5. Mapping Climate Justice

Global inequalities due to climate change currently herald a call for climate justice as the right of fairness for everyone to a favorable climate. Fair climate stability implementation strategies that support the current endeavor to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation around the globe are proposed in a three-dimensional climate justice approach to share the benefits and burden of climate change fair within society. First, climate justice within a country should pay tribute to the fact that low- and high-income households share the same burden proportional to their income. Secondly, fair climate change burden sharing between countries comprises of argumentations that those countries benefiting more from a warming climate should also bear a higher burden of enabling climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. Building on common and international law, countries with better means of protection or conservation of a favorable climate should face a greater responsibility to protect the earth. Thirdly, climate justice over time is proposed in an innovative climate change burden sharing strategy. Taxation and climate bonds are introduced as redistribution scheme to support those parts of the world that have run out of economically-favorable climate already. Climate bonds are an innovative strategy to share the economic burden of transitioning to renewable energy solutions as well as the costs of adapting to a warming globe between countries and generations. Climate bonds help weight climate change expenses more equally between today’s and tomorrow’s society. Overall, the book offers macroeconomic models to estimate future economic growth prospects in light of climate change to find innovative redistribution schemes to spread the expected short-term gains from climate change in order to offset for losses from a warming earth around the globe. Deriving respective policy recommendations for the wider climate change community is aimed at ensuring to share the burden but also the benefits of climate change within society, between countries and over time in an equitable and fair way. The presented thoughts are meant as a first preliminary step to inspire innovative climate protection incentives from a welfare redistribution perspective to ensure fair and sustainable living conditions for all countries around the world in this generation and the following.