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Reconciling justice and attribution research to advance climate policy

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 901–908 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Paris Climate Agreement is an important step for international climate policy, but the compensation for negative effects of climate change based on clear assignment of responsibilities remains highly debated. From both a policy and a science perspective, it is unclear how responsibilities should be defined and on what evidence base. We explore different normative principles of justice relevant to climate change impacts, and ask how different forms of causal evidence of impacts drawn from detection and attribution research could inform policy approaches in accordance with justice considerations. We reveal a procedural injustice based on the imbalance of observations and knowledge of impacts between developed and developing countries. This type of injustice needs to be considered in policy negotiations and decisions, and efforts strengthened to reduce it.

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Figure 1: A schematic detection and attribution framework for impacts on natural and human systems.
Figure 2: World map showing the distribution of Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) stations and the number of detected impacts as assessed in the IPCC AR56.
Figure 3: Distribution of attributed climate change impacts in physical, biological and human systems as assessed in the IPCC AR56, showing an imbalance between Annex I, Non-Annex I, and LDCs and SIDS.

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Acknowledgements

C.H. was supported by strategic funds by the Executive Board and Faculty of Science of the University of Zurich. I.W.-H. acknowledges financial support by the Stiftung Mercator Switzerland and the University of Zurich's Research Priority Program for Ethics (URPP Ethics). D.S. was supported by the US Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. W.C. contributes to the Labex OT-Med (no. ANR-11-LABX-0061) funded by the French government through the A*MIDEX project (no. ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02). We furthermore appreciate the collaboration with G. Hansen on the analysis of the distribution of climate change impacts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, Zurich, 8057, Switzerland

    Christian Huggel

  2. Advanced Studies in Applied Ethics, Center for Ethics, University of Zurich, Zollikerstrasse 117, Zurich, 8008, Switzerland

    Ivo Wallimann-Helmer

  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, MS-50F1650, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Dáithí Stone

  4. Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d'Ecologie Marine et Continentale (IMBE), Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IRD, Avignon Université, Technopôle Arbois-Méditerranée, Bât. Villemin – BP 80, F-13545, Aix-en-Provence Cedex 04, France

    Wolfgang Cramer

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Contributions

C.H. and I.W.-H. designed the basic concept and arguments of the paper, supported and advised by D.S. and W.C. C.H. and D.S. analysed the impacts data and prepared the figures. All authors contributed to the writing of the text.

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Correspondence to Christian Huggel.

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Huggel, C., Wallimann-Helmer, I., Stone, D. et al. Reconciling justice and attribution research to advance climate policy. Nature Clim Change 6, 901–908 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3104

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