Carbon Sink Conservation and Global Justice: Benefitting, Free Riding and Non-compliance

Fabian Schuppert

doi:10.1007/s11158-015-9314-x

Abstract

It is often assumed that in order to avoid the most severe consequences of global anthropogenic climate change we have to preserve our existing carbon sinks, such as for instance tropical forests. Global carbon sink conservation raises a host of normative issues, though, since it is debatable who should pay the costs of carbon sink conservation, who has the duty to protect which sinks, and how far the duty to conserve one’s carbon sinks actually extends, especially if it conflicts with other duties one might have. According to some, forested states like Ecuador have a duty to preserve their tropical forests while the rich states of the global North have a duty of fairness to compensate states like Ecuador for the costs they incur. My aim in this paper is to critically analyse this standard line of argument and to criticise its validity both internally (i.e. with regard to its normative conclusion based on its premises) and externally (i.e. with regard to the argument’s underlying assumptions and its lack of contextualisation). As I will argue, the duty to conserve one’s forests is only a particular instantiation of a wider, more general duty to contribute towards global climate justice for which the context in which one operates (e.g. whether other agents are complying with their duties of global climate justice or not) matters significantly.

Highlights

Global anthropogenic climate change is real and its consequences across the globe are expected to be for the most part harmful and adverse
Global carbon sink conservation raises a host of normative issues, though, since it is for instance debatable who should pay the costs of carbon sink conservation, who has the duty to protect which sinks and how far the duty to conserve one’s carbon sinks extends
In order to make the argument stick with regard to the duty of developed states to pay for the costs of carbon sink conservation we have to revert to the idea of historical responsibility, which is probably precisely the reason why Armstrong tried to sneak it into his poisoned lake example. The problem with this move is that it significantly alters the structure of the argument, since it is no longer only the free-riding which does the normative work: what seems relevant in the carbon sink protection case is that (a) developing states with tropical forests do not freely decide to maintain their sinks but they do so out of a sense of global climate justice, and (b) the only reason why these countries at all have to preserve all these sinks is that the global North largely caused anthropogenic climate change