Global Justice and Climate Change: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice

Climate change is one of the most significant problems facing humanity today. As scientific evidence continues to accumulate, it is becoming increasingly apparent that climate change requires an urgent global response. Without such a response, rising sea levels, severe weather patterns, and the spread of deadly diseases threaten the lives of both present and future generations. And yet, action on climate change has been characterized by lack of progress and break downs in communication. It is widely assumed that the global response to climate change has so far been inadequate. Alarmed by this lack of progress, the thesis aims to explore exactly why we should consider current global climate change action as inadequate, and what normative principles must underwrite a more just global response to climate change.

More specifically, the thesis will conduct a global justice based assessment of multilateral and networked climate change governance. This normative assessment of current practice is not only urgently needed in order to clarify the inadequacies of the climate change response, but also serves the purpose of bridging the gap between political theorists who concern themselves with the ethical dimensions of climate change, and scholars who focus on climate change governance practice. The thesis aims to illustrate that climate justice theorists can provide normative insights into current practice, which can inform the field of climate change governance and ultimately contribute to assessing how the response to climate change can become more just. In this way, the thesis provides a starting point for a discussion between two fields, which have traditionally been concerned with complementary, yet separate, research agendas. The thesis demonstrates that the bridging of these two fields can underwrite future thinking about a more just global response to climate change.