Post-2012 Burden Sharing: Towards an Ethical Approach

Abstract

This paper explores how the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change should be shared by the international community. While it briefly surveys other desiderata for a new global agreement on climate change for the post-2012 period, its primary focus is on the ethical issues posed by the imperative to address human-induced climate change, and in particular the principles and considerations that should inform an ethical approach to global burden sharing.The first part of the paper outlines the context surrounding the current international negotiations for a new global agreement on climate change, which is designed to take effect when the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. This includes consideration of the criteria that any new agreement must address and the relevance and importance of ethics at the international level. The second part examines burden sharing from an ethical perspective. It assesses the relevance and validity of a number of principles of distributive justice that are widely discussed in the relevant climate change literature – most notably, equality, capacity, historical responsibility, need, monetary costs and welfare costs. It then uses these principles to evaluate six proposed burden sharing frameworks. The third part considers the implications of these burden sharing frameworks for New Zealand. This includes a brief examination of the possible impacts of various proposed changes to some of the key rules underpinning the Kyoto Protocol.