Megan Blomfield

To address climate change fairly, many conflicting claims over natural resources must be balanced against one another. This has long been obvious in the case of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas sinks including the atmosphere and forests; but it is ever more apparent that responses to climate change also threaten to spur new competition over land and extractive resources. This makes climate change an instance of a broader, more enduring and - for many - all too familiar problem: the problem of human conflict over how the natural world should be cared for, protected, shared, used, and managed.

This work develops a new theory of global egalitarianism concerning natural resources, rejecting both permanent sovereignty and equal division, which is then used to examine the problem of climate change. It formulates principles of resource right designed to protect the ability of all human beings to satisfy their basic needs as members of self-determining political communities, where it is understood that the genuine exercise of collective self-determination is not possible from a position of significant disadvantage in global wealth and power relations. These principles are used to address the question of where to set the ceiling on future greenhouse gas emissions and how to share the resulting emissions budget, in the face of conflicting claims to fossil fuels, climate sinks, and land. It is also used to defend an unorthodox understanding of responsibility for climate change as a problem of global justice, based on its provenance in historical injustice concerning natural resources.

oral non-cognitivism1 is the metaethical view that denies that moral statements are truth-apt. According to this position, utterances such as “violence is wrong” and “kindness is good” do not express beliefs or possess truth-values; instead, they express certain non-cognitive attitudes similar to desires or intentions. Noncognitivism meets a serious challenge with what is known as the Frege-Geach problem. The essential difficulty is that even if it is possible to give a convincing account regarding how simple moral utterances like those above express certain non-cognitive attitudes, the non-cognitivist owes an explanation as to what those same moral sentences mean when they appear as embedded components in more complex sentences. For example, what is taking place when somebody claims that if violence is wrong, then it’s wrong to kill spiders? Furthermore, if moral statements have no truth-values, then how is it that they can apparently be

According to the Polluter Pays Principle, excessive emitters of greenhouse gases have special obligations to remedy the problem of climate change, because they are the ones who have caused it. But what kind of problem is climate change? In this paper I argue that as a moral problem, climate change has a more complex causal structure than many proponents of the Polluter Pays Principle seem to recognize: it is a problem resulting from the interaction of anthropogenic climate effects with the underlying vulnerability and exposure of human communities and other things of value. This means that we should acknowledge more pathways by which human agency contributes to the climate problem and, accordingly, a different landscape of contribution-based remedial responsibilities.

This chapter further explores and defends the conception of natural resource justice composed of the principle of collective self-determination and the (lexically prior) basic needs principle. It explains the lexical ordering of the principles and the nature and scope of the resource claims they legitimize. It then discusses how the two principles will work in tandem to support a system of limited territorial jurisdiction over natural resources, and several forms such limits can be predicted to take. A brief explanation of how this account might be integrated into a broader theory of justice concerning other morally significant goods is provided. In response to the objection that this conception of justice is really a form of sufficientarianism, the view is portrayed as a theory of relational egalitarianism for natural resources. A response is also given to the objection that the theory is problematically ideal in the sense that it lacks feasibility.

This chapter turns to the question of historical responsibility for unavoided climate impacts. It introduces the climate debt claim, according to which certain wealthy or industrialized states owe a debt of compensation to some of those suffering from the unavoided impacts of climate change; where the notion of a debt indicates that the obligation in question falls within the domain of rectificatory justice. The Historical Emissions Debt view, according to which climate debts arise when parties emit more than their fair share of greenhouse gases, is rejected on the basis that there is no fair shares principle for historical use of the climate sink considered in isolation. Two interpretations of the beneficiary pays principle are found to face similar problems. Since none of these accounts appear defensible, it is concluded that those seeking to substantiate a climate debt claim would do better to attempt this by other means.

This chapter defends the principle of collective self-determination as a second principle of natural resource justice. This defence emerges from consideration of the principle of natural resource sovereignty, which appears to be a candidate for agreement from the perspective of Contractualist Common Ownership. The responsible stewardship defence of resource sovereignty is rejected. The collective self-determination defence, however, is shown to get something right. Parties to the original position would indeed accept a principle according to which resource rights must support political communities in the legitimate exercise of collective self-determination, because such self-determination promises to further individuals’ interests in freedom as non-domination. But the principle of collective self-determination appears to support merely a presumptive right of exclusive territorial jurisdiction over natural resources, rather than resource sovereignty. This presumptive right must be ab...

This chapter concerns how the global emissions budget should be shared, critiquing the equal per capita emissions view (EPC). First, it is explained how theorists have used claims about natural resource rights to formulate the atmospheric commons argument for EPC. Then, drawing on the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Elinor Ostrom’s work on common-pool resources, it is shown that these arguments invoke a misleading analysis of climate change as a global commons problem. Accurate understanding of how climate change results from overuse of a global commons suggests that proponents of the commons argument for EPC overlook potential territorial claims to the climate sink. Two options for EPC theorists who wish to maintain the view in the face of this critique are identified, but both turn out to necessitate deeper engagement with the question of how rights to the world’s resources should be assigned.

This chapter draws on Charles Beitz’s account of natural resource justice to defend a method of justification that can be used to develop the Common Ownership view. This method employs an original position device, familiar from contemporary social contract theory, and the resulting view is therefore termed ‘Contractualist Common Ownership’. This understanding of Common Ownership is motivated by arguing that it is an apt interpretation of Equal Original Claims. Two key objections to this approach are anticipated and addressed. Contractualist Common Ownership is then used to reconsider and reject the principle of equal division. It is argued that instead, the parties would first secure agreement on a basic needs principle. However, it is also argued that this sufficientarian principle would not be accepted in isolation; parties would seek agreement on further principles of justice for the assignment of rights to natural resources, beyond what is required for basic needs.

This chapter summarizes the argument of the work. It situates the conception of natural resource justice that has been defended between the (egalitarian) principle of equal division and the (statist) principle of resource sovereignty. As an interpretation of relational egalitarianism concerning natural resources, the view is shown to avoid three of the most common objections to global egalitarianism. This is because the view is compatible with collective self-determination, protects cultural diversity, and avoids the metric problem. The chapter concludes that the method of partial integrationism adopted in the work, considering questions of climate justice by reference to a conception of justice for natural resources alone, has been productive. A remaining task is to integrate this conception of natural resource justice with a more general theory of global justice, encompassing other important goods, institutions, practices, and relations.

This chapter reconsiders the global emissions budget using the conception of natural resource justice defended previously. Noting that this is to adopt a method of partial integrationism, it is shown that the two principles can at least be applied not only to the problem of sharing the emissions budget, but also the prior matter of setting it. Applying the principle of collective self-determination to these problems is found to be more difficult, because it grounds many conflicting claims. This difficulty is addressed by formulating guidelines for adjudicating between self-determination claims. It is concluded that the emissions budget should be set within the parameters of enabling basic needs satisfaction for current and future individuals and protecting collectives from climate impacts that threaten the legitimate exercise of self-determination through territorial displacement. If this allows for more than subsistence emissions, fair international negotiations will be required to...

This chapter rejects Equal Division, focusing on Hillel Steiner’s formulation of the view. First, further explanation of why one might take Equal Division to follow from Equal Original Claims is provided. Then, David Miller’s objection is introduced, according to which there is no defensible metric by which resource shares can be made commensurate, given the fact of reasonable value pluralism. The chapter argues that what the metric problem really shows, is that Equal Division possesses insufficient impartiality to satisfy the equal original claims that motivate the view in the first place. This case is made by critiquing the three principal metrics proposed to amalgamate individual valuations of natural resources and thereby render Equal Division both coherent and defensible; namely, economic value, opportunity cost, and ecological space. The chapter concludes that to respect Equal Original Claims, the better approach will be to formulate a Common Ownership conception of justice fo...

This chapter develops an alternative defence of the climate debt claim via a broader discussion of how historical wrongdoing concerning natural resources could be relevant to climate justice. It first examines climate change as a problem of global justice, arguing that theorists should consider why some groups are more vulnerable to climate impacts than others and to what extent unequal vulnerability could be a result of historical injustice. Focusing on colonial resource exploitation as a significant example of natural resource injustice, it is argued that the legacies of such exploitation will likely be a significant contributor to present-day vulnerability in countries that have since gained formal independence. Such legacies have important implications for our understanding of climate vulnerability; render some climate duties a matter of rectificatory justice, vindicating the climate debt claim; and provide an important lesson in how similar wrongs could be perpetrated through f...

This chapter introduces climate change as a problem of natural resource justice by outlining some real-world examples of resource conflicts that are being generated, or exacerbated, by climate change. It then provides some necessary background for the discussion to follow. The science and predicted impacts of climate change are explained, along with the options for responding to this problem, such as mitigation and adaptation. The chapter then briefly introduces the debate about global justice and climate change, as it has appeared in the political philosophy literature, looking at the human rights approach, the distributive justice approach, and the key methodological distinctions between integrationism and isolationism and ideal versus nonideal theory. After providing further characterization of, and motivation for, the natural resources approach to climate justice that is taken in the work, it concludes with an outline of the chapters to follow.

Some claim that a commitment to egalitarianism is in tension with support for reparations for historical injustice. This tension appears to arise insofar as egalitarianism is a forward-looking approach to justice: an approach that tells us what kind of world we should aim to build, where that world is not defined in terms of the decisions or actions of previous generations. Some have claimed that egalitarianism thereby renders reparations redundant (what I will refer to as the redundancy thesis). One popular option for egalitarians who aim to reject this thesis is to insist that historical injustices demand reparations when they have caused present-day inequality (the causal approach). A promising alternative, skilfully defended by Alasia Nuti in Injustice and the Reproduction of History, is to argue that historical injustices stand in need of repair when they are reproduced into the present-day, such that some past and present injustices are in fact the same injustice. In this paper, I assess these egalitarian responses to the redundancy thesis. I find that Nuti’s account is equipped to reject this thesis, but that the same lines of reply can be adopted by proponents of the causal approach. I suggest that both approaches therefore be viewed as potential ways to conceptualise the relationship between historical injustice and our present normative circumstances; and that in choosing between them, we should understand ourselves to be engaged in an ameliorative project – a project that is guided by, and designed to help us to achieve, our legitimate purposes.

Land is becoming increasingly scarce relative to the demands of the global economy; a problem significantly exacerbated by climate change. In response, some have suggested that land should be conceptualised as a global commons. This framing might seem like an appealing way to promote sustainable and equitable land use. However, it is a poor fit for the worldʼs land because global commons are generally understood as resources located beyond state borders. I argue that land can be seen to fit the definition of a global commons, if viewed in a particular way; namely, as a biogeochemical resource system that sequesters carbon emissions. The question then arises whether land should be conceptualised as a global commons. I consider this question by reference to three contemporary problems of land justice (land grabbing, forced displacement, and unfairness in land-based climate mitigation); arguing that the global-commons framing will not be conducive to understanding or responding to these problems. I leave the question of how the global community should conceptualise land in the context of climate change open, claiming that any answer must include the voices and perspectives of those whose livelihoods and identities are closely connected to the land.

In this paper I discuss a popular position in the climate justice literature concerning historical accountability for climate change. According to this view, historical high-emitters of greenhouse gases — or currently existing individuals that are appropriately related to them — are in possession of some form of emission debt, owed to certain of those who are now burdened by climate change. It is frequently claimed that such debts were originally incurred by historical emissions that violated a principle of fair shares for the world’s natural resources. Thus, a suitable principle of natural resource justice is required to render this interpretation of historical accountability complete. I argue that the need for such a principle poses a significant challenge for the historical emission debt view, because there doesn’t appear to be any determinate answer to the question what a fair share of climate sink capacity would have been historically. This leaves the historical emission debt view incomplete and thus unable to explain a powerful intuition that appears to motivate the view: namely, that there is something unjust about how the climate sink has historically been used. I suggest an alternative explanation of this common intuition according to which historically unequal consumption of climate sink capacity, whether or not wrongful in and of itself, is a symptom of broader global injustice concerning control over and access to the world’s natural resources. This broader historical injustice will be harder to quantify and harder to repair than that which the historical emission debt purports to identify.

In discussions about responsibility for climate change, it is often suggested that the historical use of natural resources is in some way relevant to our current attempts to address this problem fairly. In particular, both theorists and actors in the public realm have argued that historical high-emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) – or the beneficiaries of those emissions – are in possession of some form of debt, deriving from their overuse of a natural resource that should have been shared more equitably. These accounts of what might be termed ‘natural debt’ generally focus on one particular natural resource (global GHG sink capacity); invoke a principle of justice by which rights to consume this resource should have been allocated (most commonly, equal per capita shares); and then argue that historical violations of this principle give rise to certain rectificatory duties in the present (generally, duties on the part of those who have historically consumed an excessive amount of the world’s GHG sink capacity, or who have benefitted from such excess consumption, to offer some form of compensation to those who have not – such compensation usually taking the form of emission credits or cash).

Though many seem to find it intuitively plausible that historical high-emissions have incurred some form of debt, significant challenges arise in rendering the concept of natural debt both coherent and defensible. Such problems are not, however, my focus in this piece. Instead, I here suggest that discussions about historical responsibility for climate change commonly fail to recognise certain other past injustices concerning natural resources that appear to hold contemporary relevance. In particular, I argue that it is not just the unequal consumption of global GHG sink capacity that may be of moral significance here; but also the way in which the world’s resources have more generally been governed.

In order to address the matter of historical responsibility for climate change, it is first important to be clear about the nature of the problem that climate change presents. It is this task that I take up in the first section of the paper. Highlighting the issue of unequal risk, I explain how climate change as a problem of global justice has both physical and social contributors. Accounts of natural debt attempt to determine responsibility for the physical component of the problem; overlooking the question of who should be held responsible for the inequalities that make climate change such a challenging problem of global justice.

As I explain in section two, this latter question is more difficult to answer, because a plethora of historical injustices appear to be causally implicated in the fact that some communities are significantly more vulnerable to climate events than others. And in any case, even where we can conclude that certain historical injustices have causally contributed to the problem of climate change, using this conclusion to determine who should bear the costs of climate action remains far from straightforward. When current situations ought to be rectified due to historical injustice, the demand for rectification holds independently of whether or not those situations are now contributing to the problem of climate change. And if socio-economic circumstances place communities at risk of disaster or undermine our attempts to deal with climate change fairly, this problem must be dealt with regardless of the historical provenance of those circumstances.

In the final sections of this paper I argue that attention to historical injustice is nevertheless necessary if we are to deal with climate change fairly. Using colonialism as an example, I argue that the causal links between climate vulnerability and historical wrongs suggest that in some respects, the problem of climate change is actually part of an on-going, or enduring, injustice. It is only when an injustice is on-going in this way that we are confronted with the question of why it endures; and when this question arises, we are given reason to search for persisting structures – whether practices, institutions, processes, systems, or rules – that perpetuate injustices and prevent their rectification. In the case of climate change, I suggest, enduring systems of unjust natural resource governance appear to be one of the reasons why many historical wrongs of this kind have a continuing legacy of injustice in the present. If we do not address these problematic structures of resource governance, then there is good reason to fear that even well intentioned efforts to find a just solution to the problem of climate change will be undermined. Historical injustices of natural resource governance thus have contemporary moral significance because they are part of an enduring injustice that persists to the present day, and which now threatens to prevent us from dealing with climate change fairly.

Against the background of continuing inadequacy in global efforts to address climate change and apparent social and political inertia, ever greater interest is being generated in the idea that geoengineering may offer some solution to this problem. The definition of this concept is itself a matter of dispute but roughly speaking, geoengineering can be understood as the intentional, large-scale modification of the Earth system. Following the IPCC’s 2011 Expert Meeting on Geoengineering, this subject was discussed by all three working groups of the IPCC for the first time in its latest report.  Given that geoengineering is an ethically and politically contentious topic, some might worry that this is a sign of its entering the mainstream.

A diverse range of techniques are often placed under the heading of geoengineering. In this paper, I start by offering a particular definition of the concept and looking at how such techniques are situated in terms of the different responses that are available for addressing climate change. I then briefly discuss some of the major ethical arguments for and against activities within this sphere; activities including lab-based research, field testing and deployment. Though many of the ethical and political issues raised by geoengineering remain unsettled – and international institutions for the governance of geoengineering activities are yet to be established – attempts are frequently made to justify further scientific research into the possible impacts of deployment. Lab-based research in particular – investigating geoengineering through the use of models, computer simulations and contained experiments – is perceived by many scientists to be ethically unproblematic. In fact, some advocate a ‘research first’ approach, which would see extensive lab-based studies conducted before international institutions for the governance of geoengineering activities are established. One might think that by improving our understanding of these techniques and the issues that they raise, such research will enable us to determine the appropriate form of geoengineering governance.

I do not take a position, here, on whether or not geoengineering could ever be morally justifiable. My goal in this paper is more modest – but also has broader implications. I aim to show that even if some form of geoengineering might be ethically acceptable in certain specific circumstances, lab-based research into such techniques could nevertheless have morally problematic consequences. I support this claim by explaining that our current state of uncertainty regarding how the impacts of geoengineering interventions could be geographically distributed may help to promote international agreement on fair rules for the governance of geoengineering. In these circumstances of scientific uncertainty, international actors also face uncertainty regarding who the winners and losers could be with respect to potential rules of geoengineering governance, thereby obstructing the pursuit of self-interest in the selection of such rules. Instead of a research first approach, then, we have reason to take a governance first approach – ensuring that fair international institutions to regulate geoengineering activities are established before further research is conducted into how the costs and benefits of such interventions could be distributed.

A popular proposal for fairly distributing greenhouse gas emission quotas is the equal shares view, according to which quotas should be distributed globally on an equal per capita basis. In this paper I show that many arguments in favour of equal shares rely on a misleading analysis of climate change as a global (atmospheric) commons problem. Correcting this flawed analysis reveals that those who defend equal shares using such arguments are controversially committed to claiming that there are no valid territorial claims to a resource system that actually encompasses the world’s forests and soils. I discuss two options for equal shares theorists who wish to maintain the view in the face of this critique, attempting to show that one holds more promise than the other.

Many economists, it is said, “are inclined to deny that moral philosophy has anything to do with economics” (Hausman and McPherson, 'Economic analysis, moral philosophy, and public policy', 2006, 291). In this paper I challenge such inclinations by drawing an analogy between economic interventions and human subjects research. It is undeniable that investigators engaged in the latter should adhere to specific ethical principles. I argue that analogous features of economic interventions should lead us to recognise that similar ethical concerns actually arise in both activities, and thus that economic interventions should also be conducted in accordance with ethical principles. By exploring the analogy further I formulate some ethical guidelines for economic practice, which in turn imply that ethical responsibilities will extend to all members of the economics profession.

This paper explores Wendy Parker’s characterisation of computer simulation studies (CSS) as experiments on real, physical systems. I discuss the external validity of traditional experiments and computer experiments and argue that the latter are not at an epistemic disadvantage due to the lack of material similarity between the experimental and target systems (E and T); material similarity is only epistemically useful in an instrumental sense. In traditional experiments, just as in CSS, what is required in justifying experimental inferences is that scientists have good reason to believe that properties of interest in E and T can be described using formally similar models. Material similarity can help to ensure that this is the case, but it is this shared model structure which mediates between the two systems and supports the external validity of experimental results by giving reason to believe that E and T will behave in a relevantly similar way in light of an experimental intervention.