Remedies for loss and damage caused by climate change from the dimension of climate justice

Adverse consequences to the ecological system and human health caused by impacts potentially attributable to climate change have already drawn great and widespread concern of many scientists and international organizations. However, we still have a hard time determining exactly the impact of climate change on the environment or the damage that climate change inflicts on countries comprising small islands or low-lying lands in light of today’s science and technology. The progress for dealing with the issue of loss and damage has been struggling for a long time from the beginning to the present. In this paper, the author begins by summarizing talks on the concept and the positions of commentators. The author is proposing that the development of future climate negotiations and rule-making process be based on global climate justice as a standard for measuring value. Also, the author proposes that a holistic view of climate justice be established. Generally, three aspects of climate justice can be derived. First, the dimension of human rights protection shows that protection of fundamental human rights is a logical precondition if small-island and low-lying countries are able to achieve climate justice. Second, the definite and traditional concepts of distributive justice and corrective justice hold the view that the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities should be upheld as a basic standard of allocating rights and duties associated with climate change. Third, climate justice requires that any state follow the “no-harm principle,” which is regarded as an international customary rule. According to the principle, the obligation of states to prevent the use of their territory for causing trans-boundary harm to the environment shall be a violation of state responsibility, which incurs international punishment. Then we put forward three remedial approaches in light of climate justice, including the approach of State Responsibility (SR) based on the principles and rules of international human rights law and international environmental law. Based on clear rules, the judge can determine whether the damaging behavior or the damage perpetrated by a state party constitutes a state responsibility. The International Environmental Regulation (IEB), which means solving the problems within the framework established by the Conventions on Climate Change, takes advantage of the market mechanisms and incentives such as fund and insurance support system to relieve or compensate the loss and damage. International Environmental Dispute Settlement Mechanism (IEDSM), which includes the means such as consultations, negotiations, nonmandatory ways and international arbitration, international judicial ways to solve these disputes, functions as a procedural safeguard. As an active promoter of global climate governance, China should no doubt stand by the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR) and take it as a basis for negotiations, actively strengthen the work of South-South cooperation, fulfill her international climate commitments without reservation, vigorously develop a low-carbon economy, and actively promote international negotiations on the subject of loss and damage.     

Using citizen science in environmental justice: participation and decision-making in a Southern California waste facility siting conflict

Uses of science by environmental justice (EJ) activists reflect struggles to challenge professional scientific expertise, achieve fair outcomes, and effectively participate in decision-making processes. This qualitative research analyses the relationship between citizen science and EJ in a new waste facility siting conflict in urban Los Angeles, namely connections between citizen science and four dimensions of EJ: fair distribution, respect and recognition, participation in decision-making, and community capabilities. Citizen science is one tactic in EJ, yet little research investigates its role in a new facility siting conflict, particularly in relation to multi-faceted EJ goals. The research reveals opportunities for individual empowerment and community capacity building using citizen science, and a small measure of improved respect and recognition for participants who brought their own knowledge, research, and voices to the table. At the same time, the work identifies limitations on citizen science to improve local participatory procedures and decision-making, which also constricted the achievement of outcomes most desired by the EJ group: to prevent approval and construction of the new waste facility. This paper argues that uses of citizen science contributed to partial achievement of EJ goals, while hindered by governance processes that call for public participation yet shield decision-makers from substantive engagement with the volume or content of that participation.     

Climate justice and energy: applying international principles to UK residential energy policy

This paper draws on climate justice principles developed in the context of international negotiations between national governments to assess the distribution of carbon reduction roles between different actors involved in residential energy use within the UK. In so doing, it aims to provide a new understanding of equity aspects of current residential policy and to highlight opportunities for more effective and equitable policy. The paper uses three criteria: rights and corresponding duties; mitigation responsibilities and capabilities. It applies them systematically to assess the roles of five key actors involved in residential energy use in the UK. The assessment finds a suboptimal distribution of actors’ duties, responsibilities and capabilities and roles and discusses whether and how a more effective and fair allocation of outcomes, in terms of carbon reduction and fuel poverty, could be achieved. In particular, it raises questions about whether the right actors are being legally obliged or incentivised to deliver energy efficiency improvements, and suggests that particular actors – local authorities and community groups – are under-used and require greater government support with capability. The paper represents the first use of international climate justice frameworks to investigate residential energy policy within a country.     

“It's easy to throw rocks at a corporation”: wind energy development and distributive justice in Canada

In places like Canada, fast-paced wind turbine development combined with policy that limits local decision-making power has resulted in strong opposition to specific projects. Some studies suggest that anti-wind sentiment is tied to inadequate financial benefits – especially sharing at the local level. Thus, ideas of distributive economic justice have received traction, particularly in the form of praise for community-based development models. This paper reports on the findings from a mixed-methods study concerning preferred distributive justice elements in rural communities in Ontario (technocratic-based model) and Nova Scotia (community-based model) living with turbines. Residents’ perceptions of economic benefits are nuanced, but unlike other studies, this empirical work shows that both the fair distribution and the amount of local benefits are important predictors of project support. Yet, concerns around the fair distribution of benefits dominate in a regression on the adequacy of those benefits. A variety of interview and survey findings further point to the strength of traditional, profit-sharing community-based models for distributing benefits, but also more novel ideas including lowered electricity bills and tax rebates in areas home to turbines.     

Planning for environmental justice in an urban national park

Urban national parks were designed in the 1970s to bring nature and recreational opportunities to socio-economically disadvantaged communities in the USA. Using the theoretical frame of environmental justice, this paper discusses findings of a recent survey of visitors to Los Angeles' Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area – the United States' largest urban national park. Findings show park visitors were predominantly white, affluent, and lived nearby. People of colour travelled further, were significantly less likely to be return visitors, and were less inclined to use the park for active recreation. Seemingly, this park fails to meet the needs of the disadvantaged urban communities for whom it was created, a problem that may also affect other parks in the United States and potentially parks in other countries. Park planners and managers can take practical steps to increase accessibility to this park for people of colour and low-income earners, and should monitor other parks for patterns of ethno-racially differentiated access and utilisation.     

Serving the Common Interest in U.S. Forest Policy: A Case Study of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act

In the United States, the common interest often is conceived as a by-product of the pluralist, interest-group-driven democratic process. Special interests dominate in many political arenas. Consequently, we have lost the language, vocabulary, and ability to talk about the common interest. The way to reverse this trend is to develop and practice with new tools that allow us to articulate what we mean by the common interest in specific contexts. In this article, we leveraged the literature on procedural, substantive, and pragmatic decision making to illustrate how they work together to demonstrate whether and how the common interest was served in three case studies of Healthy Forests Restoration Act implementation on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. In two of the cases we found that the common interest was mostly served, while in the third case it was not. Our results raise questions about the ability of procedural criteria or substantive criteria alone to determine effectiveness in decision making. When evaluated together they provide a more complete understanding of how the common interest is or is not served.

Towards socially just adaptive climate governance: the transformative potential of conflict

Conflict is an important factor in ongoing climate change debates and its role in management is under increasing scrutiny. In this paper, I present the results of an advanced discourse analysis that analyses trends in the relationship between conflict and climate change. I present two primary discourses dominate discussion: (i) climate as a security risk and (ii) climate as one of many factors affecting power relations that may lead to conflict. Both narratives implicitly or explicitly discuss climate conflict as a cause–outcome relationship, and further primarily construct conflict and climate change within normative frames. Yet, conflict has transformative potential and can be incorporated into management in ways that harness its capacity to drive innovation and lead to more robust and just adaptive governance. I argue for a shift in the discursive frame from a cause– outcome-oriented approach to a process-driven approach, one that treats conflict as an integral part of adaptive governance processes, thus being more just and equitable. Such a shift in focus can lead to positive on ground climate adaptation outcomes, in ways that respect rather than are counter-intuitive to dominant political and societal imbalances and institutional structures.     

Left to interest groups? On the prospects for enforcing environmental law in the European Union

ABSTRACT

There have been important changes in the enforcement of European Union environmental law over the last 25 years. Environmental law has traditionally been reliant on the European Commission, but the Commission has started to withdraw from enforcement. Instead, it is undertaking efforts to ‘outsource’ enforcement to environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by systematically promoting access for such groups to national courts. While the Commission has indicated that it sees centralised and private enforcement as substitutes, the advantages and drawbacks of each mechanism are evaluated and it is concluded that both mechanisms have an important role to play. In particular, the private enforcement of EU environmental law is dependent on national opportunity structures that are unlikely to ever be fully liberalised and harmonised by EU procedural law. Private enforcement is therefore not a panacea for compliance problems, and the growing absence of a central enforcing authority is a cause for concern.     

Public Participation Mechanisms in Environmental Disasters

This paper examines the role of public participation mechanisms in certain major environmental disasters. It examines situations in which people’s lifestyles or their lives have been directly threatened, and thus elicited citizen participation. Threatening issues often seem morally, physically, socially, economically, religiously, and otherwise unacceptable to a group. As will be presented in this paper, citizens voluntarily participate in a community activity when they see that their way of life has been threatened. An introductory historical perspective, the legal framework upon which it is based, and background information on the participatory mechanisms, all emphasizing the importance and need for empowering citizens with participatory skills so as to bring changes in the existing educational, legal, and social systems are presented. The major environmental accidents/disasters of Minamata, Japan; Bhopal, India; Seveso, Italy; Chernobyl, Ukraine; and Exxon-Valdez, Alaska are discussed, mainly to indicate the reaction, and the participatory mechanisms used by the affected communities in each of the sudden disasters that occurred. If citizens worldwide had been active participants in the environmental issues, it is quite possible that we would have experienced fewer environmental accidents.     

Information,beliefs, and motivation: The antecedents to human resource attributions

Despite significant interest in the attributions employees make about their organization's human resource (HR) practices, there is little understanding of the antecedents of HR attributions. Drawing on attribution theory, we suggest that HR attributions are influenced by information (perceptions of distributive and procedural fairness), beliefs (organizational cynicism), and motivation (perceived relevance). We test a model through a two‐wave survey of 347 academic faculty in the United Kingdom, examining their attributions of the purpose of their institution's workload management framework. After two preliminary studies (an interview study and a cross‐sectional survey) to establish contextually relevant attributions, we find that fairness and cynicism are important for the formation of internal attributions of commitment but less so for cost‐saving or exploitation attributions. Fairness and cynicism also interact such that distributive fairness buffers the negative attributional effect of cynicism, and individuals are more likely to attribute fair procedures to external forces if they are cynical about their organization. This study furthers the application of attribution theory to the organizational domain while making significant contributions to our understanding of the HR‐performance process.