Climate Justice and Carbon Pricing

This paper focuses on one particular case that connects climate justice and climate economics. It addresses the following question: how can market-based instruments for climate change mitigation (MBIs) respond to requirements of justice? It aims at exploring how principles of climate justice are realized in practice. The contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it is to provide a sound normative foundation for a bottom-up approach to climate justice, and for carbon pricing mechanisms, around the notions of a ‘right to energy’, the ‘duty not-to-harm’ and a ‘capacity principle’. I argue that we can structure these three notions in a cohesive proposal. Secondly, it is to identify the normative elements from theories of climate justice that should constrain the design of MBIs so that these become instruments of justice. This paper aims to pave the way for a design of MBIs that balances requirements of climate ethics with the emissions reduction potential and the social co-benefits of different distributive alternatives. I will argue that, once we consider jointly emissions reduction targets, efficiency and fairness, the best course of action is to design MBIs so as to invest and provide incentives to lower the price of green alternatives, in order to assist developing populations in their climate change mitigation effort, and fund the transition to a low-carbon economy.