Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Ethical choices behind quantifications of fair contributions under the Paris Agreement

Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 300–305 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The Parties to the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement agreed to act on the basis of equity to protect the climate system. Equitable effort sharing is an irreducibly normative matter, yet some influential studies have sought to create quantitative indicators of equitable effort that claim to be value-neutral (despite evident biases). Many of these studies fail to clarify the ethical principles underlying their indicators, some mislabel approaches that favour wealthy nations as ‘equity approaches’ and some combine contradictory indicators into composites we call derivative benchmarks. This Perspective reviews influential climate effort-sharing assessments and presents guidelines for developing and adjudicating policy-relevant (but not ethically neutral) equity research.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Equity principles included in studies presented as value-neutral.
Fig. 2: Equity principles included in studies presented as ethically explicit.

References

  1. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992); http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf

  2. The Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2015).

  3. Sarewitz, D. How science makes environmental controversies worse. Environ. Sci. Policy 7, 385–403 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Howarth, D. Power, discourse, and policy: articulating a hegemony approach to critical policy studies. Crit. Policy Stud. 3, 309–335 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Beck, S. & Mahony, M. The IPCC and the new map of science and politics. WIREs Clim. Change 9, e547 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Miller, C. A. & Edwards, P. N. Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2001).

  7. Klinsky, S. et al. Why equity is fundamental in climate change policy research. Glob. Environ. Change 44, 170–173 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Vanderheiden, S. Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (Oxford Univ. Press, 2008).

  9. Ciplet, D., Roberts, J. T. & Mizan, R. K. Power in a Warming World (MIT Press, 2015).

  10. Agarwal, A. & Narain, S. Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism (Centre for Science and Environment, 1991).

  11. Shue, H. Subsistence protection and mitigation ambition: necessities, economic and climatic. Br. J. Polit. Int. Relat. 21, 251–262 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Vaillancourt, J. G. in Environmental Sociology: Theory and Practice (eds Meha, M. D. & Ouellets, E.) 219–230 (Captus Press, 1995).

  13. Sen, A. Development as Freedom (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).

  14. Shue, H. Subsistence emissions and luxury emissions. Law Policy 15, 39–60 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Caney, S. in The Ethics of Global Climate Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011).

  16. Kartha, S. et al. Cascading biases against poorer countries. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 348–349 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Meyer, L. H. & Roser, D. Climate justice and historical emissions. Crit. Rev. Int. Soc. Polit. Phil. 13, 229–237 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Moellendorf, D. Responsibility for increasing mitigation ambition in light of the right to sustainable development. Fudan J. Human. Soc. Sci. 13, 189–190 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Gosseries, A. Luck egalitarianism and the greenhouse effect. Can. J. Phil. 35, 279–309 (2005).

    Google Scholar 

  20. Caney, S. Just emissions. Philos. Public Aff. 40, 255–300 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Schmidt, B. C. Principle and prejudice: the Supreme Court and race in the progressive era. Part 3: black disfranchisement from the KKK to the grandfather clause. Columbia Law Rev. 82, 835–905 (1982).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Caney, S. in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. Zalta, E. N.) (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020); https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-climate/

  23. Shue, H. Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U. S. Foreign Policy (Princeton Univ. Press, 2020).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  24. Singer, P. One World: The Ethics of Globalization (Yale Univ. Press, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  25. Moellendorf, D. The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Poverty, and Policy (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  26. Caney, S. Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford Univ. Press, 2005).

  27. Brock, G. (ed.) Necessary Goods: Our Responsibilities to Meet Others’ Needs (Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).

  28. Watson, R., McCarthy, J. J., Canziani, P., Nakicenovic, N. & Hisas, L. The Truth Behind the Climate Pledges (Fundación Ecológica Universal (FEU-US), 2019).

  29. Raupach, M. R. et al. Sharing a quota on cumulative carbon emissions. Nat. Clim. Change 4, 873–879 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Hayward, T. Human rights versus emissions rights: climate justice and the equitable distribution of ecological space. Ethics Int. Aff. 21, 431–450 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1131a23-24

  32. Adger, N. W., Paavola, J. & Huq, S. in Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change (eds Adger, N. W. et al.) 1–19 (MIT Press, 2006).

  33. Muttitt, G. & Kartha, S. Equity, climate justice and fossil fuel extraction: principles for a managed phase out. Clim. Policy 20, 1024–1042 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Wallimann-Helmer, I., Meyer, L., Mintz-Woo, K., Schinko, T. & Serdeczny, O. in Loss and Damage from Climate Change: Concepts, Methods and Policy Options 39–62 (Springer, 2019).

  35. Rogelj, J. & Schleussner, C.-F. Unintentional unfairness when applying new greenhouse gas emissions metrics at country level. Environ. Res. Lett. 14, 114039 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  36. Klinsky, S. & Winkler, H. Building equity in: strategies for integrating equity into modelling for a 1.5 °C world. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 376, 20160461 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Höhne, N., Elzen, Mden & Escalante, D. Regional GHG reduction targets based on effort sharing: a comparison of studies. Clim. Policy 14, 122–147 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. van den Berg, N. J. et al. Implications of various effort-sharing approaches for national carbon budgets and emission pathways. Climatic Change 162, 1805–1822 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Parra, P. et al. Equitable Emissions Reductions Under the Paris Agreement (CAT, 2017); https://climateactiontracker.org/documents/56/CAT_2017-09-19_EquityUpdate_BriefingPaper.pdf

  40. Comparability of Effort (CAT, 2017); https://climateactiontracker.org/methodology/comparability-of-effort/

  41. Robiou du Pont, Y. et al. Equitable mitigation to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. Nat. Clim. Change 7, 38–43 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Pan, X., Den Elzen, M., Höhne, N., Teng, F. & Wang, L. Exploring fair and ambitious mitigation contributions under the Paris Agreement goals. Environ. Sci. Policy 74, 49–56 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Robiou du Pont, Y. & Meinshausen, M. Warming assessment of the bottom-up Paris Agreement emissions pledges. Nat. Commun. 9, 4810 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Meinshausen, M. et al. National post-2020 greenhouse gas targets and diversity-aware leadership. Nat. Clim. Change 5, 1098–1106 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Peters, G., Andrew, R. M., Solomon, S. & Friedlingstein, P. Measuring a fair and ambitious climate agreement using cumulative emissions. Environ. Res. Lett. 10, 105004 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Pozo, C., Galán-Martín, Á., Reiner, D. M., Mac Dowell, N. & Guillén-Gosálbez, G. Equity in allocating carbon dioxide removal quotas. Nat. Clim. Change 10, 640–646 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  47. Clarke, L. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) Ch. 6 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

  48. IPCC Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

  49. Pan, J. Meeting human development goals with low emissions: an alternative to emissions caps for post-Kyoto from a developing country perspective. Int. Environ. Agreem. 5, 89–104 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Kolstad, C. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) Ch. 3 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

  51. Fleurbaey, M. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) Ch. 4 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

  52. Holz, C., Kartha, S. & Athanasiou, T. Fairly sharing 1.5: national fair shares of a 1.5 °C-compliant global mitigation effort. Int. Environ. Agreem. 18, 117–134 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Sælen, H., Tørstad, V., Holz, C. & Nielsen, T. D. Fairness conceptions and self-determined mitigation ambition under the Paris Agreement: is there a relationship? Environ. Sci. Policy 101, 245–254 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Anderson, K., Broderick, J. F. & Stoddard, I. A factor of two: how the mitigation plans of `climate progressive' nations fall far short of Paris-compliant pathways. Clim. Policy 20, 1290–1304 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. McMullin, B., Price, P., Jones, M. B. & McGeever, A. H. Assessing negative carbon dioxide emissions from the perspective of a national "fair share" of the remaining global carbon budget. Mitig. Adapt. Strateg. Glob. Change 25, 579–602 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Fyson, C. L., Baur, S., Gidden, M. & Schleussner, C.-F. Fair-share carbon dioxide removal increases major emitter responsibility. Nat. Clim. Change 10, 836–841 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  57. Schlosberg, D. Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature (Oxford Univ. Press, 2007).

  58. Wesselink, A., Buchanan, K. S., Georgiadou, Y. & Turnhout, E. Technical knowledge, discursive spaces and politics at the science–policy interface. Environ. Sci. Policy 30, 1–9 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Oppenheimer, M. et al. Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy (Univ. Chicago Press, 2019).

  60. Fraser, N. Recognition without ethics? Theory Cult. Soc. 18, 21–42 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Stirling, A. “Opening up” and “closing down”: power, participation, and pluralism in the social appraisal of technology. Sci. Technol. Hum. Values 33, 262–294 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Winkler, H. Reducing inequality and carbon emissions: innovation of developmental pathways. S. Afr. J. Sci. 114, 1–7 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Climate & Energy College, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Kate Dooley

  2. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Ceecee Holz

  3. Climate Equity Reference Project, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Ceecee Holz & Tom Athanasiou

  4. Stockholm Environment Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Sivan Kartha

  5. School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Sonja Klinsky

  6. Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    J. Timmons Roberts & Galen Hall

  7. Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Henry Shue

  8. Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Harald Winkler

  9. Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Simon Caney

  10. Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Elizabeth Cripps

  11. Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India

    Navroz K. Dubash

  12. Department of Social Sciences, Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong

    Paul G. Harris

  13. CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway

    Bård Lahn

  14. International Political Theory and Philosophy, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

    Darrel Moellendorf

  15. Department of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Darrel Moellendorf

  16. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Benito Müller

  17. School of Public Policy, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Ambuj Sagar

  18. University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Peter Singer

Authors
  1. Kate Dooley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ceecee Holz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sivan Kartha
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Sonja Klinsky
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. J. Timmons Roberts
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Henry Shue
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Harald Winkler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Tom Athanasiou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Simon Caney
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Elizabeth Cripps
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Navroz K. Dubash
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Galen Hall
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Paul G. Harris
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  14. Bård Lahn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  15. Darrel Moellendorf
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  16. Benito Müller
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  17. Ambuj Sagar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  18. Peter Singer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to the conception of the work. K.D., C.H., S. Kartha, S. Klinsky, H.S., T.R. and H.W. jointly wrote the paper. K.D., C.H., S. Kartha and G.H. contributed to the analysis and interpretation of data, including the figures. All authors contributed to discussions of revisions and improvements to this paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kate Dooley.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Climate Change thanks Sudhir Rajan, Narasimha Rao, Steve Vanderheiden and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Data 1

Supplementary data containing Supplementary Tables 1 (Overview of reviewed studies) and 2 (Analysis for Figs. 1 and 2).

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dooley, K., Holz, C., Kartha, S. et al. Ethical choices behind quantifications of fair contributions under the Paris Agreement. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 300–305 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01015-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01015-8

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing