In the light of equity and science: scientific expertise and climate justice after Paris

Abstract

The Paris Agreement is built on a tension between the common goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C, and the differentiation that follows from the principle of equity. Scientific expertise is commonly seen as providing important means to overcome this tension, for example in the Agreement's "global stocktake", which is said to be undertaken "in the light of equity and the best available science". This raises the question of how scholarly communities best can contribute to deliberations on equitable differentiation in the effort required to meet common temperature goals. To discuss this question, the paper looks to the literature within Science and Technology Studies (STS) on the role of science in policymaking, where disagreement exists over the merits of "heating up" controversies through politicization, versus "cooling down" issues by seeking consensus. It assesses two cases in which scientific expertise has engaged with questions of equitable effort-sharing in international climate politics: The "Bali Box" of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, and the "Civil Society Equity Review" undertaken prior to COP21 in Paris. Based on a comparison of the two cases, it is argued that scientific contributions should not shy away from highlighting conflicts in values and interests, and that "heating up" discussions about climate justice may be a valuable contribution to overcoming the tensions of the Paris Agreement.

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“…Como señala Lahn (2018), en las negociaciones de cambio climático, la justicia climática ha empezado recientemente a interesar a la literatura en gobernanza climática, y la manera común de abordarla es a través del equitativo reparto de la carga entre los países del Norte y el Sur respecto a la mitigación del cambio climático. Este último punto fue progresivamente politizándose en el seno de las negociaciones, pasando de una criticada aproximación "puramente científica" que generó un cortocircuito en las negociaciones en Bali 2007resultando posteriormente en el fiasco de Copenhague a una aproximación desde la sociedad civil y la academia en el camino hacia París que puso de manifiesto el "irreductible elemento político" (Lahn, 2018) del reparto equitativo de la carga en la mitigación.…”

Fairness conceptions and self-determined mitigation ambition under the Paris Agreement: Is there a relationship?

“…Holz, Kartha, and Athanasiou (2018) compare NDCs with parties' fair-share contributions of 1.5°C-consistent global mitigation and serve as a central data source for the current analysis. 3 Their Climate Equity Reference framework (CERf) calculates parties' fair-share efforts, based on users' normative positions vis-à-vis relevant ethical choices, which, for their study, were made through deliberative processes involving a large coalition of civil society organizations (Lahn, 2018). Mitigation efforts are defined relative to projected "no-policy" baseline emissions.…”

New Science Institutions for Global Sustainability

“…Several studies have pointed to the dominance of scholars from the Global North in assessment bodies and advisory committees, and associated consequences for the political legitimacy these institutions carry in the Global South (Biermann, 2001(Biermann, , 2002Karlsson, Srebotnjak, & Gonzales, 2007;Montana, 2017;Pasgaard, Dalsgaard, Maruyama, Sandel, & Strange, 2015). More recently, scholars in environmental governance have urged researchers to direct attention to normative questions of sustainability governance, including the orientation of science institutions towards questions of equity and justice (Burch et al, 2019;Lahn, 2018).…”

“…Science for sustainability is directly concerned with action and interventions for sustainability transformations, moving beyond a linear idea of scientific knowledge informing decision-making and rather attending to the co-production of knowledge and societal change (Norström et al, 2020;West et al, 2019;Wyborn et al, 2019). If ever it was possible to separate facts from values or truth from power, this distinction is increasingly found unhelpful in addressing urgent, complex and contested sustainability challenges (Kläy et al, 2015;Lahn, 2018;T. R. Miller, 2013;Popa et al, 2014;Schneider et al, 2019).…”

“…This can be encouraged by conversations between solutions-oriented and critical approaches to help rethink how science relates to and may support societal change, including by questioning prevailing practices and institutions and breaking down incumbent power structures (Jerneck et al, 2011;Wijsman & Feagan, 2019). And finally, science institutions can support and encourage practices that purposefully generate political contestation and draw attention to dimensions of urgency as well as equity and justice in sustainability transformations (Lahn, 2018;Temper et al, 2019). Doing so will move science for sustainability outside of its comfortable position of neutrality and impartiality and into a messy but potentially productive realm of political action for societal change.…”