Climate justice and the international regime

Contestations over justice and equity in the climate regime provide the most striking evidence of the quest by relevant actors to ensure that institutions for global environmental governance are based on widely shared ethical standards of responsibility and fairness. This review article examines recent policy debates and literature on distributive justice and the climate regime and highlights some areas of key research. The review indicates that while discussions on climate justice have gained ascendency within the international regime circle with noticeable impacts, a lot remains to be clarified about the status of justice concepts and how to best design polices that reconcile moral ideals and power politics. Hence, although the current regime performs well in terms of recognizing the need for and incorporating concepts of distributive justice between the rich and poor countries; it has not provided a basis to sufficiently upset the underlying forces and abiding structures of global inequality. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 462-474