scholarly journals On the Alleged Insufficiency of the Polluter Pays Principle

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle

Several theorists of climate change justice have argued that the polluter-pays principle fails to assign duties that, if fulfilled, would be sufficient to prevent or compensate for all climate change-induced harm to persons. This paper contends that their argument for this claim rests on a faulty account of how the costs of rectifying a collectively-caused harm or threat of harm should be allocated among agents who have incurred duties of corrective justice to bear these costs. Given a more plausible account of how these costs should be allocated, it is likely that the polluter-pays principle does in fact assign duties that, if fulfilled, would be sufficient to prevent or compensate for all climate change-induced harm to persons.

scholarly journals The Polluter-Pays Principle in Climate Change Law: an Economic Appraisal

Climate Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Heine ◽  
Michael G. Faure ◽  
Goran Dominioni
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Pigouvian Tax ◽  
Climate Change Negotiations ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Traded Goods ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Intuitive Conceptions ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle

There is a lively debate among scholars and policymakers on whether either consumers or producers should be seen as responsible for pollution caused in the production and consumption of traded goods. In this article, we argue that, in conformity with intuitive conceptions of causation, the economic incidence of a Pigouvian tax can be seen as a measure of the relative contribution to pollution of consumers and producers. Taking this perspective on the polluter-pays principle can help increase ambition in climate change action because it reduces the relevance of the question “Who is the polluter?” in climate change negotiations and enables a focus instead on the issue of “What can be done?” to reduce carbon emissions.

Of Harm, Culprits and Rectification: Obtaining Corrective Justice for Climate Change Displacement

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Fanny Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Unmet Needs ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Many

Abstract In light of the accelerating nature of climate change and its effect, it is unsurprising that various entities increasingly resort to courts and tribunals to seek to address the many harms and wrongs that clearly stem from climate change. This article discusses the opportunities in this context for those who face displacement by the effects of climate change, an issue that is not necessarily at the heart of either climate justice debates or climate displacement debates. Discussions about how to respond to displacement arising in the context of climate change often focus on the ‘protection space’ or ‘assistance space’, in which those affected are conceptualized as actual or potential seekers of protection or assistance, who may or may not be owed refuge elsewhere on account of unmet needs for shelter, support or safety. This article takes a different approach and conceptualizes those affected as potential or actual seekers of justice, who may be owed rectification for inflicted harm. The article thus contributes to emerging scholarship concerning climate change litigation and climate harm reversal, by focusing on the corrective justice potential for those who face the specific issue of displacement stemming from climate change. To this end, the article provides the relevant practical and analytical background, and discusses key recent law and policy developments in both the domestic and cross-border spheres. The article considers not merely the nexus between displacement stemming from climate change and considerations of justice, but also how and where justice in this context is or may be sought.

Have You Benefitted from Carbon Emissions? You May Be a “Morally Objectionable Free Rider”

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-296
Author(s):  
J. Spencer Atkins ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Carbon Emission ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
Ability To Pay ◽  
Climate Ethics ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
Beneficiary Pays ◽  
Compensatory Justice

Much of the climate ethics discussion centers on considerations of compensatory justice and historical accountability. However, little attention is given to supporting and defending the Beneficiary Pays Principle as a guide for policymaking. This principle states that those who have benefitted from an instance of harm have an obligation to compensate those who have been harmed. Thus, this principle implies that those benefitted by industrialization and carbon emission owe compensation to those who have been harmed by climate change. Beneficiary Pays is commonly juxtaposed with Polluter Pays Principle and the Ability to Pay Principle in the relevant literature. Beneficiary Pays withstands objections that raise suspicion for the latter two.

Climate Change and People on the Move

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
International Law ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Change Context ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
People Movement ◽  
Disproportionate Burden ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

The book applies a justice framework to analysis of the actual and potential role of international law with respect to people on the move in the context of anthropogenic climate change. That people are affected by the impacts of climate change is no longer doubted, including with implications for the movement of people (migration, displacement, relocation, etc.). The book tackles unique questions concerning international responsibility for people movement arising from the inequities inherent to climate change. Corrective and distributive justice provide the analytical backbone. They are explored in a substantial theoretical chapter and then applied to subsequent contextual analysis. Corrective justice supports analysis as to whether people movement in the climate change context could be conceived or framed as harm, loss, or damage which is compensable under international law, either through fault-centred regimes or no-fault regimes (i.e., insurance). Distributive justice supports analysis as to whether such movement could be conceived or framed as a disproportionate burden, either for those faced with movement or those faced with sheltering people on the move, from which duties of redistribution may stem. The book contributes to the growing scholarship and analysis concerning international law or governance and people movement in response to climate change by investigating the bounds of the law where the phenomenon is viewed as one of (in)justice.

The Polluter Pays Principle as an Instrument of Municipal and Global Environmental Governance in Climate Change Mitigation Law: Lessons from China, India, and the United States

Climate Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-93
Author(s):  
Paul A. Barresi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Change Mitigation

The disparate fates of the polluter pays principle (ppp) as an instrument of municipal environmental governance in the environmental law of China, India, and the United States illustrate how institutions and culture can shape its use. In China, essential elements of the Chinese legal tradition and an institutionalized devolution of power from the central government to local governments essentially neutralized the Chinese variant of the ppp in one important context by mobilizing certain culturally defined behavioural norms at the local level. In India, the Supreme Court has behaved in accordance with the socially revolutionary role intended for it by the framers of India’s Constitution by recognizing a maximalist conception of the ppp as part of Indian law, although other features of India’s unique legal culture and institutions have reduced the impact of this development. In the United States, the institutionalized fragmentation of the law-making process within the Federal Government has undermined even the implicit implementation of the ppp, to which US environmental statutes do not refer. The implications of these developments for the ppp as an instrument of municipal but also global environmental governance in climate change mitigation law flow less from the nominal status of the ppp in the laws of China, India, and the United States than from the unique institutional and cultural conditions that prevail there. The result is a case study in how institutions and culture can transform the implementation of a principle of environmental governance that at first glance might seem to be a simple exercise in economic rationality into a different exercise that is not simple at all.

scholarly journals The Evolution of the Emission Trading System in the EU and Italy in the 2030 Climate and Energy Framework. Brief Notes on Climate Change Litigation

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Emissions Trading ◽  
Emission Trading ◽  
Eu Ets ◽  
Emission Trading System ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
Combat Climate Change ◽  
Eu Emissions Trading System ◽  
The Eu

The EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is an important tool of the EU’s strategy to combat climate change, as it aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the “polluter pays” principle. The EU ETS is more effective than environment taxation that has had little application, as it is difficult to determine the amount of tax and how it should be applied to companies and consumers [1].

scholarly journals Beyond burdens and climate refugees: a stocktake of international responsibility-sharing and South Pacific climate-induced migration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy McElwain
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Pacific ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Emissions Reduction ◽  
Ability To Pay ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
South Pacific Climate ◽  
Climate Refugees

<p>This paper provides a ‘stocktake’ of common responsibility-sharing principles and goals in international agreements on climate change and refugees/migration to date and investigates how these principles might inform an Oceania agreement to deal with the emerging issue of South Pacific climate-induced migration. Where international agreements on climate change and refugees/migration overlap I identify a set of responsibility-sharing principles and goals and investigate their compatibility with the needs and demands of Pacific communities facing the prospect of climate-induced displacement. In this paper, I tap into ongoing political and academic debates concerning if and how we ought to differentiate states’ environmental responsibilities. I ask whose responsibility is it to address climate-induced migration? And what exactly are they responsible for? I find that international agreements on climate change and refugees/migration sufficiently overlap with the needs of Pacific communities to provide us with five common responsibility-sharing principles and goals that are potentially useful in the South Pacific climate migration context: the ability to pay principle, polluter pays principle, prevention, emissions reduction and (funding) adaptation. Notwithstanding responsibility-sharing’s negotiation difficulties, these responsibility-sharing principles have significant congruence with Pacific communities’ needs and demands, and thus provide us with a valuable starting point for an Oceania agreement on climate-induced migration that is informed first and foremost by the needs of those who may have to leave their homes.</p>

scholarly journals Duties of Corrective Justice and Historical Emissions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
In Virtue Of

This paper addresses the question of whether agents have incurred duties of corrective justice to bear the costs of climate change in virtue of having produced historical emissions, or emissions produced when it was still reasonable to be ignorant of the causes and harmful consequences of climate change. It argues that it is likely that agents have incurred duties of corrective justice in virtue of having produced some of their historical emissions, given that it is likely that they would have produced these emissions had they known, when they produced them, that the emissions would contribute to harmful climate change.

Corrective Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Compensatory Mechanisms ◽  
People Movement

The chapter builds on its predecessor in acknowledging that causality issues in the climate change and people movement context are complex. The chapter works with the premise that those who are nevertheless adversely affected and those that may wish to seek a remedy should be able to seek redress. The chapter therefore relies on the logic which has informed the establishment of no-fault compensatory mechanisms—especially those akin to insurance—in exploring alternative, ‘rougher’ mechanisms of correction through compensation. Detailed attention is paid to existing support for such mechanisms under international law and governance regimes.

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