Departement of Philosophy •

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Climate ethics and justice: A few

preliminary remarks

Johan HattinghCOMEST

&Department of Philosophy

Stellenbosch UniversitySouth Africa

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It is problematic …

• To conceptualize climate change merely as an ecological and technical/political issue• Climate change impacts on people and communities• Any response to climate change entail decisions that are

deeply ethical in nature• Allocation of scarce resources• Distribution / sharing of benefits and burdens• Sharing of knowledge• Foreseeing and preventing harm • Compensation for harm• Inaction, or postponing action• …

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The real threats of climate change

• Affects livelihoods, living space, security, cultural heritage, rights, dignity of all people in all nations

• Non-human members of biosphere

• Some are more vulnerable than others• Low lying coastal areas, small islands and river deltas

• Arctic region

• Arid and semi-arid zones

• Children, the elderly, the poor, the marginalized

• Non-human species already under threat

• Amplifying the vulnerabilities already existing in society because of a history of other problems

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Climate change as a justice issue

• Unfair distribution of the benefits and burdens of • GHG emissions• Mitigation of GHG emissions

• Administrative injustice• The most vulnerable affected by decision-making on CC

policy responses mostly do not participate in the decision-making

• Compensatory injustice• Those negatively affected by climate change seems to be

unable to get compensation for damages from those who have caused climate change

• Recognition of suffering and need• Climate refugees (for example)

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The complexities of CC

• Challenge our conventional moral sensitivities and practices around • Respect for persons• Causing no harm• Doing good• Justice

• Unmasks the gaps in international law and normative instruments to adequately deal with the ethical dimensions of climate change• Polluter pays principle• Precautionary principle• Common, but differentiated responsibilities• Sustainability / sustainable development

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What are these complexities?

• The dispersal of causes and effects• Fragmentation of agency• Institutional inadequacy• Time delays in the effects of GHG emissions• Scientific uncertainties

• Gaps in knowledge• Problems around theories and modeling• Unpredictability

• The intergenerational character of climate change

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What should be done?

• To better understand the vulnerabilities caused by CC, and how they add on to already existing vulnerabilities• To mitigate these vulnerabilities

• To better understand the ethical implications of measures proposed to mitigate GHG emissions in global as well as concrete local terms – different people are affected differently by the “solutions”

• To better understand the need and requirements for adaptation to those effects of climate change that cannot be avoided

• To build a scientific knowledge base for mitigation and adaptation that effectively responds to the knowledge needs required for adaptation, in particular the knowledge needs of those most vulnerable to climate change

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Where should we start?

• Education of decision-makers and scientists• Establish new decision-making structures and

procedures, forms of governance and modes of communication and networking in which • The needs of the most vulnerable to climate change can

be articulated and foregrounded• Those most vulnerable to climate change can effectively

participate

• Establish recognition for the duty to obtain and share the knowledge required to foresee, mitigate and adapt to CC

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To emphasize the importance and magnitude of our ethical challenge

• A climate ethics of justice will have to deal with complex systems that are characterized by threshold or non-linear behaviour• Future conditions may not resemble past conditions• Relative stasis may suddenly give way to rapid changes• Unexpected outcomes can emerge (negative or positive)• Gradual changes require different forms of adaptation

than a system that can flip over into a new state• Which will require a different paradigm of policy,

management and individual responses: Robust structures and resilient policies

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An ethics of climate change then …

• Seems to require active, system wide, collective action (networks, new types) to build robust and resilient individuals, households, communities, societies, governmentsthat, for the time being, can live with uncertainty, and start to reduce the effects of a high risk mode of livingand actively address the mechanism through which injustices in the world are created, justified, strengthened and perpetuated

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Resilience in management and governance

• Experimental – learning from experience to adapt to changed circumstances (ability to recover from shock)

• The ability to build and increase the capacity of learning• The ability to self-organize

• [Precautionary governance]

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Robust management

• Robust scientific predictions• Hold for most known uncertainties• But may break down in the presence of surprises

• Robust policies• Not affected much by over- or under-estimations of risk