given that emissions do not respect borders, this means allocating responsibility for climate action on a global scale. Seeking global justice in mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage is particularly relevant given that many of the more vulnerable countries have comparatively lower (historical and current) per capita emissions and lower capacity to address the problem. While these larger questions of intergenerational and intragenerational justice make up the core of the ethical challenge of climate change, climate change brings up a host of further ethical issues, for example moral aspects of policy instrument choice (such as population control, market measures, or lifestyle changes), This article is part of a Special Issue on "Climate Justice in Interdisciplinary Research" edited by Christian Huggel, Markus Ohndorf, Dominic Roser, and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Many countries are implementing or at least considering policies to counter increasingly certain negative impacts from climate change. An increasing amount of research has been devoted to the analysis of the costs of climate change and its mitigation, as well as to the design of policies, such as the international Kyoto Protocol, post-Kyoto negotiations, regional initiatives, and unilateral actions. Although most studies on climate change policies in economics have considered efficiency aspects, there is a growing literature on equity and justice. Climate change policy has important dimensions of distributive justice, both within and across generations, but in this paper we survey only studies on the intragenerational aspect, i.e., within a generation. We cover several domains including the international, regional, national, sectoral and inter-personal, and examine aspects such as the distribution of burdens from climate change, climate change policy negotiations in general, implementation of climate agreements using tradable emission permits, and the uncertainty of alternatives to emission reductions.