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Climate Justice and Capabilities: A Framework for Adaptation Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

David Schlosberg
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Abstract

This article lays out a capabilities and justice-based approach to the development of adaptation policy. While many theories of climate justice remain focused on ideal theories for global mitigation, the argument here is for a turn to just adaptation, using a capabilities framework to encompass vulnerability, social recognition, and public participation in policy responses. This article argues for a broadly defined capabilities approach to climate justice, combining a recognition of the vulnerability of basic needs with a process for public involvement. Such an approach can be used to engage stakeholders with varied perceptions of what is at risk, and to develop priorities for adaptation policy. It addresses both individual and community-level vulnerabilities, and acknowledges that the conditions of justice depend on a functioning, even if shifting, environment.

Type
Special Section: Safeguarding Fairness in Global Climate Governance
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , Winter 2012 , pp. 445 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2012

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References

NOTES

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4 Breena Holland has also developed a capabilities approach to environmental and climate justice, though there are key distinctions between our efforts: Holland's work is more specifically focused on environment as an instrumental support system for human needs, while the current piece more broadly addresses the contrast with other notions of climate justice, the role of recognition, and applications to communities and the nonhuman realm. See Holland, Breena, “Justice and the Environment in Nussbaum's ‘Capabilities Approach’: Why Sustainable Ecological Capacity Is a Meta-Capability,” Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2008), pp. 319–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holland, Breena, “Environment as Meta-Capability: Why a Dignified Human Life Requires a Stable Climate System,” in Thompson, Allen and Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy, eds., Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012), pp. 145–64Google Scholar.

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13 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 18.

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19 This is one of the “storms” in Gardiner's metaphor of climate change as a “perfect storm” of tragedy. See Gardiner, Stephen M., A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 See, e.g., “The Anchorage Declaration” of the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change. Such a focus is also clearly part of the discourse of affected states, local social movements, and international NGOs—the actual political discourse of climate justice encompasses recognition more so than the academic literature on the concept.

21 They highlight the “local material and symbolic contexts in which people create their lives, and through which those lives derive meaning” and show that it is those “contexts” that are threatened by climate change. Adger, W. Neil et al. , “This Must Be the Place: Underrepresentation of Identity and Meaning in Climate Change Decision-Making,” Global Environmental Politics 11, no. 2 (2011), pp. 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 21.

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24 Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, p. 71.

25 Sen, Amartya, “Human Rights and Capabilities,” Journal of Human Development 6, no. 2 (2005), pp. 151–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nussbaum, Women and Development, pp. 78–80.

26 Defined politically as “being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one's life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association,” in Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities, p. 34.

27 See Holland, “Justice and the Environment in Nussbaum's ‘Capabilities Approach,’” and Holland, “Environment as Meta-Capability,” for the former, and Schlosberg, David, “Justice, Ecological Integrity, and Climate Change,” in Thompson, Allen and Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy, eds., Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012)Google Scholar, pp. 165–84, for the latter.

28 Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 70.

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30 Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice.

31 Page, Edward, Climate Change, Justice, and Future Generations (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2007)Google Scholar; and Page, Edward, “Intergenerational Justice of What: Welfare, Resources, or Capabilities?” Environmental Politics 16, no. 3 (2007), pp. 453–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Holland, “Justice and the Environment in Nussbaum's ‘Capabilities Approach’”; and Holland, “Environment as Meta-Capability.”

33 Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, p. 80.

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35 Leckie, Scott, Simperingham, Ezekiel, and Bakker, Jordan, eds., Climate Change and Displacement Reader (London: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar.

36 Holland, “Environment as Meta-Capability.”

37 Holland, “Justice and the Environment in Nussbaum's ‘Capabilities Approach,’” p. 328.

38 Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, p. 74.

39 Page, Climate Change, Justice, and Future Generations; and Page, “Intergenerational Justice of What.”

40 Figueroa, Robert M., “Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Loss,” in Dryzek, John, Norgaard, Richard, and Schlosberg, David, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 232–50Google Scholar. For another discussion of a community-level approach to capabilities, in particular as applied to indigenous environmental justice, see Schlosberg, David and Carruthers, David, “Indigenous Struggles, Environmental Justice, and Community Capabilities,” Global Environmental Politics 10, no. 4 (2010), pp. 12–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Schlosberg, “Justice, Ecological Integrity, and Climate Change.”

42 Wolff, Jonathan and de-Shalit, Avner, Disadvantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Ibid., p. 10.

44 See, e.g., Rasmus Heltberg and Misha Bonch-Osmolovskiy, “Mapping Vulnerability to Climate Change,” World Bank Policy Research Paper 5554 (2011); Climate Commission, The Critical Decade; the Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping System (fivims.net); and Maplecroft's Climate Change Vulnerability Index (maplecroft.com/about/news/ccvi.html).