Two Mutually Exclusive Concepts of Harm? Retrospective and Structural Wrongful Harm at the Bases of a Compensatory-Based Approach for Loss and Damage

ABSTRACT

Compensatory approaches to climate justice rely on powerful intuitions regarding responsibility and injustice. They appeal to one of our most deeply ingrained moral principles: those who have caused harm are those who should prima facie bear the responsibility of remedying it. However, in the context of climate change there are important epistemic and normative arguments that speak against applying this sort of principles. In this paper, I use the new developments of the science of attribution to reply to the epistemic concerns. I also provide countervailing normative reasons (based on recognition and self-respect) for the application of compensatory principles. I argue that the combination of two notions of wrongful harm — interactional and structural — would enable us to make the most of the normative force of an argument in favour of a compensatory view of climate justice.

Compensatory-based approaches to Loss and Damage policies have a direct appeal to our intuitions regarding responsibility and injustice. Such accounts refer to one of our most deeply ingrained moral principles: those that have caused harm are those who should prima facie bear the responsibility of remedying it. However, this intuitive force can also play against defenders of compensation. For it to be valid, this intuition need to be fed by a proof of a causal connection between duty-bearer’s actions and the harmful effects suffered by their victims. Otherwise, we would lack a valid concept of wrongfulness to ground the demands of the responsibility required to ask for compensation.

Idil Boran (2017) has recently addressed the importance of the concept of wrongful harm for Loss and Damage issues, sketching out two different concepts of wrongful harm: interactional and architectural. Or rather, as she emphasizes, interactional vs. architectural. Her article shows that the tort-law-like character of the first concept makes it impossible to ground demands of compensation for Loss and Damage. Instead, she seeks to show that the second conception can serve as the groundwork for a compensatory-based approach. Here I argue that both concepts shall not be regarded as mutually exclusive, but rather complementary. This would enable us to make the most of the normative force of the argument in favour of compensation, which Boran rightly identifies.

Wrongful harm in its interactional version refers to the harmful effects suffered by an agent due to some other agent’s action. The corresponding moral judgement is blameworthiness, which is intrinsically retrospective. Retrospective moral adjudication seems problematic to Boran for two reasons. First, epistemically speaking, such a mechanism would require ‘but for causation’, a condition that, according to her argument, cannot be proven in the context of global climate change. She argues that the systemic and cumulative character of its negative effects over time makes it impossible because ‘global warming does not result from the actions of this or that person, or even of a specific group of individuals, but from being unable to coordinate the complex network of social practices on a global scale’ (p. 202). Second, normatively speaking, according to Boran, the retrospective moral approach undermines the basis for cooperation on large scales over time, a condition that is necessary both to overcome the negative effects of climate change and avoid its possible future impacts. In her view, ‘the retrospective moral outlook reinforces a view of responsibility that is always zero-sum’ (Íbid). For the aforementioned reasons, Boran considers the interactional view ‘narrow and overly legalistic’.

Here I shall argue that, on the one hand, the epistemic argument is misleading and, on the other, we can come up with other kinds of normative reasons that push back against the validity of the normative argument made by Boran. First, whereas it is true that loss and damage occur mainly due to extreme weather events (EWEs) and that the science of attribution for EWEs does not provide a deterministic base for attributing loss and damage to human action, it does so in a probabilistic sense. It is true that we will be never able to be confident enough to say that human actions have contributed to a certain percentage of this or that particular EWE. However, the science of EWEs attribution can deliver results on the extent to which the risk of that event has increased in comparison to preindustrial scenarios due to human actions (Allen 2003; 2012; Stott et.al 2013). In fact, recent studies show that this can even be shown at a country-level, making it easy to attribute responsibilities for loss and damage in a proportional way (Otto, Skeie, Fuglestvedt, Berntsen, & Allen, 2017). Thus, whereas she is right when arguing that climate change ‘does not result from the actions of this or that person’, that statement is not accurate when applied to ‘specific group of individuals’ if we can take countries as such. Additionally, again, whereas it is true that climate change does not result from individual actions, that does not mean that climate change is the result of the inability of individuals to coordinate a common answer against climate change. Instead, climate change results mainly from the polluting actions of collective agents. For those reasons, diluting retrospective responsibilities in the language of the lack of complex networks and global practices shall be regarded as misleading.

Second, I agree with Idil Boran that global cooperation is needed to overcome the negative effects of climate change and avoid future ones. However, I disagree with the methods through which this can be accomplished. Instead of avoiding any kind of attribution of responsibilities, I consider that, for it to be long lasting, such collaboration would need to be built up in a process of reconciliation among parties unequally responsible and unequally affected. For one thing, without fair attribution or responsibilities, the goal of overcoming the negative effects of climate change could not be achieved. Without a process of reconciliation in which the wrongdoing parties recognize their responsibility in the suffering of the victims, and apologize for it, relations of respect cannot be restored, nor can victims’ self-respect be repaired. Without a solid basis of self-respect, the goal of helping people in overcoming the negative effects of climate change will not be successful because self-respect constitutes a necessary solid base to carry on with new projects of life after climate disruptions.¹ For other, cooperation cannot be built up on dishonest practices on the part of those that are more responsible for climate change. It the science of attribution can actually deliver results concerning the extent to which different actors have contributed to the negative effects of climate change. Why, then, should we agree that those more affected by climate change on climate policies that ignore what they justly deserve, which is, among other things, the acknowledgement of historical responsibilities? (Thompson & Otto, 2015).

I do not see how, on the basis of the historical and scientific basis available to us, those more affected by climate change could agree on developing climate treaties that brush aside the issue of retrospective responsibility. On those bases, I deem that, far from speaking against cooperation, recognition of differentiated current and historical responsibilities would help on fostering the degree of international cooperation requisite to develop appropriate global institutions to address global environmental problems (Thompson, 2002). We should be careful not to hide injustice under the label of positive-sum cooperation. The aforementioned remarks point out in two directions. First, that there is more room for a retrospective conception of moral responsibility than the one envisioned by Idil Boran. Second, that at least some retrospective elements of wrongful harm and moral responsibility must be included on a compensatory-based approach of losses and damage for practical, operational, and justice reasons.

As opposed to the concept of interactional wrongful harm, Idil Boran puts forward an architectural concept of wrongful harm. This concept relies on the idea that the negative effects of climate change are not the result of individual persons’ actions, but the consequence of a wrongful institutional architecture. As well as the institutional architecture produces effects on people’s well-being, it impacts adversely on people’s lives. This type of wrongful harm can be identified by wrongful features of the web of the political institutional structure. I agree with Boran that a ‘single action-single individual’ structure shall be regarded as problematic for pointing out the wrongful actions involved in climate change. However, that should not exclude the possibility of including a retrospective concept of moral responsibility that allows us to denounce the historical injustice linked to climate change. Architectural or structural moral responsibility can and must also be regarded as retrospective in nature, since the negative effects of climate change are not just the result of unstructured preventive policies, but also the result of some collectives’ wrongful actions. It is true that it is problematic to analyse the phenomenon in terms of blameworthy singular individuals. However, it is not less true that, at least since 1990, high polluters have been ignoring the foreseeable effects of climate change and contribute to reproduce the kind of structures we both regard as problematic.

My point is that we cannot implement fair agreements and cooperation if we ignore the retrospective aspect of the wrongful architecture. There might not be single individuals to blame for the wrongful effects of climate change. However, architectural harm has not emerged from nowhere, but from past actions of collectives that knew, at least from a certain point in time on, that their activities were morally problematic. The architectural view of wrongful harm identifies correctly the intrinsic structural dimension of climate change wrongful harm and climate injustice. But it should not dispense with a retrospective dimension of the responsibility involved in those harms (Neuhäuser 2014). That is, in my view, what we should take from the interactional framework of wrongful harm. Therefore, in the context of a structural framework I deem both concepts of wrongful harm as compatible.

Otherwise, I do not see how we could still enjoy the normative force of the argument in favour of compensation that Boral herself highlights. For one thing, for Idil Boran herself, that normative force relies on its ability to highlight the relevance of historical responsibility (p.199). However, how can make use of that normative force if we dispense with any reference to the retrospective dimension of the wrongful harms at stake? Finally, and in addition to that, diluting wrongful harm under the language of positive-sum cooperation does nothing but maintain and reproduce one of the aspects of precisely the architectural wrongful harm that Idil Boran seeks to denounce: the lack of recognition and acknowledgement of historical injustices that victims of climate change rightly deserve. For grounding an operational and fair compensatory-based approach, the concept of architectural wrongful harm needs to be complemented by the retrospective character provided by the interactional conception of wrongful harm.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Kian Mintz-Woo and Daniel Petz, from the Doctoral Programme in Climate Change at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz for the conversation that encouraged me to write this response. I acknowledge the financial support provided by the University of Graz for the publication of this article. For financial support related to my research, I am in debt with the Research Project Self-Knowledge, Moral Responsibility and Authenticity (FFI2016-75323-P; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) and 'La Caixa' foundation. 

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I rely here on Rawls’ moral psychology. Drawing on Rawls, self-respect is a sense of one’s own worth and a sense of that one’s owns plans in life and ends are worth pursuing (Rawls, 1999, p. 155, pp. 386–389) (Rawls, 1996, p. 319). However, self-respect depends on the respect of others: ‘unless we feel that our endeavours are respected by them, it is difficult if not impossible for us to maintain the conviction that our ends are worth advancing’ (Rawls, 1999, p. 155). In my view, disrupting people’s lives though climate losses and damages fails to comply with the minimum requirements of a respectful attitude. Conversely, it gives the impression that their ways of life do not matter to us and, therefore, it must be seen as disrespecting the plans of life they envisioned for themselves and which constitute their source of value. It shows an attitude of contempt towards that undermines their own self-respect. In turn, this presents a psychological hurdle in the process of overcoming the negative effects of losses and damages.