Reframing Climate Justice: A Three-dimensional View on Just Climate Negotiations

Abstract

This article proposes reframing the justice discourse in climate negotiations. In so doing, it makes two claims. First, global climate negotiations deserve to be addressed as an issue of justice on their own due to their peculiar characteristics. Second, a multidimensional theory of justice is superior to distributional theories for this task. To support these arguments, I apply the multidimensional theory of justice to global climate negotiations. This analysis reveals that injustice in the negotiations is multidimensional and irreducible to distributional questions. Furthermore, it shows how promoting justice in this broad sense would have significant effect on the negotiation procedures and substantive outcomes.

Keywords:

• Climate justice
• climate negotiations
• multidimensional justice
• recognition