Climate Justice Principles Explained: Fair Climate Action Toolkit

[00:00:00]hi everyone nice to have you with us I'm Kevin of climate and environment policy Analyst at the foundation for European Progressive studies and today we have our first webinar of our policy breakfast series Breaking Down the silos climate mainstreaming and holistic policy design in the face of multiple transitions So today we're going to discuss our first policy brief of the series climate Justice principles a brief at the intersection between political philosophy and policy where we explore and evaluate principles that can guide Fair climate action from a global distributive justice perspective so we're quite lucky to have with us the co-author Dr Carl Knight senior lecturer in political Theory at University of Glasgow he's a political philosopher working on theories of distributive justice like egalitarianism prioritarianism and sufficientarianism and applied topics in distributive justice so Global Justice climate change Healthcare and discrimination we're also joined by two great discussants Luke bass currently working for the international Union for conservation of nature iucn in the commission on environmental economic and social policy he has worked quite extensively on cut on climate policy including on fepsis United for climate Justice project under the chairmanship of terreza Rivera minister of ecological transition in Spain so I also invite you to take a look at that we also have namita cambly a senior researcher at e3g who's principally in support of a clean economy program there and also complementing the work of a fossil transition programs on just transition she's recently co-authored a brief on just decarbonization an opportunity for EU U.S cooperation to participate in moving the topic of climate Justice to the center of the policy debate which is really essential so it's part of a bigger project on breaking down the silos where we try to make sure that we mainstream climate as a transversal issue in other policy fields and today we're looking at the first brief of this series which is a toolkit of principles that we can then use to produce Fair outcomes in policy and the goal is to move from Theory to practice so now I'll open the floor to Dr Carl Knight for his presentation of a policy brief in question and uh outlining the most plausible account of climate Justice from the fairness and moral philosophy perspective so Carl the floor is yours thank you very much uh Kevin um and thanks also to Luis and everyone else that's um perhaps it's helped to to set up this um this wonderful event under the larger project that Kevin mentioned that it's part of okay so hopefully you've all got my my slides visible there so um I'll be talking to you about climate Justice principles this is going to basically cover the um more philosophical part of of the uh FEPS publication that is cohorted with uh with Kevin um that came out um you know a month or so ago um a couple of months now maybe um so I'll start off with um an overview of some sort of the board of issues that we'll be addressing so political philosophy offers unique insights into the justice and Injustice of alternative policy interventions we're first going to be looking at some uh key Concepts and questions that arise in this kind of setting will then be surveying six leading principles of climate Justice we can erase some problems with um an influential alternative to those which is cost benefit analysis and finally I'm going to very briefly State and defend two principles of climate Justice which are a lucky gallatarianism and prioritarianism now you won't know what those are just yet we'll get on to them okay so firstly um there are three broad policy responses um that that could be considered I suppose to to climate change these will be I think familiar so firstly mitigation which we can very Briefly summarize as being a reduction in greenhouse gases which can be achieved in various ways but the main one is obviously to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases you're emitting in the first place um second one is adaptation which can be broadly considered to the reduction in the negative impacts of climate change so you're not actually unlike the first option which is actually reducing the radiator forcing effect you're not reducing the radiation forcing adaptation but you're just adapting human societies to those those heating effects and then the third um kind of policy response which is is kind of a slightly newer one but that's come to more a bit um in recent years is compensation so this is essentially making amends for climate change loss and damage now um while nations are in practice the focus of international distribution for instance through the unfcc process a fully just distribution would require that each individual Bears a fair share so this goes back to I suppose a methodological and ethical individualism that would be widely accepted in the clinic Justice literature so um you know we talk about Nations but really the fundamental thing we're interested in is individuals but but nations are you know important groupings of individuals essentially but obviously purposes related to this is a distinction between practical principles of policy and the fundamental principles that might provide a theoretical or normative underpinning for those principles and we're going to be looking at some of those um principles in both categories as we go along so we're now looking at some questions of climate justice so the first question of climate addresses is who should bear the cost of climate change now most principles of climate Justice are concerned with this question allocating the adaptation compensation and especially mitigation burdens of climate change so so the theories I'm going to be talking about they cut across those three categories that I mentioned a second question climate Justice is how much mitigation is is required obviously it's a very important one you know we want to reduce the amount of emissions um now that second one as important as it is political philosophers don't have as much to say about it it's often seems largely a a kind of empirical and natural science kind of question and we're just going to plug in the results from science into you know our theories our desired outcomes I was still some principals will say something about that and I think actually that's useful when they do that okay I'm now starting in the survey of six principles um so we'll start off with polluter pays which is fairly self-explanatory from the name it says that those with high historical emissions they're a large share of the costs of climate change so there's some fairly obvious limitations I think that this principle so firstly um it may seem unreasonable to hold the countries liable for costs that will risks they were unaware of which are typically um you could say pre-1990 you might choose a different date for the puzzle point but in any case clearly there was going to be some some historical point before which we couldn't really say that countries knew that their emissions were causing climate change whether it's 1990 or maybe the 80s or something um so that's one limitation it might seem unfair to hold Bluetooth accountable for free 1990 emissions and the second one which made it seems even stronger is it may seem unfair to hold the current generation accountable for prior Generations emissions so we could adjust the principles where it plays only to recent emissions so we're saying yeah okay we can't hold anyone accountable for like you know admissions that were in the 19th century or something we're just gonna you know focus on more recent emissions but that then seems to shift the burden precisely towards um lower middle income countries so for instance if we were to look at 1990 um onwards emissions post 1990 emissions China would have higher emissions you know with that cut Point than the us would have so I think that under undercuts some of the appearance principle um because usually you would think the us would have a higher burden than China to address climate change probably because it's richer furthermore this shift intensifies um as the developed world decarbonizes so you know in in Europe we have been fairly successful in in um mitigating uh you know growth of at least growth of um of emissions whereas the developing World obviously is developing so it is increasing its emissions so if you actually adopt a polluted Ace principle which is often motivated by by sort of trying to sort of make the West pay their fair share or something like that that might look like a good idea right now but over time that's going to get worse and worse still for the developing world because you know many European countries have Net Zero targets you know um so so they're eventually they're gonna their emissions are not actually going to be very high um so so there are some problems I think in this principle even if it intuitively seemed quite appealing second principle I want to mention is the beneficiary pennies principle so this principle says that station where the cost of climate change in proportions of the benefits they're derived from greenhouse gas emission emitting activity so the underlying idea is that you shouldn't profit from harm to others even if you're blameless so this removes those limitations we saw with polluter pays because we're not saying for instance we're in you know young people are responsible for pre-1990 emissions we're just saying that benefit from the society is ways there is one significant problem with with this principle of beneficiary pays which is the disaggregation problem it seems impossible to distinguish between benefits that are derived from climate change inducing action and those that aren't you know it seems like we're only saying everything is kind of right in some way or from climate change emitting activity because you know we haven't had zero Society or anything right about so one solution which is quite simple is to treat all wealth as essentially derived from climate change and then we seem to have a principle that sort of actually say not really focused on on pollution per se it's more or less saying that the Richer you are the more you pay and that's the difference well that's the the principle which will come to um shortly so we'll now mention a third principle which is um the principle of grandfathering and this is like the other two principles we mentioned so far are historical principle um but it is quite different it maintains that those with high historical emissions thereby gain entitlements to high future missions okay so the general idea is that agents can continue practices they wouldn't now be allowed to initiate that's quite intuitive it's used in all kinds of contexts for instance you know older cars have um lower standards that the new ones do now political philosophers have largely dismissed grandfather and is obviously unjust but I'd say it's hard to argue for instance that checklist should immediately reduce its emissions to those of Hungary you know it would be devastating for the economy to have to do something like that so it seems there must be a place for this principle at least as a moderate and transitional principle both principle I'm going to mention is the guaranteed minimum so this requires that everyone worldwide is guaranteed enough for a decent life um and it draws on the distinction between subsistence emissions which everyone has an entitlement to and luxury seems very intuitive this is accepted by political philosophers but it's very limited in scope we may think that people have entitlements to emit more than than just um you know the the bare minimum for a decent life especially where many have had much more than that so the fifth principle I want to mention is emissions egalitarianism and this proposes that everyone worldwide has an identical entitlementing the use of the atmospheres absorption capacity it accordingly says that emission entitlement should be distributed equally on an individual basis after all why should have Americans have more than Brazilians example from Jameson but a simple version of this view seems to encourage pronatalism because if you're basically a country increase its population and thereby get more emissions enticements it seems to have this sort of perverse incentive of incentivizing countries to increase the population obviously that's very much at odds with climate change mitigation if population is indexed to a base year which would solve that perverse incentive problem it would then be the case that Americans are getting more after all than Brazilians because Brazil has a higher population so you might also say this principle lacks at theoretical basis so philosophical theories of equality for instance so to distributed Goods as a whole rather than one particular good permission so it's an initially appealing principle that I think there are actually problems and the final principle um of this six we're going to mention a couple more after this um is the the um is the principle of ability to pay which I did mention in passing earlier and this distributes burdens of climate change in proportion to the agent's ability to pay I.E the rich pay more so it's concerned with absolute levels of Advantage like the guaranteed minimum principle but it's more ambitious so it's not saying we get everyone to a decent level it just says you know says the Richer you are the more you pay basically and more you are the less you pay yeah it two main seem to encourage pronatalism because if you if you um increase the size of your population then you know you're making your country poorer all that's equal so that's going to trigger reduced climate burdens that also seems to be a potential problems papers very briefly going to mention cost benefit analysis which is a kind of standard very influential alternative to these climate Justice principles which is you know popular economics especially uh which is basically maximizing welfare it's a kind of Applied version of utilitarianism that's the theme three main problems here so um firstly It generally the kind of welfare used to generally inflex market value so the riches interests are going to be given excess weight compared to Poor's interests it uses usually an unaccessibly high pure time discount rate so benefits for future people come for a lot less than benefits of parent people and utilitarianism is also incentive to insensitive to distributed justice so it's giving no priority to the worst off which we might think is appropriate to get priorities for worse off um and it also also gives no priority to those that make better climate choices so climate Sinners will do just as well as climate Saints on the leopards name so I'm therefore going to defend two principles that address some of the shortfalls of those earlier principles we mentioned which are often used in discussions they're kind of like more practical principles these are kind of fundamental principles principles that I think underpins some of those principles they'll actually pull out the normative course of their ideas so First Fundamental principle proletarianism says that all welfare accounts as utilitarianism it says that welfare for the worst of count um so a simple version of this view would be we don't really need to go for this but it um basically it says you sum of the square roots of individuals don't worry don't quite get back or well it's the next slide will make that bit clearer so prioritarianism is similar to the ability to pay principal um but it improves on it by firstly considering the overall amount of well-being removing perverse incentives and secondly addresses the how much mitigation question as well as the who should bear the cost question because authoritarianism is saying that we we increase welfare and also get priorities for the worst off it's going to apply both to the question of how much mitigation and the question of who's paying the cost of that way so this to pay is just a question about who there's the costs um okay so here's just very quick illustration of some of square root proitarianism so you look at the the dashed line naturally utilitarianism so it just says you know one unit of welfare is has one unit value so it weighs manifestable worse off and the better off equally whereas prioritarianism which is the curved solid line because it does a transformation so the um the function in this case the square root transformation it's not the case that one extra unit is always one extra unit it's one extra unit of welfare is always one extra unit of value um we get this nice curve which means we're giving priority to the worst op because if you're worse off then a unit for you can come for more than a unit for a better person okay so the second fundamental principle that I'll uh mention and this will be the the version um as well um is lucky gallatarianism and this says that those who have made more praiseworthy for instance lower emitting choices are going to be due more so the basic idea is that inequality is is permissible only work responds to differential exercises with individual responsibility rather than being the result of individual work so the main lucky gallatarianism is the idea that you're equalizing the luck so the effects of luck on people's lives are removed but we make people accountable for the things that are not matters of love that matches the choice for them so we propose to combine um prioritarianism with with lucky egalitarianism and that overall view is called luck prioritarianism so it says a distribution gets better the more welfare it contains the more welfare there is for the worse of and the more welfare goes for those who have made their choices okay that's it from for me for now I will be responding to the discussions at the moment thanks Carl and uh for presenting these principles hopefully we can now test for this account of climate Justice by discussing it a little bit further with uh Luke and namita in relation to their own work but one of the key findings of a policy brief is really that we need to make sure that the Practical principles in policy making also align with a fundamental moral principles so that we can really strive towards the same goal of making sure that the worst off are sheltered from harm uh and that we increase the well-being on a global level and also take into account the global picture uh just a reminder to our participants online that if you have any questions so far in the audience don't forget to post them and um also make sure to tell us which speaker or discussion you'd like to address for question two and we'll answer all the questions at the end I'll now open the floor to Luke who's going to give some initial thoughts about the principles and how they might be relevant to other work he's currently conducting so we can really suss out the barriers that exist in translating climate Justice from political philosophy into policy practice thanks Kevin and thanks for that incredible presentation call information an eye-opener because I love philosophy but I'm obviously not a philosopher and not not as knowledgeable on it but it's really refreshing to to see it from um a rather theoretical point of view but it triggers quite a few obviously questions and comments and I don't want to comment too much on the presentation itself I'll just um go through a few things it's just one thing I wanted to say which is quite interesting is the the polluted Pace Principle as you used in the beginning uh where you then refer to okay how do we account for those that didn't know that there were actually causing climate change and that is a tricky one especially when we mentioned 1990 which is the golden year as a reference but it was known way before it's like with asbestos um we those that are guilty to have produced asbestos in the time it was clear that it was harmful and so they were their pain and I think it's similar here in this case just as an example um yes I should maybe clarify I'm the vice chair for the cease for the commission on environmental economic and social policy at the iocn that's a voluntary role I should say um I'm between jobs at the moment but I do represent the iocn in this Commission in Europe and it is a commission that focuses on the economic and social impacts or effects or contexts for environmental policy and with that I wanted to say that the biggest Silo we are creating at the moment is effect the climate Silo itself uh we're starting to look and we're talking about breaking the silos and I wanted to just emphasize that this basically is all about resources we have to look at how we manage resources and if you go back to the historic guilt then that's easier to point that because there is no doubt that there is a incredible historical uh depth from the Richer countries on how they have been resourcing cheap resources and have built wealth on it and one of the effects was CO2 emissions and climate change but it's much more than that and so you have to look at this in a much broader perspective which of course the sdgs do I think overall when you when you kind of sum this all up the environmental climate the sustainability challenges basically a redistribution challenge um so we have to reduce our consumption the emissions and therefore consumption drastically in those parts of the world that have been emitting and have been using resources at Big scale um we have to stay within the planetary boundaries and that's clear those are quite clear uh but if you look at this redistribution what's less clear is and it's also mentioned in the paper is what is this minimum material wealth that everybody should be entitled to and even if you go to a very basic entitlement which is Basic Energy even that needs to be defined basic housing and then of course all the social uh security context in education but that's not necessarily having a weight on resources even if we would do that um if you then have to start looking at everybody's fair share the reduction of consumption in oecd countries has is massive now here we come to all the theories and principles but I think um that is the big elephant in the room and we have to dare to to bring it up because what we also know what is politically feasible at the moment is ecologically irrelevant that's another really important point to make and at the same time it also has to happen all has to happen in a socially just way um maybe it's interesting to for this group here and the people that are on this webinar to remind and also to see how the this new project with breaking the silos and and these climate principles just uh climate's justice principles link up with what was done earlier by the steering committee won't be too long on it but there was a clear view on just transition plans which is basically a redistribution approach and then looking at some of the tools which is the finance and investment and trade and where you have the taxation mechanism that is the most important and here is another uncomfortable uh elephant in the room it's taxing the wealthian it's taxing the rich we don't have to beat around the bush it's it's just what it is and that becomes very political immediately and if you're not careful you immediately end up in either being appointed as a socialist and even worse as a community if you're looking to talk about this but I think it's it's an honest reflection we need to use the tools that we have today also to make that happen faster and then maybe one important thing it was mentioned as well is the intergenerational um solidarity and having the young people really engage and participate in decision making is not just being being kind of heard in a council like really being part of the decision making I think is this is the third principle that was discussed back then and then of course and this is something that's at the heart of the cease of this Commission of ICN is a rights-based approach so just to focus again on how this is a right to a healthy environment I think that's important to remind in in the context of principles and then finally and and I think here I'll try to close um is that much of the solution is in mitigation and adaptation and where you have a as I can say a double whammy is in is in how nature is involved in it the nature-based solutions and how they're being implemented but that is even getting closer to the heart of local communities indigenous peoples and how they control their own lands for example and how that that solution then also can have a diverse effects if we don't uh if you don't make sure that we do it in the right way with the right approaches um so finally I think it's a lot of governance that we need to dare to point at that it is a redistributional approach that is needed and maybe to end on a positive note and with the with the latest vote in Parliament uh recently and it might be a bit of a bridge to namita later is the the social climate fund is one of these hope giving elements within the EU um and but I think even within the EU but even more importantly in its external relations this has to be much more than the even 86 billion that is now foreseen in this climate fund and that's of course scary numbers but then again if you look at other parts of economy those numbers are not so incredible and maybe a final point is to lead into next year when we will have the European elections um if we want a green deal which is part of this debate and part of the the work of the EU in this context it has to be even stronger on its social elements and on social components because we will otherwise not get the population on our sides to get a green deal that is needed which actually has to be more ambitious than we want we have in front of us which are already a great piece of work and it's hope giving and then looking at 2030 in a very positive way but 2040 is around the corner and let alone 2050 at a net zero context and to do that in a fair way this this element of a social uh social just approach will be crucial so I'll leave it here thanks so much for your intervention Luke I think a lot of good points especially on the scope of the crisis that we're facing which is not limited to uh you know the carbon tunnel that we often might have but also to biodiversity loss and the the distribution of resources so thank you for uh including that into the debate um at FEPS we're also hoping to work a little bit on the trade-offs that we need to make between the scale up of Renewables and biodiversity loss so keep an eye out for that and on quantifying the minimum rights and exactly what we need to consider a baseline level of well-being we're also hoping to work on Basic Energy minimum rights so also keep an eye out for that and the last point from my side on the just transition plans there might also be some some resource is upcoming that I will share with uh with all of you on this topic um I'm now going to pass the floor to nemita who is also doing a significant work on integrating climate Justice into policy debates uh so namita when you hear Luke's intervention and you first hear these principles what are the questions that emerge for you how do you cross this over with your own experience in the field thanks Kevin um and yeah thanks Carl and uh uh I just wanted to say that before I actually go back I'm really excited to be here I I spend unhealthy amounts of time thinking about how social adjustments and climate Justice interspects and um I especially want to thank God for teaching me about the prioritarianism I think I will use that the next time I want to sound smart in an intimidating setting uh but um yeah so my name is namita I work as a research manager at e3g on just transition and e3g is a climate change Think Tank whose mission is to sort of advanced climate safe world for all and it is actually the for all part which is where I come in um all of the policy research advocacy that I do is based around sort of the intersection of climate change and inequality but the point of this is trying to understand how climate action can be treated as a fairness issue essentially um and today's uh I think this this webinar and the principles that uh you talked about Carl as well as the points you've raised uh Luke I think for me uh and you mentioned this as well this is especially tiny because um yesterday one of the core fairness authors of the uh fifth of 75 package the social climate fund was officially adopted in the European Parliament um and I have spent uh the past 22 months uh more or less uh following this policy instrument and I see that there are several people on the call who have as well um and which is why I sort of wanted to uh base my intervention uh sort of drawing panels between what I've learned and uh what um and what I at the points that sort of Collins raised um which is also one way to answer the question you post um and there are three points in particular that I want uh to touch upon starting with just very you know um saying the scene in terms of where the climate Justice debate is at uh in the EU um this idea of giving priority to the worst off when it comes to climate action um and lastly what this focus on vulnerability and inequality um means and why it's relevant for EU policy making going forward and uh you will have noticed that I've said EU at least five times by now uh which is an indication of the fact that uh I this is the level that I go work on and will focus on but dress for sure that these points uh that I'm about to raise uh on uh decarbonization or on just recognization or Justice um a fairness are applicable for decarbonization legislation uh across the board and including in the US with their information production and um okay to begin with uh we do not really talk about climate Justice in the EU uh bubble as much as we do about say adjust transition um but to be fair I have to say that the just transition The Babe has uh itself um come a long way since the FIFA 55 package was sort of first proposed in uh July of 2021 and the discourse is still very much framed um it's still one of leaving no one behind but we are increasingly hearing references for social fairness and even the term climate Justice is slowly becoming part of the use of vocabulary uh to not just talk about International Global Climate justice but even within the EU the main issue though is that um there all of these terms uh climate Justice stress transition fairness uh they're fairly open to interpretation which means that there is no common or shared understanding of what fairness means or what the just in the just transition stands for which in turn affects how we sort of fold it into policy making how we mainstream it um and here I'd like to just take the example of the social climate fund which look also mentioned now the main purpose of this fund is to Shield vulnerable households and micro Enterprises from negative impacts of carbon pricing and the way it does this is by providing temporary direct income support and financial support to investment in alternatives now there is a clear acknowledgment here that vulnerable groups face particular barriers to investing in structural measures and without this specific prioritization these groups will become logged into say fossil fuel news and accordingly sort of like exposure to carbon pricing for longer um despite this positive of you know prioritization and the social climate funds for me remains uh essentially a compensation measure which also kind of like exemplifies what rather it illustrates that you use current approach to fairness which is to remedy what is essentially a political challenge with a financial instrument um and it think of it as a loose form of retroactive Justice if you will um and this is not to say at all that this question of redistribution of who should be at the cost of climate action action here that I say is not a crucial one um very much so but what I've seen in my work is that while we often ask who pays or who benefits we uh very rarely ask who decides who gets to have a stay in um who gets to have a say and rather how is their participation enabled um and actually think of it as when Carl mentioned um when Carl talked about fair share of the benefits I'm uh talking about I'm extending it to say a fast say as well um and if and the reason I see this is because if we think of climate Justice as a subset of social justice involving people in the decisions that affect the future of well-being is very much a matter of social justice and this will be applicable to the social economic fund as well because member states will need to draw up what are called social climate plans to um unlock funding and here we will need to pay close attention to who is at the table whose voice has been considered as legitimate uh because to me this will also broaden our understanding of vulnerability and marginalization now Luke of course mentioned young people and intergenerational justice but there are also aspects of gender a phrase of ability of residence status to name just a few and the hope is that this woman policy making more effective uh but also way more inclusive so the point I'm trying to say is that um recognition Justice in a way is just as important as redistributive justice but this is an aspect that's still seen as a nice to have but not as essential tenant of justice and before you think that this is a moral or ethical imperative let me show you that it's not because there are legal Frameworks such as the IRS convention the governance regulation and EU or even the European Court of conduct for Partnerships which sort of requires meaningful participation to be carried out um and I just want to uh sort of highlight here that the institutional record on this has been very poor be with respect to the recovery and resilience plans or the national energy and private plans and the social climate fund simply cannot afford to make the same mistakes if it is to really shelter those hearts done by and protect them from harm um and here again it won't be enough to consider to just consider them in these plans but we need to ensure that their voice whether their interests and their lived experience are are sort of reflected in policy making and that the channels and the mechanisms are in place to enable this um and I I will stop here but the point that I would like to leave you with is the implications for policy making now giving equal weights to recognition and pre-distribution in policy making will ensure that past and Justice are not injustices are not repeated or replaced um and the approach to sort of fairness and adjust policy making shifts from Beyond compensation to giving people more agency over their lives and like Luke said this is important because the elections are coming up next year and the goals should not be to just prevent social backlash but to actually build a long-term public mandate uh for uh climate action which is the only way to really accelerate and sustain it and I'll stop here thank you so much namita and I completely agree that recognition Justice is an essential element of the climate Justice debate our brief was not long enough to cover it but I also hope to see more citizen empowerment uh Raven simply for management of social movements because we need in the face of his challenge to all be together working at it if we want to realistic chance of succeeding in avoiding the worst consequences of climate change perhaps we can have some very brief reactions one minute 30 seconds each from Carl and Luke on the meters intervention yeah thanks um yeah thanks namita um and Kevin of course um so so yeah I I mean I absolutely agree on on the importance to have kind of recognition justice as well as distributive justice you know the need for a kind of um the decision-making processes um and you know this is an agency and things like that I mean but there is also of course an important connection between them I think if if everyone's interests are fully represented and um and effectively communicated um in a way they're going to be um more fully accommodated probably in the policies that result from that so so in essential or maybe to get a just distributive outcome if you have sort of just um procedural or sort of recognition um in place so so yeah I absolutely agree with that you know it's um I don't think I have anything more to say on it than you do and I know yeah thanks Carl uh to Luke now if you have a reaction to this yeah yeah sure of course the it's interesting that I think we're starting to talk about climate democracy because um and and apparently I mean I think our democracies are at least in in some parts of the world quite well organized but uh it's of course impossible to have it perfected there will always be some way to make it uh representative because otherwise uh you get totally lost so it's it's about rethinking and this is where the whole sustainable development governance question comes in and climate is the one that is now giving the most uh fuel to it with nice expression maybe to say giving fuel but uh but I think it's it's where the acceleration comes from which is good but but I think it's it's again larger a larger part of of the sustainability debate and it's interesting how when I've been involved in sustainable development discussions for 25 years now and so we've drifted away from sustainable development at Partners sdgs but to Transitions and mistake sustainability transitions because somehow sustainable development has become this kind of two bigger concept has been corrupted and but I think you should go back to the basics of this and sustainable development which has a very strong governance element to it which is all of what namita just said that is needed to advance the agenda on climate but also on on the larger environment agenda which is then basically a social agenda but yeah climate democracy maybe that's a new term to think of thanks Luke uh inspirational uh terminology that we can bring forward uh after this uh this webinar uh so now I'd like to open the floor uh in the spirit of Citizen empowerment uh to the question of Pedro which I'll read out just now so we have a first question for Dr Carl Knight uh which and he's saying I'm wondering how exactly you conjugate lock egalitarianism with neocolonialism meaning uh did for example Uganda emit more than the us out of doing virtuous practice or because it simply couldn't emit more due to the resource drain the global North does on the global South uh so this first question to Carl if we can keep it brief as well and then we'll go to Luke's question I'm not sure I understand the question I mean surely the US emits a lot more than Uganda um he's asking how you factor in uh neocolonialism into your lock egalitarian approach if that's something that you'd like to do yeah I mean I suppose what I would I would say in that in that sort of space um it is the the in a a kind of uh neocolonial um distributive pattern which is essentially what we kind of have um you know resources are heavily concentrated in in the global North um so you know that so that that's unjust you know that's unjust under a lucky egalitarian scheme or under a proletarian scheme so it's unjust when you combine those things you know if you think about the the average Ugandan um you know there are emissions are a lot I assume are a lot lower um than than the average Americans and um you know they're no less deserving or anything so you know that that's an injustice on a lucky gallitarian scheme um yeah I mean I I don't think that the account I give doesn't doesn't um greets let's say colonialism as as it doesn't really distinguish it from other processes by by which you might have um different unjust outcomes you know for instance there would be unjust processes within a society you might not refer to as Colonial you know there might be for instance glass injustices that might might not um be um referred to as Colonial but they would be identified as unjust so it would be a similar you know I would say that there's something of a parallel in those those kinds of cases um you know because lucky altarianism and proletarianism have this ambition to be a fundamental principle they they yeah they're aiming to identify something that's unjust in in all those different kinds of contexts um which is not to say that those contexts are not not important of course colonialism or neocolonialism is among the most important causes of of uh climate Injustice and Injustice more generally I would say thanks for the clarifications Carl uh now I'll read the question to Luke bus so Pedro is also asking do you therefore find it is a communication problem to address for real solutions to climate change given Decades of anti-communist propaganda uh and he says I have been noticing how far how for the past years Scholars have been successfully I believe rebranding socialism and communism as post-growth and degrowth not as an overarching term but in opposites in opposition to capitalism as requiring infinite growth so quite interesting when considering the ideological ramifications of a resource debate uh Luke in 30 seconds it would be great if you could unless some of uh some of that big yes first of all I would like I would be interested to know who Pedro Mendes is uh because he's been asking the two questions and it would be nice for us to know who who he's with or what his background is but by the way two really good questions um yes I think the anti-communist propaganda is an interesting point I don't want to go into it but we all know that communism unfortunately in the form it had been executed unfortunately miserably failed you have to admit that so it's it's when you attach a redistributional debate to Communism it's not potentially not helpful and therefore that rebranding I think that is being talked about is is important then again if you talk about dig growth or post-growth I mean it's all about what kind of growth of course I think there is still room to draw but not in material outputs or in material use or in consumption that's where that's where it doesn't work anymore um or it has to be in an even par with some parts of the world that still have a fair share their fair share of growth entitled which then means that some will have to really slow down or or even stop growing which is becoming immediately uncomfortable but that's a it's a just a truth it's a reality um and maybe in the last 10 seconds if you look at uh Kate Robert's donut economy it's a it's it's an interesting concept it's one that gets attention uh the only thing is not answered in that donut really and and I've had good discussions with her is what is that inner circle when it comes to the material wealth that is the social wealth education and so on and so forth Social Security and illness security but we just don't come to the point to Define what has to be redistributed the planetary boundaries are known but we don't know what that but we don't dare to say what it really means on consumption on a fair part of consumption and these uh concepts of growth or degrowth then at that moment are maybe not as well thanks Luke if it's acceptable to go five minutes over time we'll give one last question to namita so we have Anna who is asking how you see recognitional Justice applied in practice to policy making processes especially in terms of including groups that are at risk affected but some what outside the policy making bubble for example indigenous peoples or non-eu populations affected by EU policies here again let's keep it very short so we don't go more than five minutes over time thanks um okay 30 second answer uh on a a very poorly I would say uh but I think there is hope to sort of pull this in so with the new critical Roman rules acts for example or uh the new um uh legislation on due diligence I think these are Avenues to sort of bring in the human rights lens and uh including and and create sort of like a difference to Frameworks such as um the human rights framework but also other um Frameworks that include um uh sort of the involvement of Engineers groups I am trying to find the exact because I know that the ILO for example has uh such uh legal guidance as well uh and strategic Frameworks um but I will find the exact name of it and it was chat in a second thank you for asking uh the short answer is not very well and you definitely needs to do better thanks nomita so now I will conclude the meeting and thank you all for joining a very rich discussion today so some key terms to to leave with recognition Justice distributive justice climate democracy resource use and uh thank you also to the team that helped set this up Luis Rodrigo and if you've enjoyed the interaction today please make sure to come also to our climate mainstreaming into Health policy which is happening on 27th of April and the next ones will be on mainstreaming climate into digital and mainstreaming climates into gender policy so we'll build a little bit on the discussions we started here today thank you all thanks thanks for a good exchange nice to meet you thanks a lot cheers bye everyone