A Defence of the Beneficiary Pays Principle for the
International Distribution of Climate Costs and Claims
Abstract
This thesis investigates which distributive principle should be internationally used for sharing out the costs and claims related to climate change. In the first Chapter I explain how there are four main costs and claims that need to be distributed: the cost of mitigation, the cost of adaption, the cost of damages and claims to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
In the second Chapter I discuss how global climate negotiations also take place in an international environment that maintains vast inequalities in wealth and resources and a principle of international distribution should address this. Firstly because people who already have limited wealth and resources will be in more extreme positions of vulnerability due to the affects of climate change, jeopardizing the basic needs of some. Secondly this divide is not arbitrary but resultant from past cases of domination, exploitation and injustices.
Redistribution of wealth can occur by distributing the costs of climate change amongst rich developed countries and claims to emit CO2, providing valuable developmental opportunities, amongst poor developing countries.
In the third Chapter I develop an account of the beneficiary pays principle (BPP) and explain how it is instructive about distributing the four factors related to climate change whilst also addressing global inequality of wealth and
resources. The BPP is a principle of redistribution that assigns distributive duties to those who benefit from certain adverse actions. In terms of climate change, if someone has benefitted from adverse acts, such as releasing climate harming green house gases into the atmosphere, have a duty to redistribute their wealth in order to pay for the costs of this action. I show how the BPP holds the most promise as a fair principle of distribution in comparison to the other two often cited principles; the ability to pays principle (APP) and the polluter pays principle (PPP), because the BPP combines the most common sense aspects of fairness from these other two whilst avoiding their most adverse consequences. I develop an account of the BPP that is backwards looking, it perceives historical acts as morally relevant, yet it does not aim to correct past injustices. Instead it questions the legitimacy of current resource distribution in virtue of how
historical injustices created this distribution, which can undermine entitlements to benefits and resources.
In the fourth Chapter I reply to some critiques of the BPP. The main critique is the non-identity problem, which is the problem that no one has actually benefitted from climate related activities due to the counterfactual element in this claim. I defend the BPP by arguing that it only poses a threat if we accept a certain counterfactual description of a benefit, which is not necessary. Next I consider whether adopting a principle that acknowledges unjust global disparities in wealth is actually favourable. I look at an arguments put forward by Mathias Risse (2012) that question whether the global order is actually harmful, and so whether we are required to address the inequalities within this order. I deny Risse’s line of argument by casting doubt on the empirical
Contents
ABSTRACT……….………..………….p. 2. CONTENTS……….………. p. 3. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……….………. p. 4. INTRODUCTION……….……….p. 5 CHAPTER I –DISTRIBUTIVE COSTS AND CLAIMS ………..…………...p. 7. 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Mitigation 1.3 Adaption 1.4 Damages 1.5 Emissions Budget 1.6 Conclusion
CHAPTER II- GLOBAL INEQUALITY………p. 12. 2.1 Introduction
2.2 Two Tracks
2.3 Radical Inequality and Worsening Positions of Vulnerability
2.4 Unequal Positions due to Colonial Legacy and Compound Injustices 2.5 Conclusion
CHAPTER III-THE BENEFICIARY PAYS PRINCIPLE……….p. 19. 3.1 Introduction
3.2 Principles of Distribution 3.3 The Negative BPP
3.4 How the BPP is Instructive About Sharing Distributive Factors and Addressing Global Inequality
3.4 Conclusion
CHAPTER IV –CRITIQUES OF THE BPP……….…..p. 35. 4.1 Introduction
4.2Non-Identity Problem
4.3 Absence of unjust inequality
CONCLUSION ………p. 45. BIBLIOGRAPHY……….p. 47.
Acknowledgements
I would like to say a big thank you to Marc Davidson for his kind words and advise that have aided me throughout the writing of this thesis.
Introduction
The Earth’s surface has been warmer in the last three decades than any preceding decade since 1850 (IPCC, 2014, p. 2), and this warming is having a major global effect on our environment. By 2050 the percentage of people in Africa struggling with water shortages is predicted to increase to 29%. Climate change will also cause the number of people suffering from malign diseases such as malaria and dengue fever to increase (Caney, 2006, p. 466). Other affects will be increased rainfall causing destructive flooding, increased oceanic
temperatures causing sea level rise and many more extreme weather events. Global warming has been rapid since the pre-industrial era and this has been largely driven by economic and population growth (IPCC, 2014, p. 4). Therefore human activity is culpable for many of the negative affects of climate change.
Climate change raises various distributional issues due to its adverse affects that threaten both our ecosystems and civilizations. Firstly, the costs of mitigation, adaption and damages need to be internationally distributed in order for us to deal with the exponential problems of global warming and a changing climate. Secondly, our atmosphere is effectively a sink that only has finite capacity to absorb C02 and other pollutants. A carbon budget has recently been worked out that quantifies how much CO2 the atmosphere can absorb before it starts to have irreversibly detrimental affects, and around 25 percent of this budget is still available for use. If emissions continue as they currently are, we will succeed this amount in the next 18 years (Evershed, 2017). Emissions therefore need to be reduced and claims to emit remaining greenhouse gases into the atmosphere need to be internationally distributed amongst countries and other collectives.
How the global community should share out these costs and claims needs to be established. Edward Page (2012, p. 303) endorses the importance of
choosing a fair principle of distribution for these matters because “selecting one set of criteria over another will alter the flow of very large flows of financial and other resources”. Whatever principle of distribution is chosen will have a huge effect on many agents all over the world, and different principles will lead to flows of money going to different people. Therefore it is immensely important to choose a principle of distribution that is fair to the global community and can be justified, since the distribution of climate costs and claims can have a profound effect on peoples lives. Whatever principle of burden sharing and distribution that is chosen needs, therefore, to be accompanied by a normative account of why it has been chosen over other proposed principles.
My aim here is to investigate principles for the distribution of climate costs and claims. For this purpose I will particularly focus on the beneficiary pays principle. The beneficiary pays principle assigns duties to those who have benefitted from climate related activities. The other two principles that are often considered are the polluter pays principle (PPP) and the ability to pay principle (APP). The PPP assigns duties to those who actually emitted dangerous GHG’s
into the atmosphere in virtue of the fact they caused the problem. Therefore the PPP calls upon those who have been historical accountable for pollution to shoulder the burdens of climate costs and claims, for instance those who have emitted more than their fair share of emissions in the past should now work on reducing their emissions, so others can have the remaining claims to emit
(Nuemayer, 2000, pp. 3-4). The APP, on the other hand, is a principle that assigns duties to those who can pay for climate costs, regardless of whether they are accountable for the problem (Duus-Ottestrom, 2014, p. 451). Page (2012, p. 305) explains how this principle entails that people should contribute towards
resolving the problem of climate change “only in proportion to their relative capacities to bear such burdens”.
In the first chapter of this enquiry I describe the four factors related to climate change that should be shared out by a fair principle of distribution. These are the costs of mitigating climate change, the costs of adapting to climate
change, the cost of paying for climate related damage and claims to the
remaining emissions budget, which is a finite and commonly owned resource. In the second chapter I explain how we internationally negotiate about climate costs in a world that maintains vast global inequalities in wealth and resources, and how a principle of distribution should address this. In the third chapter I investigate the BPP as a principle of distribution, and I formulate what I term a negative version of the BPP. The term ‘negative’ is indebted to a distinction made by Simon Caney (2006) where he argues that backwards-looking principles of distribution can take a ‘negative view’ of history. This is when such principles are not intended to actually correct past injustices through redistribution of current resources, instead they are intended to undermine current holdings to resources due to the fact those holdings are the product of unjust actions. I consider how this principle would distribute the factors described in the first chapter and how it addresses global inequality. In the final chapter I examine two critiques of the BPP that try to undermine its legitimacy. These are the non-identity problem and doubt that the global order is actually a harmful injustice that needs to be
Chapter I: Distributive Costs and
Claims
1.1 Introduction
In his influential book on climate justice, Henry Shue (2014, p. 48) pinpoints four important questions that are deeply involved in any deliberation about the affects of climate change. These are: “What is a fair allocation of costs for preventing the global warming that is still avoidable? What is fair allocation of the costs of coping with the social consequences of global warming that cannot be avoided? What is a fair allocation of emissions of greenhouse gases? And, finally, what background allocation of wealth would allow the bargaining to be a fair process?” The first three of these questions are concerned with fair
distribution of climate costs and claims, which need to be identified before we can consider how they should be shared out. The final question identifies the problem of global inequality and how this links to climate negotiations, which I shall examine in the subsequent chapter.
In this Chapter I present the four distributive factors that a principle of distribution should instruct about sharing with respects to climate change. These are three costs and one set of claims to the remaining emissions budget. I
present these four factors alongside the question involved with climate deliberations that they are related to and explain why they are integral to climate negotiations.
1.2 Mitigation
“What is a fair allocation of costs for preventing the global warming that is still avoidable (Shue, 2014, p. 48)?”
Mitigation is the concise term for any act, policy or infrastructure put in place to prevent global warming that’s still avoidable. Caney (2010, p. 204) discusses how a duty to “engage in mitigation” is one of the main duties that can be ascribed when “bearing the burdens of global climate change”. This duty, he explains, can take on a variety of forms, for instance through individual practices such as reducing air travel or insulating our homes (Caney, 2010, p. 204).
However there are also much larger national and international ways that this duty can be fulfilled, such as creating protected global climate sinks or
implementing alternative energy sources so we reduce our output of CO2.
Therefore the first distributive factor in relation to climate change is distribution of the large financial cost for putting such practices in place that can stop
preventable global warming. In fact Article 2 of the 2015 Paris Agreement states that all the countries that signed the treaty intend to make “finance flows
consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilient development” (UN, 2015, p. 3). Finding ways of lowering our
greenhouse gases through means such as using renewable resources, for instance, will amount to the mitigation of climate change.
The World Bank predicts that in order to manage global warming by 2°C on average, the total cost will exceed $1 trillion annually by the year 2020 (Page, 2012, p. 303). So the cost of mitigation is certainly not futile. Furthermore, undergoing carbon sequestration or large alterations to the way in which we use energy will involve not only huge financial costs but also immense changes to people’s daily lifestyles. In order to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2, it has been predicted that emissions will need to be reduced 60% below the level emitted in 1990 (Shue, 2014, p. 49). Therefore many industries such as the gas oil and transport industries will need to immensely alter, downsize or eventually cease existing if we are to make proper leeway on reducing the incredibly large amounts of CO2 they release into the atmosphere. For instance, switching entirely to low carbon technology and fuels in our vehicles is one proposed way of mitigating climate change, but it is observed that this switch will have to be influenced by behaviour, culture and lifestyle changes that complement
technological and structural change (IPCC, 2014, p. 100). Therefore a reshuffle in our energy supply will also amount to a reshuffle in our behaviour and lifestyle, as well as having affects upon influential industries within our economy.
Rich developed countries such as the US and most parts of Europe will subsequently have to change how they currently create the energy that much of economies are reliant upon. Poorer less developed countries such as China and India, on the other hand, would have to compromise valuable development opportunities that would help grow their economy if they were forced to switch to more expensive renewable ways of creating energy. Questions of distributive justice therefore begin to arise since different country’s needs and abilities need to be compared in order to work out who should pay for and implementing mitigation strategies. The Paris Agreement states that financial flows that aim to lower greenhouse gases need to recognise“equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances” (UN, 2015, p. 3).
Subsequently, our duty to engage in mitigation is often met with global reluctance, due to the alterations it will ensue upon people’s behaviour and GHG emitting lifestyles. Switches to renewable energy and implementation of carbon sinks are very costly endeavours. For example a reforestation project, set up by a Dutch NGO, is currently aiming to create an immense Carbon sink along the Araguaia Corridor in Brazil, replanting a 2,600 km long and up to 40 km wide corridor of trees. Billions of trees, therefore, need to be planted with each tree costing between 40 cents to €3 (black-jaguar.org). One of the roles of international climate negotiations is working out the fairest compromise for how states should
collectively foot the bill of immense costs like this.
1.3 Adaptation
“What is fair allocation of the costs of coping with the social consequences of global warming that cannot be avoided (Shue, 2014, p. 48)?”
Even if the actions necessary to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were made today, negative affects of climate change on both our
civilizations and our environment would still occur. The world has already begun warming and show signs of severe climactic strain and Shue (2014, pp. 51-52) explains how “[t]oday is already the morning after” for two reasons. Firstly we cannot undo the immense amount of GHG emissions we have already placed in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. We have already emitted far too much CO2 and the earth’s temperature is already rising in virtue of this, causing negative climactic affects all over the world. Secondly, as discussed above, the likelihood that governments will make a concerted effort to reduce their CO2 emissions to the desired amount is extraordinarily slim due to the adverse affects this will have on some of the worlds most influential industries and the economy in general.
Therefore, not only do we need to try and prevent the negative affects of climate change, we also need to adapt to the affects that already are and will continue to occur. This is the second cost induced by changing climate, since human influence on the environment has most likely doubled the probability of heat waves of some areas of the world and lead to a dramatic increase in both flooding and storm surges since around 1970 (IPCC, 2014, pp. 7-8). Adaptation costs can come in a variety of forms; for instance, in Europe adaption is taking place through coastal management such as the building of floodgates and dams. In Asia agroforestry and coastal reforestation of mangroves are two main techniques (IPCC, 2014, p. 106).
It tends to be the case that the cost of adapting to extreme weather is internalized within national boundaries. For instance Japan is a country prone to earthquakes and tsunamis and after the 1996 Kobe earthquake, where 6,000 people were killed, the Japanese government poured huge amounts of resources into protecting structures against shockwaves (Glantz, 2011). The
implementation of this new infrastructure was paid for by Japanese tax-payers, as they are obviously the ones who were affected by these weather events. It can be questioned, however, whether the national internalization of anthropogenic climate adaption costs is entirely just. This is because whereas the emission of GHG’s is globalized, it happens all over the world, adverse affects such as storm surges and droughts are localized; some areas are particularly prone and vulnerable to them. For instance last year 41 million people were affected by flooding in India, Bangladesh and Nepal (Farand, 2017). Yet the sea level rise that caused these deadly floods are a global affect, contributed to by all countries. UN agencies, international development organizations and a number of NGOs have already begun internationally cooperating adaption strategies and creating multilateral funding mechanisms to pay for adaption costs, acknowledges
collective responsibility (IPCC, 2014, p. 106).
Consequently, the negative affects of climate change already inflicted upon our civilization and environment provides us with a duty of ‘adaption’, which Caney (2010, p. 204) describes as a “duty to devote resources to protect people from the ill affects of climate change”. Thus it is necessary to pay for the
costs of adapting to dramatic weather occurrences and climate change, and a principle of distribution needs to decipher how this cost should be shared out on a global scale. However, adapting to unavoidable climate change is not the only social consequence of the climate problem, since a lot of damage has already been inflicted upon societies and civilizations. Thus the final costs that need to be internationally distributed are damage costs.
1.4 Damages
“What is fair allocation of the costs of coping with the social consequences of global warming that cannot be avoided (Shue, 2014, p. 48)?”
The second social consequence of unavoidable climate change is paying for the costs of immense damages that have occurred due to extreme weather and climactic strain. As Shue (2014, pp. 51-52) said, “[t]oday is already the morning after”, the affects of climate change have already been felt in some parts of the world. Droughts, flooding and sea level rise have already have begun to take affect and wreak havoc. For instance, it has been observed that the
Greenland ice sheet, which makes up 8 percent of all the ice on earth, has been rapidly melting since 1993, already causing dangerous sea level rise (IPCC, 2014, p. 48)
To provide example of the kind of damage that will need to be financed due to climate change, Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas (2010, p. 61) assert that ‘climate refugees’ will become one of the most crucial issues of global
governance over the coming years. Predictions suggest that the problem will succeed any previous refugee crisis that we have encountered. It has been estimated that by 2050 there are likely to be 162 million refugees from sea level rise and 50 million from droughts and other climatic impacts (Biermann & Boas, 2010, p. 68). Aid and assistance needs to be provided for these suspected
millions of people whose homes and lives may be savaged by climactic events. As costs like this become larger and even more pressing, it needs to be globally agreed upon how to distribute them.
1.5 Emissions budget
“What is a fair allocation of emissions of greenhouse gases (Shue, 2014, p. 48)?” Finally, our atmosphere is also a finite and rapidly depleting natural resource, and one of the biggest findings that resulted from the most recent IPCC report was a quantified carbon budget. This predicted how much CO2 we can still release into the atmosphere before we have emitted so much that the world temperature will have risen by 2°C. This kind of raise will have detrimental affects on our environment. It has been predicted that if we continue emitting at the rate we currently are, then we will exceed our emissions budget by 2045, which is in less than 30 years (IPCC, 2014). Therefore a cap has been established of how many emissions we can still emit without a detrimental affect. Claims to this capped amount of emissions need to be globally distributed and this is where questions of distributive justice become relevant.
One proposed scheme about how to ‘privatize’ the atmosphere and share out remaining use of its assimilative capacity to absorb CO2 without detrimental affects is through emissions caps and trading. This is where countries and
corporations are provided with a capped amount of how many GHG’s they are allowed to emit, usually around one ton of emissions, yet they are allowed free reign to trade off their own emissions rights (EDF, 2018). The problem in regards to distribution of our remaining emissions budget and emission rights, however, is that developed countries have historically already used far more then their ‘share’ of emissions in order to develop. This means that developed countries have deprived developing countries of their chance to emit large
amounts of GHG’s, since they have released a disproportionate historical amount. A principle of distribution, therefore, needs to instruct upon a way of distributing remaining claims to the emissions budget in light of the fact certain proportions of the world have historically emitted much more. Thus the final factor that needs to be distributed in relation to climate change is remaining claims to emit CO2 into the atmosphere, since the assimilative capacity of the atmosphere is a finite and rapidly reducing resource.
1.6 Conclusion
To conclude, there are four different factors that a principle needs to be instructive about distributing. Three of these are costs and the final factor is concerned with remaining claims to access a depleted and commonly owned natural resource. The costs are financing mitigation, paying for adaptation and compensating for damage. The claims that need to be distributed are allowances to still emit GHGs into the atmosphere.
Chapter II: Global Inequality
2.1 Introduction
In the previous chapter I described the four different distributive factors that climate negotiations need to address and that a principle of distribution should be instructive about internationally sharing. I now explain why
discussions about distributing these factors should acknowledge that the world is highly disproportionate in wealth and resources. Distribution of the costs and claims of climate change can address wealth inequality by sharing the costs amongst rich developed states and the remaining claims to emit GHG’s amongst poor developing states.
In the first section of this Chapter I explain how acknowledging wealth inequality is something that can be incorporated into or left out of climate negotiations and the implications of each negotiating track. I describe how climate change is effectively one of the first problems that the world needs to address as a unified collective; therefore climate negotiations can provide opportunity for wealth to be shared more evenly through redistribution of climate costs and claims. In the next two sections I give some reasons for why wealth inequality might be addressed in negotiations by a principle of
distribution. The first reason is because there is a link between vulnerabilities to climate change and wealth distribution across the globe. Climate change has the most adverse affects on many of the poorest states within our global community, worsening existent inequalities and threatening some people’s basic needs. Global developmental disparities should therefore be addressed in climate negotiations because these disparities are exacerbated by the problem of climate change. The second reason is that the global disparities in wealth and resources, which are worsened by climate change, are not arbitrary but the result of
unaccounted compound injustices such as overuse of the climate sink and historical domination of resources by the global ‘West’. If climate negotiations are to take place in accordance with justice, they should aim to rearrange some of the current international distribution of wealth, in virtue of the fact this distribution is founded in past exploitation.
2.2 Two different tracks
There are two kind of approaches that can be taken in climate
negotiations and Shue (2014, pp. 27-28) has labelled these either a ‘one-track’ approach, which is purely climate related and doesn’t consider global inequality, or a ‘two-track’ approach, which acknowledges developmental disparities
between states and widens the scope of justice considerably.
Shue (2014, p. 28) explains how a ‘one-track’ purely climate related approach will instruct upon distribution of the remaining emissions budget and the costs of adaption, mitigation and damages without considering how states
vary in terms of wealth and resources. Failing to acknowledge the background context of inequality within our global arrangement will lead to either
negotiations that conclude complete equality in our distribution of costs and claims or a grandfathering distributive principle. This is the principle that every country continues to emit the relative proportion of greenhouse gases it
currently emits, for instance the US will continue to emit an immense per capita amount compared to regions in Africa, yet all countries make an equal concerted effort to reduce their relative emissions overall (Nash, 2009, p. 811). Upon a grandfathering principle disproportionate global emissions would remain the same yet be reduced in sum. A ‘one-track’ approach, consequently, assumes a position of global equality between nations and negotiates without
acknowledging that some countries have already used more then their fair share of emissions and have a lot more wealth and resources to dispense.
A ‘one track’ approach is more practical because its application doesn’t require complex background considerations of wealth inequality. Yet Shue (2014, p. 48) thinks the final question, following on from the three I have stated in the first chapter, which is deeply involved in global deliberations about climate change is: “what background allocation of wealth would allow the bargaining to be a fair process?” A ‘one-track’ approach may create an unfair bargaining process because an approach that can result in demanding similar duties of everyone in relation to climate change will place very feeble demands on rich industrialized countries and very large requests on poorer industrializing countries. It doesn’t consider factors such as assigning duties proportional to how much wealth a state has or how some states have used far more than their fair share of commonly owned resources. Therefore by failing to acknowledge background differences in wealth, a ‘one-track’ approach does not make any headway in reducing developmental disparities.
Alternatively a ‘two-track’ approach considers questions of justice within global negotiations and acknowledges how global negotiations take place against the backdrop of global wealth inequality, aiming to restore and address this to some degree. Wealth inequality has already been recognized in a number of climate treaties. For instance the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change noted that common but differentiated responsibilities should be maintained between nations dependent on how developed they are (UN, 1992). Similarly the 2015 Paris Agreement aimed to “strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable
development and efforts to eradicate poverty” (UN, 2015, p.2). However this recognition has also been contended since some argue that it widens the scope of distributive justice into restorative justice and this is impractical for climate negotiations.
Due to the uniqueness of climate change as a problem that needs to be resolved by all states as an integrated international unit, it provides leverage for large developing countries to demand for a ‘two-track’ approach to be taken and for their lack of development and resources to be addressed. In the case of climate change developed countries need developing countries in order to have any discernable affect on CO2 levels in the atmosphere. No country can act alone
in trying to solve climate change because no country’s emissions and
environmental footprint is large enough on its own to have a profound enough affect. Developed countries like the US and countries in Europe need the
cooperation of developing countries such as China and India, which are currently emitting huge amounts of CO2, in order to make any discernable change to levels within the atmosphere. China alone currently releases 24% of global CO2
emissions per annum; therefore their cooperation is key if CO2 levels are to be reduced. China has in fact made it clear that their first priority before addressing climate change is to meet development needs, so if they are to cooperate in reducing CO2 then an effort needs to be made to aid them in their development (Caney, 2012, p. 279). This could be done, for example, if developed countries bore a larger distribution of the mitigation costs and contributed towards the transfer of Chinese industry onto more renewable energy sources.
So, whereas in most global negotiations the countries with the most wealth and power have the most leverage to influence negotiations, in climate negotiations developing countries that emit a lot of CO2 also have an influence because their involvement is key. This does not succinctly correlate with wealth and power, since many poorer countries are now emitting large amounts. Therefore larger developing countries have a strong influence with which to demand a ‘two-track’ approach and address their weak position in the global political economic order due to past compound injustices.
A ‘two-track’ approach will lead to principles of distribution such as the BPP, PPP or the APP because these principles aim to redistribute climate costs and claims with reference to global inequality or recognition of past disparities in emissions. The PPP assigns duties on the basis of whoever caused the problem and emitted a lot in the past, the APP assigns duties on the basis of whoever has the wealth and ability to pay and the BPP assigns duties on the basis of whoever has benefitted from climate related activities that have generated burdens for others. Therefore these principles are restorative, or acknowledge wealth inequalities. I now explain two reasons for why a ‘two-track’ approach might be taken in climate negotiations.
2.3 Radical Inequality and worsening positions of vulnerability
One reason why a two-track approach that addresses global wealth inequality might be utilized in climate negotiations is because, due to the current world order, the detrimental affects of climate change will increasingly
jeopardise the lives and basic needs of the most vulnerable people in our global community. It doesn’t take a lot of observation to figure out that the world is currently highly disproportionate in wealth. The richest eight people on the globe now control more wealth than the poorest half of the world combined, and more than 4.3 billion people in the world right now live on less then $5 a day (Hickel, 2017). These vast inequalities in affluence across the globe are relevant to climate change and climate justice because as weather disasters such as flooding and droughts occur more frequently, developing countries suffer a lot more from the affects of these events, worsening global inequality and
A number of empirical examples can show how radical wealth inequality is exacerbated by climate disasters and can threaten people’s basic needs, for instance the difference between various countries’ ability to deal with dramatic weather events. New York is a city prone to flooding because Manhattan in an area of low-lying land that is often subject to a lot of precipitation. However the Mayor of New York is able to implement a $20 billion climate-protection plan based on the Dutch Levy system throughout the city (Rolling Stone, 2013). Therefore New Yorkers do not need to fear for their lives in the case of intense rainfall, since their state has the wealth and the resources to protect them. New York is prone to extreme weather, yet the city and its residence are not
vulnerable to it because the state is affluent enough to cope with adverse weather affects. Nobody has to fear for his or her life in New York because of flooding. On the other hand, the city of Dhaka in Bangladesh is another low-lying area of land that is prone to floods. Last year 145 people died due to flooding in this city and around 100,000 houses were destroyed (Bamforth, 2017). Dhaka is not just prone to severe flooding, its people are also vulnerable to its affects since they do not have the wealth to rebuild the city and protect themselves against each flood. Not just the basic needs but also the lives of Bangladeshi citizens are in jeopardy, simply because of a lack of wealth and resources. The important point here is that a person’s chance of survival in a dramatic weather event is largely dependent on the wealth of their nation, and so extreme inequalities in wealth contributes to extreme inequalities in survival likelihood. As climate change intensifies, so will extreme weather events and the effect this has on the basic needs and survival chances of citizens in poorer parts of the world can become increasingly dire.
Secondly, the unequal affects that climate has on agriculture around the world is another example of radical inequality. If UK farmers have a bad season one year, the affects felt by UK citizens in general will be minimal. Perhaps the price of strawberries may rise in the local supermarket because corporations will have to import them from elsewhere rather then growing them on their own land. However, nobody will starve to death because the UK and other developed countries can afford the infrastructure, transportation systems and ability to feed their citizens regardless of local crops. On the other hand, a bad season in parts of Sub Saharan Africa can be fatal. Local farmers depend on their local crops and predominantly rain fed agriculture in order to survive; they cannot source their food from elsewhere (Cooper, 2008, p. 25). If the harvest is bad then local farmers cannot just go to the shop to buy an imported good for dinner, their lives might be in serious jeopardy. This is a troubling thought considering 22 out of the 28 countries in Sub Saharan Africa are expected to face water stress by 2025 (Cooper, 2008, p. 25). Lack of wealth leads to lack of infrastructure, and lack of infrastructure can be fatal if local resources fail. Therefore the effect that climate has on agriculture around the world leaves people in immensely varying positions of vulnerability.
Thomas Nagel’s idea of radical inequality, discussed by Shue (2014, p. 540), indicates why this global inequality is problematic; there are enough resources in the world for everyone to have their basic needs met (access to
water, education, food for example). However, some people have far more then just the resources to meet their basic needs and other people have much less. Changing the global distribution of resources so that everyone can meet their basic needs will have very little effect on those who currently have a lot of wealth and resources, it will certainly not jeopardise their rights to have their basic needs met. However it will have an immensely positive, often lifesaving, effect on those who are currently struggling to meet basic needs. Therefore we are in a position of radical inequality; some have far more than enough and others have far less than enough, and the continuing affects of climate change will add to this radical inequality (Shue, 2014, p. 540).
Consequently huge inequalities in wealth across the globe entail that some people struggle to have their basic needs met whereas others are stupendously affluent. Those who are currently struggling to meet their basic needs will only become more vulnerable due to the worsening affects of climate change. Thus global inequality may be considered in climate negotiations in order for some redistribution of wealth to occur from developed to developing countries. This would be by a principle that shares out climate costs amongst developed countries and claims to the emission belt amongst developing ones, thus quashing some of the radical inequality that is currently existent and contributed to by climate change.
2.4 Unequal Positions due to Colonial legacy and Compound injustices
A second reason why a ‘two-track’ approach might be taken is because our currently disproportionate world order, which permits the poorest people in the world to become more vulnerable to climate change, is not just an arbitrary factor. Currently unequal global distribution of wealth can be attributed to a historical legacy of unjust transfers of resources from some parts of the world to others. Climate negotiations are one of the first discussions where all countries collectively need to work on a solution to a joint problem and so they provide opportunity for wider considerations of global justice to be considered. Therefore a ‘two-track’ approach that uses this collective negotiating
opportunity to also address development disparities will provide a much better outcome for developing countries; the ‘losers’ in the global order who have suffered unjust treatment in the past.
Megan Blomfield (2016) supports the idea that climate negotiations should regard a wider umbrella of historical injustices and she addresses the common intuition many philosophers and policy makers hold that the climate sink has been unfairly used. She argues that this intuition has not just arisen because countries have had unequal access to the sink in the past. The reason why they have had unequal access is because of “significantly unjust allocation of fossil fuels and their benefits” which “underlies historical use of climate sink capacity”. By “unjust allocation of fossil fuels”, Blomfield (2016, p. 76) is
referring to how access to oil has previously been seized by colonial authorities, acquired through the use of violence and a “might makes right” approach to natural resources. Therefore oil is a natural resource that has been unjustly used because it has historically been extracted by previous colonizing states, which
are now developed countries, often through unsavoury means such as colonial expansion, exploitation and thievery. Nikita Dhawan (2014, p. 27) comments on how “[t]he scarcity of land in Europe was solved through the colonial theft of indigenous lands in the name of “rational use of lands”.” Colonizing European countries effectively took land and resources like oil off colonized states to make up for the lack of their own. Furthermore the burning of these taken fossil fuels leads to the emission of GHG’s, which diminishes the atmosphere’s collective ability to absorb CO2. Thus countries have not only used the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere to unequal measure, but also “this inequality appears to be borne of injustice” (Blomfield, 2016, p. 76).
Blomfield (2016, p. 76) also observes how this unjust colonial expansion and exploitation of resources had a persisting legacy in the industrial revolution and beyond, since colonialism left colonising nations with more wealth and stronger political institutions. This allowed them to start industrializing and developing at a faster rate, since they were already more advanced in terms of wealth and infrastructure. Shue (2014, p. 41) explains how compound injustices are when one injustice builds upon the next. This can result in current seemingly fair agreements between two parties being unjust due to past wrongs leaving negotiators in unequal positions of power, due to their amount of wealth and resources. In the case of climate negotiations, it can be acknowledged that countries are in unequal positions of wealth and development due to compound injustices, and so seemingly fair agreements, for example that all countries should have an equal duty to pay for the costs of climate change, are actually unfair due to countries unequal positions. He says:
“To what extent is the poverty that contributes to the weak position of Haiti the result of French colonialism? To what extent is the poverty that contributes to the weak position of Indonesia the result of Dutch colonialism? And so forth. These are important but intractable debates about causal mechanisms.” (Shue, 2014, p. 41).
Therefore the injustice borne out of the colonial era maintains a hold upon our world order today, leaving nations in unequal positions when they engage in international relations.
Subsequently a ‘two-track’ approach towards climate negotiations, which takes into consideration how countries have disparate amounts of wealth and resources, may be taken because these inequalities in wealth and resources are the result of compound injustices. Colonial legacy and other injustices have largely influenced our current world order, affecting global negotiations and international deals. A principle of distribution may therefore be chosen that makes leeway on addressing developmental inequalities in the world order through redistribution of climate costs and claims.
2.5 Conclusion
To conclude, a ‘two-track’ approach to climate negotiations may be considered for two reasons. Firstly, climate change exacerbates current global
inequalities because its biggest victims are the poorest and most vulnerable people within our global community. Therefore this inequality might be
addressed and reduced by a principle of distribution for climate costs and claims. Secondly, this radical global inequality can be traced back to past compound injustices and colonial exploitation of resources. Our global order is thus the result of injustices that have left countries in unfair and unequal positions of wealth and vulnerability to climate change. Distribution of climate costs and claims provide opportunity for global considerations of justice to take place by addressing inequality.
To be clear, by explaining how climate negotiations might take a ‘two-track’ approach and address global inequality in wealth and resources, I am not suggesting that all wealth would need to be evenly redistributed; this enquiry is not taking on a socialist plight. My aim here is to consider how to distribute climate costs and claims and in the first chapter I described the four costs and claims that this entails. Therefore global inequality might be addressed when shouldering these costs and distributing these claims. This is in order to provide less developed countries with enough wealth and opportunity to develop, an aim that many previous climate agreements have established. For instance Article 4 of the 1992 United Nations Convention on Climate Change states that all
countries dedicated to resolving climate change should acknowledge the “common but differentiated responsibilities” that exist between them due to “their specific national and regional development priorities” (UN, 1992). I now consider different distributive principles and develop a version of the BPP that does take a ‘two-track’ approach to climate negotiations, addressing global inequality.
Chapter III: The Beneficiary Pays
Principle
3.1 Introduction
In this chapter I investigate the beneficiary pays principle for distributing climate costs and claims. I outline a specific version of this principle and consider how it can assign duties to climate costs and claims to the atmosphere in a ‘two-track’ way by considering global inequality.
I shall begin by explaining the concept of burden sharing and how there are three main principles discussed within philosophy for how to distribute burdens in a fair manner: the ability to pay principle (APP), the polluter pays principle (PPP) and the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). I shall explain how the BPP holds the most promise as a fair principle of distribution, in short because it incorporates the most common sense aspects of fairness from both the PPP and the APP whilst avoiding their most adverse consequences. I will then outline a specific version of the BPP, which I call the negative BPP. This principle
undermines beneficiaries’ entitlements to their wealth and resources because those entitlements are the product of climate related activities that are unjust. I shall develop this idea before finally considering how this principle can be instructive about distributing climate costs and claims, and how this principle can address global inequality.
3.2 Principles of Distribution
a) Burden Sharing and three proposed principles
It is important to note that whatever principle of distribution is chosen will have a huge affect on many agents all over the world, and different
principles will lead to flows of money going to different people. Therefore any chosen principle must be justified. Three main principles of distribution that are often considered in relation to climate negotiations are the BPP, the PPP and the APP. The BPP assigns duties to those who have benefitted from climate related activities. The crux of this principle is that climate related activities are unjust and they generate both burdens and benefits. Those who have benefitted from these activities, therefore, have a duty to shoulder the burdens and pay for the costs of climate change. A non-climate related example would be someone who inherited a lot of land and later found out that that land had been stolen, for instance their ancestors had forcefully removed the rightful owners. The beneficiary of this land has therefore unjustly received it, and this can generate duties to repay the rightful owners for the burdens that befell them. I will explain in the next section of this chapter how the BPP can perceive the moral
significance of history in a number of ways, however the fundamental idea is that it beneficiaries can be ascribed duties to shoulder burdens that have arose from
an unjust activity if they have benefitted from that injustice.
On the other hand, the PPP is a principle that assigns duties to those who actually emitted dangerous GHG’s into the atmosphere in virtue of the fact that those people have caused the problem. This principle is based on the simple ethical instruction of remedial action; those who made the mess should clean it up. The polluters tend to be rich developed states and Page (2012, p. 304) cites the World Bank’s statistic that more than 60 percent of CO2 that has been released between 1750 and 2008 was the result of activities from 31 developed states. This shows that there is a link between industrial activity and economic gain, as those who have historically polluted the most tend to now be high-income developed states. Developing states such as China therefore may support the PPP because it will put the onus of shouldering climate costs onto developed countries (Page, 2012, p. 304). The main trouble with the PPP, however, is that many polluters are no longer alive so it needs to justify how to hold current generations causally accountable for past pollution.
The APP is a principle that assigns duties to those who can pay for climate costs, regardless of whether or not they are accountable for the problem. Shue explains the normative justification for this principle: “among a number of parties, all of whom are bound to contribute to some endeavor, the parties who have the most resources should contribute the most to the endeavor (Shue, 1999. p. 537)”. Therefore this principle states that those who can pay should pay. This will place duties upon rich developed states to shoulder the costs of climate change merely in virtue of the fact that they are rich and developed and so have a surplus of wealth to pay for this problem with. The problematic part of the APP is that it places no moral significance on retribution or remedial action at all, so advocates of the APP need to justify why we should adopt a principle that generates duties purely on the basis of ability.
Before comparing the principles it is useful to recount what has been established in the preceding chapters. So far it has been maintained that a principle of distribution needs to be instructive about how to bare the costs of mitigation, adaption and damage, as well as claims to the remaining emissions budget. Furthermore in order for negotiations to be considerate about global justice they should address global inequality in wealth. I focus on the BPP as the main principle of distribution that can achieve these aims. This is because whereas the PPP is backwards looking, it solely justifies assigning climate costs and claims due to historical accountability, and the APP is forward looking, it solely regards the current generations ability to pay, the BPP can be formulated as a hybrid of both, as I shall now explore.
b) How the BPP compares to other principles
In order to show how the BPP is a promising principle of distribution for climate costs and claims, I compare it to another principle developed by Caney (2010), which combines the APP and the PPP. Caney’s combined principle intends to achieve hybridity and he thinks that by incorporating these two other principles we can maintain the best aspect of each whilst disregarding their
adverse consequences. I show how the BPP alone also achieves this hybridity, because it acknowledges the importance of historical injustices whilst also assigning duties due to present holdings and people who are currently wealthy beneficiaries. Because the BPP has this desired effect it is not necessary for us to develop a more convoluted combined principle. Therefore my aim here is to present how the BPP is on its own a fair and effective principle by comparing it to another hybrid theory of distribution.
Caney introduces his combined principle by firstly instating what he calls a ‘poverty-sensitive version’ of the polluter pays principle:
“Persons should bear the burden of climate change that they have caused so long as doing so does not push them beneath a decent standard of living.”(Caney, 2010, p. 218)
He discusses how the PPP has immediate intuitive appeal because it makes those who caused the problem of climate change responsible. Yet he adds this poverty sensitive limitation because Caney (2010, pp. 212-3) believes that it is
fundamentally wrong to expect people to fall below a certain decent standard of living. Therefore Caney thinks we cannot look at a countries contribution to climate change in isolation from their general economic entitlements. He provides the example of China and the US and argues that even though China emitted 6,220 million tonnes of CO2 in 2006 whereas the USA emitted 5,801, the USA should still adopt a bigger proportion of the duty of paying for the costs of climate change. Amongst other reasons (such as China’s emissions being more justified because they have a bigger population), Caney thinks this should be the case because China needs to emit more to provide a decent standard of living for their citizens, since it is a developing country. Therefore Caney’s
‘poverty-sensitive’ clause inoculates those who are very poor and struggle to get their basic needs met from paying for the affects of their pollution.
The BPP alone also maintains the common sense outcomes of a poverty sensitive PPP. This is because targeting those who have benefited from activities that contribute towards climate change immediately excludes those who have not benefited, rendering it poverty sensitive. One cannot classify somebody who has fallen below a decent standard of living or is failing to have basic needs met as benefiting from activities related to climate change, since there is nothing beneficial about living in such a state of vulnerability and abject poverty. Furthermore the BPP still maintains the intuitive appeal of the PPP, the
justification that those who created the mess should clean it up, because people benefit from their own climate related activities. Historically empirical evidence supports this claim, because it is the countries that underwent rapid
industrialization in the 19th Century that are now the wealthy and affluent
portion of the world (the global ‘North’). These countries failed to take on the burden of dealing with their emissions alongside the benefit of industrializing and developing. Therefore the BPP will instruct that the global ‘North’, who are causing most of the problem and can afford to deal with it, should give up some of their current holdings and wealth since they have benefitted and become wealthy from the emissions that have allowed them to acquire this wealth.
Yet Caney believes that his poverty sensitive PPP does not suffice on its own as a fair principle of distribution. This is because there is also a ‘remainder’ that needs to be paid for, and duties to pay for this cannot also be attributed to polluters that have their basic needs met. Caney (2010, p. 213) says that this remainder of climate-induced costs comes about in three different ways: “(a) the emissions of earlier generations, (b) non-human-induced climate change, and (c) the (legitimate) emissions of the disadvantaged”. He argues that these costs should be distributed in adherence to what he calls a ‘history-sensitive’ ability to pay principle, which is formulates like so:
“The duties to bear the Remainder should be borne by the wealthy but we should distinguish between two groups – (i) those whose wealth came about in unjust ways, and (ii) those whose wealth did not come about in unjust ways – and we should apportion greater responsibility to (i) than to (ii).” (Caney, 2010, p. 218) Rather then being a pure ability to pay principle, where simply whoever can shoulder the costs should, Caney includes the ‘history-sensitive’ part because he still want his principle to consider morally relevant factors. He explains that a “wholly forward-looking” principle that completely disregards history as irrelevant does not align with some of our deepest moral convictions, for
instance that those who created a problem should bear its burden (Caney, 2010, p. 214).
The BPP also incorporates the most common sense aspects of fairness from the history-sensitive APP above. The appealing part of Caney’s version of the APP is that it is both forward and backward looking. It is forward-looking in the sense it apportions the greatest responsibility to those who actually have the ability to pay. This makes it practically useful; it takes into account how much money we can feasibly demand off countries in respects to their wealth. It is also a backwards-looking principle, since it doesn’t completely disregard the moral relevance of history and asks that those whose wealth is the result of injustice have a stronger duty to give up this wealth. The BPP is also forward-looking in the sense that it enlists wealthy nations that have been the beneficiaries of climate related activities to take on the most responsibility in giving up their benefits and paying for climate costs. Yet it is also backwards looking because it specifies that those who have benefitted from unjust climate related activities have the most responsibility. It therefore acknowledges how historical
wrongdoing should influence who pays, which allows it to be in keeping with our moral convictions about duty-bearers. Page (2012, p. 307) comments on how the BPP argument is effectively that: ‘you should pay because you are much better off than others as a result of exploiting benefits linked to the creation of climate change.’ He explains how this argument both acknowledges who actually can pay, yet it also acknowledges remedial responsibility, which is alien to purer forms of the APP.
Therefore Caney’s principle is a combination of two caveated principles. He firstly thinks that polluters who can afford to pay for the costs of their
duty to shoulder the costs. He then thinks that the costs of any left over emissions should be shouldered by those who have the ability to pay,
particularly those who have the ability due to past injustices. This is fair because it acknowledges people’s ability to pay, whilst also trying to assign duties to those who caused the problem. The BPP also has this desired effect by only assigning duties to beneficiaries; this implicitly implies an ability to pay. Yet by also being beneficiaries of unjust climate related activities, this acknowledges how historical injustices have lead to the problem.
How does the BPP differ from Caney’s hybrid principle of a ‘poverty sensitive’ PPP and ‘history sensitive’ APP? Both the hybrid principle and the BPP will attribute duties to shoulder climate costs onto the same collectives of
people, For instance both would attribute a large proportion of duties to pay for climate costs onto America. This is because America is a nation that has
historically emitted a lot and benefitted from vast amounts of GHG’s, and they are also able to pay for the costs. However, the justification for why those duties have been attributed will differ dependent on the principle chosen. The BPP will attribute duties simply because a state (such as America) will have received unjust benefits from their emissions, throwing the legitimacy of their current holdings into question. Upon Caney’s principle the reason is more complex, polluters must pay but only if they are within a certain wealth bracket. Those who can pay also must, but this duty is particularly strong if they are able to pay due to any form of past injustice. Therefore the negative version of the BPP is much clearer and more instructive in its reasons why one has a duty to pay for climate costs.
Subsequently the BPP is a promising principle with which to distribute climate costs because its hybrid structure incorporates the most common sense aspects of fairness from both the APP and the PPP. Caney (2006) himself rejects the BPP in favour for his combined APP and PPP because he thinks the BPP places too much importance on the moral significance of history and cannot avoid the problem of non-identity. I shall show in the next section of this chapter how the BPP can be formulated in a way that doesn’t place too much importance on the moral significance of history and I shall explain in the next Chapter how the BPP can sidestep the non-identity problem. However, I shall now finish this comparison section by explaining how the BPP not only adopts some common sense aspects of fairness from the other two principles but also manages to avoid some of the adverse consequences of the APP and the PPP.
Firstly an adverse consequence of the PPP is that it maintains a corrective aim, it argues that those who created the mess should clean it up, and this
becomes problematic in the case of climate change. This is because climate change is an intergenerational problem so many of those who ‘made the mess’ are not alive today to clean it up. Industrialization and the burning of fossil fuels have historically occurred since the late eighteenth century (Caney, 2006, p. 468). Therefore advocates of the PPP need to justify how we can hold the current generation accountable for past emissions and past wrongs. The BPP can avoid this adverse consequence because it is not an integral part of the principle to actually hold people accountable for emitting GHG’s into the atmosphere. It can
take either a ‘positive’ or a ‘negative’ view on the moral significance of history and emissions, as I shall explain more fully below when developing a ‘negative’ version of the BPP. In short, however, the PPP necessarily maintains a ‘positive view’ of history because it is integral that the person who created the problem needs to pay for it, the BPP does not.
Furthermore, an adverse consequence of the APP is that it assumes what Göran Duus-Otterström (2014, p. 451) calls ‘positive cosmopolitan duties’. The term ‘positive’ is being used here to refer to how duties entail an action rather then an omission of action, for instance helping a person who is lost would be a positive duty whereas abstaining from inflicting harm would be a negative one. Furthermore ‘cosmopolitan’ is a philosophical outlook that demands that we show equal concern for everybody in the world rather than just those that we are connected with (Duus-Otterströn, 2014, p. 451). For instance caring for the welfare of a child you have never met before who lives the other side of the world from you just as much as you would care for your own child. Therefore Duus- Otterström describes ‘positive cosmopolitan duties’ as duties that further the wellbeing of others, regardless of ones relationship to them or where they live in the world. A pure version of the APP promotes such duties because it simply holds that if you can pay for the costs of climate change you should, regardless of where those costs are needed. He explains how this is controversial in nature, because the APP can therefore generate binding duties of justice to pay if one is able. Duties of justice are duties that can be enforced upon people.
Therefore the APP has the unfavorable consequence that if people have the ability to pay, regardless of their connection to the victims of climate change or whether they have been implicit in creating the problem, it is justified to coerce or hold them under enforceable obligation to pay.
The BPP, on the other hand, avoids this adverse consequence because it doesn’t adopt ‘positive cosmopolitan duties’. The BPP holds that it is morally relevant, whether or not somebody has been unjustly benefitted by activities that relate to climate change. Therefore the BPP doesn’t allow us to simply force obligations on some to pay for the climate costs effecting people they have no relation to, simply because they can. It ensures that you must have unjustly benefitted from climate related activities before it obligates you to give up any of your own resources. It provides a reason that is not just ability. Thus the BPP doesn’t make unfair and exaggerated demands upon the wealthy in the way that the APP manages to.
Consequently, the BPP qualifies as the most effective principle of distribution for climate costs and claims out of the three main principles that I have compared. Its hybrid structure combines the most common sense aspects of fairness from both the APP and the PPP whilst avoiding their most adverse consequences. It is both appropriately backward-looking, it believes that benefits can be undermined by past injustices, whilst also being usefully forward-looking, it prevents the poorest members of society from having to pay for the costs of climate change by assigning duties to people who are beneficiaries. Now that the BPP has been established as a fair and promising principle for distribution, I shall present a version of it that emphasizes the moral significance of history as
relevant due to how it can undermine people’s entitlements to current resources and wealth. I shall call this a ‘negative’ version of the BPP.
3.3 The Negative version of the BPP
a) Background distinctions
In order to differentiate the ‘negative’ version of the BPP from other potential ways the BPP can be established I will firstly explain two distinctions. One is made by Caney (2006) between a ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ view of the moral significance of history in retrospective principles of justice. The other distinction is made by Duus-Otterström (2014), explaining how backward-looking principles of justice can either have an ‘entitlement undermining’ or a ‘corrective’ aim. I shall present a version of the beneficiary pays principle that adopts a ‘negative’ view on the moral significance of history, with an ‘entitlement undermining’ aim. These distinctions are important because the type of principle chosen for distributing climate costs and claims will have an immense affect on many agents, since the chosen principle will affect where large stocks of money flow to. How we justify accounting for the moral significance of history and compound injustices within a principle of distribution for climate costs and claims is therefore crucial. This is because we are making distributive decisions that will affect people; therefore the normative justification behind these decisions must be succinct.
Caney (2006, p. 476) distinguishes between a ‘positive view’ and a ‘negative view’ of the moral significance of history when formulating
retrospective principles of distributive justice. A ‘positive’ view of history takes a much stronger stance on the moral significance of history; it aims to correct compound injustices, such as colonial exploitation or unfair overuse of the emissions budget, by holding people causally accountable for past wrongs. Upon a ‘positive’ view of history the justification behind making developed countries redistribute large sums of money to developing countries, in order to foot the bill of mitigation and adaption for example, would be that the citizens within the developed countries are accountable for their past emissions and the inherited compound injustices that have led to their disproportionate wealth. Those who adopt this ‘positive’ view will think that compound injustices need to actually be undone through rearranging things and paying out reparations to the victims, or inherited victims, of the wrongdoing. A ‘positive’ view, therefore, validates
redistribution by maintaining that justice needs to be fully served for those in the past who were wronged and so people must be held accountable for past
injustices.
Caney (2006, p. 477), amongst others, takes issue with this view because if the moral significance of history is taken as seriously as the ‘positive’ view requires, then people alive today are being held accountable for historical injustices. This normative account of the significance of past wrongs is immensely difficult to justify, because it involves justifying the causal accountability of current duty bearers for past wrongs.
Alternatively a ‘negative’ view does not take such a strong stance on the moral relevance of history and its justification for the redistribution of current holdings of resources and wealth isn’t because agents are accountable for compound injustices. A ‘negative’ view much more modestly questions the legitimacy of people’s entitlement to their current holdings of wealth and resources if those holdings came about in an unjust way. A ‘negative’ view will justify redistributing some of the wealth of developed countries in order to pay the global costs of mitigation and adaption because citizens in those countries are not entitled to their wealth and resources. This is because the
disproportionate amount of wealth acquired by developed countries has predominantly been the result of compound injustices. It will not justify redistribution because citizens currently living in developed countries are accountable for the compound injustices that have lead to their
disproportionately high levels of wealth, as the ‘positive’ view does. Instead, it will justify redistribution because citizens currently living in developed
countries are not entitled to their wealth, because this wealth has been acquired as the result of compound injustices. Caney (2006, p. 478) highlights the
distinction between the two by explaining how whereas the ‘positive’ view determines “what people should currently possess”, the ‘negative’ view casts “doubt on the legitimacy of the status quo”.
To elucidate the point once more, a ‘positive’ view of history would hold that if somebody inherited land that they later found out was stolen by their ancestors, they are now accountable for that theft. That is because by inheriting an unjust benefit they are causally accountable for the injustice it was borne from. It is therefore their duty to fully compensate the rightful owners of the land and pay them reparations, as the beneficiary of an inherited the wrong. On the other hand a ‘negative’ view would hold that the person who inherited the land is not accountable for the thievery of their ancestors, because this view does not dictate that past wrongs need to be addressed. Instead, the ‘negative’ view would dictate that the beneficiary is not entitled to the land, because their acquisition of the land was due to an illegitimate thievery. Therefore upon a ‘negative’ view the beneficiary does not have a duty to pay reparations but instead their entitlement to the land has been called into question, so the land may be redistributed in accordance with principles of fairness.
Another useful distinction in a similar tenor is Duus-Otterström’s (2014, p.453) distinction between the two different aims that backwards-looking principles of just distribution can have. The first aim is a ‘corrective aim’ where, true to its name, past injustices have to in fact be corrected in accordance with justice. Duus-Otterström discusses how this correction could come in many forms and the most desired form is evidently undoing the historical injustice. Yet in absence of this option, correction may alternatively come in the form of
compensation in order to redress the suffering experienced by the victim. The other possible aim is an ‘entitlement undermining aim’, where current
entitlements can be undermined by the presence of past injustices. History merely has a bearing upon whether current entitlements are just, without delving into the past and aiming to restore injustices. Thus in a similar way to Caney, Duus-Otterström believes that it is possible to acknowledge the moral
