The Prospect of ‘Just Emissions’ as an International Norm of Environmental Governance

Abstract

The international system, as it presently exists, has proven woefully inadequate in its efforts to prevent the global injustices of massive ecosystem loss and environmental degradation. These issues have disproportionally affected individuals living in impoverished countries and in zones characterised by precarious living standards and negligible welfare status both well below the per capita income enjoyed by the Global North since the onset of the industrial revolution. The brunt of the harms to result from climate change will inevitably affect the Global South to a higher degree, because of underdeveloped infrastructure and weaker ability to adapt ex ante and respond ex post. International agencies, such as UNEP, the UNFCCC, and the IPCC, that are dedicated to instituting international agreements to combat rising surface temperatures, are struggling to create international momentum for realizing the growing necessity for radical action. This essay takes a critical perspective on theories of international culture, society, governance, competition, and great-power rivalry that call for remediations (on the part of industrialised nations) for climate-related loss and damage required by theories of environmental and economic justice. I argue that these theories must consider both the differential capacity for country-specific economic growth potential and the inequality of wealth that exists between developed nations and developing ones when measuring responsibility for climate damages and allocating environmental legal regulations such as financing and cost burdens. Governance and management of the biosphere is desperately needed to ensure equitable transnational standards of environmental justice which, through multilateral adherence to a regime of ecological justice, will create an international coalition of sustainable societies. International justice for the developing world is not only about development. The Global South requires allowances for subsistence emissions, necessary for the purpose of growth; allowances that are due to them through norms of fairness and distributional justice.