Christian Baatz (Kiel University): Assessing climate policies from a justice perspective. Finance for adaptation, loss & damage and beyond

Climate Change and Future Generations - Generations - Public Ethics International Seminars; a series of seminars organised in collaboration between the Public Ethics Research Group of the DIRPOLIS Institute and the Labont (Center for Ontology) of the University of Turin. These seminars are part of the All4Climate - Italy 2021 events, promoted by the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
Live streaming on Web-Ex platform.

ABSTRACT

Climate impacts disproportionally hit the Global South where people have contributed very little to the problem. From a global justice perspective, they are entitled to support in adapting to climatic changes and remedying so called “loss and damage”. This raises the question who exactly is entitled to receiving climate finance and who ought to provide it. This talk focuses on the latter issue. Based on the climate ethics discourse it develops a duty-bearer account that in turn informs criteria for assessing policy instruments suitable to raise climate finance. It argues that it is important to make a categorical distinction between the feasibility and the desirability of a given policy and proposes fairness, effectiveness and feasibility as the main assessment components. The criteria are then applied to different policies such as carbon taxes, emissions trading schemes, border tax adjustments and the Clean Development Mechanism. After presenting some tentative results, the talk will end with an outlook on how to rework the criteria in order to assess Carbon Dioxide Removal options and policies that govern these measures.