Skip to content

Ethical choices behind quantifications of fair contributions under the Paris Agreement

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

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.

 

Full list of Authors: Kate Dooley, Christian Holz, Sivan Kartha, Sonja Klinsky, J. Timmons Roberts, Henry Shue, Harald Winkler, Tom Athanasiou, Simon Caney, Elizabeth Cripps, Navroz K. Dubash, Galen Hall, Paul G. Harris, Bård Lahn, Darrel Moellendorf, Benito Müller, Ambuj Sagar & Peter Singer

 

Read Here

You might like these publication categories

Recent publications

Earth System Governance – Volume 24

We are delighted to present the twenty-fourth volume of Earth System Governance, the open-access journal for all those interested in…

The Politics and Governance of Decarbonization: The Interplay between State and Non-State Actors in Sweden

This book examines how, and under what conditions, states – in collaboration with non-state actors – can govern a societal…

Sustaining Development in Small Islands: Climate Change, Geopolitical Security, and the Permissive Liberal Order

The viability of small island developing states (SIDS) is threatened by three distinct processes – a backlash against globalisation; rising…