Promoting justice in global climate policies

Global inequalities raised by climate change lead to multiple injustices. This chapter adopts a climate justice perspective to assess the degree of (un)fairness of current mitigation and adaptation policies and to propose institutional reforms that would make them fairer. The first section explains in what sense political economists and normative political theorists could join efforts to promote climate justice, despite the historic tensions between their two fields. The second section deals with mitigation policies and explains why current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are unfair. It also proposes a roadmap for a just energy transition that would implement a price-signal approach complementing the pledge-and-review approach that dominates climate negotiations. The third section moves to adaptation policies and highlights that adaptation finance transfers to vulnerable countries are currently insufficient. It also supports the promotion of democratization processes in vulnerable societies to avoid a trade-off between two influential criteria guiding the allocation of adaptation finance: vulnerability and good governance. The conclusion sketches a research agenda for future interdisciplinary research on climate justice.