Global Justice, Climate Change, and Human Rights

While climate change has been framed as an environmental issue from the very beginning of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations, over the years the concept has expanded to further emphasize it as a fundamental issue of human rights and global justice. This paper examines the evolution of the conception of climate change since 2009, arguing that the issue framing utilized by UNFCCC member states has increasingly trended toward some aspects of the climate justice frame, including disparities in vulnerability to climate change (loss and damage), human rights impacts, and social inequalities. This shift also extends to the framing adopted by civil society organizations in the form of the Climate Action Network (CAN International), in which a larger focus on issues of climate justice can be seen in recent years. These trends are then reviewed alongside the objectives, mechanisms, and language of the ratified text of the Paris Agreement in order to evaluate the status of the growing international norm of climate justice.

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Global justice, climate change and Miller’s theory of responsibility

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy ◽

10.1080/13698230802415946 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 501-517 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Margaret Moore

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Justice ◽

Justice Climate

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Introduction: Global Justice and Climate Change

Global Justice, Natural Resources, and Climate Change ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198791737.003.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 3-26

Author(s):

Megan Blomfield

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Political Philosophy ◽

Human Rights ◽

Global Justice ◽

Climate Justice ◽

The Political ◽

Nonideal Theory ◽

Resource Conflicts ◽

Mitigation And Adaptation

This chapter introduces climate change as a problem of natural resource justice by outlining some real-world examples of resource conflicts that are being generated, or exacerbated, by climate change. It then provides some necessary background for the discussion to follow. The science and predicted impacts of climate change are explained, along with the options for responding to this problem, such as mitigation and adaptation. The chapter then briefly introduces the debate about global justice and climate change, as it has appeared in the political philosophy literature, looking at the human rights approach, the distributive justice approach, and the key methodological distinctions between integrationism and isolationism and ideal versus nonideal theory. After providing further characterization of, and motivation for, the natural resources approach to climate justice that is taken in the work, it concludes with an outline of the chapters to follow.

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Basic Rights

10.23943/princeton/9780691202280.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Henry Shue

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Human Rights ◽

International Relations ◽

Forest Fires ◽

Global Justice ◽

Global Poverty ◽

Original Publication ◽

Fortieth Anniversary ◽

Basic Rights ◽

Subsistence Rights

Since its original publication, this book has proven increasingly influential to those working in political philosophy, human rights, global justice, and the ethics of international relations and foreign policy, particularly in debates regarding foreign policy's role in alleviating global poverty. The book asks: Which human rights ought to be the first honored and the last sacrificed? It argues that subsistence rights, along with security rights and liberty rights, serve as the ground of all other human rights. This classic work, now available in a thoroughly updated fortieth-anniversary edition, includes a substantial new chapter examining how the accelerating transformation of our climate progressively undermines the bases of subsistence like sufficient water, affordable food, and housing safe from forest-fires and sea-level rise. Climate change threatens basic rights.

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The Oxford Handbook of Global Justice

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198714354.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Political Philosophy ◽

Human Rights ◽

Global Justice ◽

Global Citizenship ◽

Global Problems ◽

New Ideas ◽

Territorial Rights ◽

Exciting Area ◽

Changing World

Global justice is an exciting area of refreshing, innovative new ideas for a changing world facing significant challenges. Not only does work in this area often force us to rethink ethics and political philosophy more generally, but its insights contain seeds of hope for addressing some of the greatest global problems facing humanity today. This book has been selective in bringing together some of the most pressing topics and issues in global justice as understood by the leading voices from both established and rising stars across twenty-five new chapters. The book explores severe poverty, climate change, egalitarianism, global citizenship, human rights, immigration, territorial rights, and much more.

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Commentary on Part 3: International political and economic structures

Les ateliers de l éthique ◽

10.7202/1021337ar ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 41-52

Author(s):

Colin Farrelly

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Human Rights ◽

Intellectual Property ◽

Property Rights ◽

Intellectual Property Rights ◽

Global Justice ◽

Good Deal ◽

The Earth ◽

Common Ownership ◽

Aging World

Mathias Risse’s On Global Justice is a unique and important contribution to the growing literature on global justice. Risse’s approach to a variety of topics, ranging from domestic justice and common ownership of the earth, to immigration, human rights, climate change, and labour rights, is one that conceives of global justice as a philosophical problem. In this commentary I focus on a number of reservations I have about approaching global justice as a philosophical rather than an inherently practical problem. To his credit Risse does acknowledge at various stages of the book that a good deal of the applied terrain he ventures into presupposes complex and contentious empirical assumptions. A greater emphasis on those points would, I believe, helpfully reveal the shortcomings of tackling intellectual property rights by appealing to Hugo Grotius’s stance on the ownership of seas, or the shortcomings of tackling health by invoking the language of human rights without acknowledging and addressing the constraints and challenges of promoting health in an aging world.

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