Human Rights vs Emissions Rights: Climate Justice and the Equitable Distribution of Ecological Space

Abstract

In debates about principles for differentiating responsibilities for reducing carbon emissions, attention is invariably drawn to claims, staked in the language of rights, that limit responsibilities. This article charts the constraints on the legitimate use of normative arguments framed in terms of rights. It first distinguishes carbon emissions rights as tradable property rights from more fundamental norms of justice as represented by human rights. It then clarifies that the distribution of emissions rights within a state does not raise fundamental questions of justice, but that between states such questions do arise. The problem then is how to theorise those questions. Some argue, with the situation of the worst off particularly in mind, that there should be a human right to equal emissions per capita, or to sufficient emissions for subsistence. Yet I deny that there is any human right to emissions. This would be too inconsistent with a human right to a healthy environment. What the worst off have a right to is secure access to the means to a decent life. Emissions are not inherently necessary to fulfil that right. Moreover, a just distribution of emissions rights cannot be determined in isolation from the distribution of resources more generally. For if rights of subsistence and responsibilities for emissions reductions are to be comprehended within a single framework of justice, this must encompass a more comprehensive view of how the command of all natural resources and environmental goods is relevant to economic and welfare goods. My constructive proposal is that this more comprehensive view should be developed in terms of the idea of 'ecological space'. An equitable distribution of rights to ecological space would ensure an equitable distribution of subsistence goods without sanctioning any excess use of environmental services, including the planet's capacity for absorbing carbon. A just allocation of responsibilities for emissions reductions must take due account of the human rights of the worst off, but this does not entail granting them emissions rights; rather it entails a recognition of the wider ranging redistributive responsibilities of those who have already benefited from an excess of emissions for which the poor have not been responsible.