Scepticism about Beneficiary Pays: A Critique

Abstract

Some moral theorists argue that being an innocent beneficiary of significant harms inflicted by others may be sufficient to ground special duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims, at least when it is impossible to extract compensation from those who perpetrated the harm. This idea has been applied to climate change in the form of the beneficiary‐pays principle. Other philosophers, however, are quite sceptical about beneficiary pays (both in general and in the particular case of human‐induced climate change). Our aim in this article is to examine their critiques. We conclude that, while they have made important points, the principle remains worthy of further development and exploration. Our purpose in engaging with these critiques is constructive — we aim to formulate beneficiary pays in ways that would give it a plausible role in allocating the cost of addressing human‐induced climate change, while acknowledging that some understandings of the principle would make it unsuitable for this purpose.

How Fairness Principles in the Climate Debate Relate to Theories of Distributive Justice

“…An alternative approach is the so-called Beneficiary Pays Principle [16,40,51,60,63,64] (p. 536). Although previous generations may have passed away, present generations still reap the benefits of past industrial activities involving the burning of fossil fuels.…”

Climate Justice and the Duty of Restitution

“…In response to these objections, some authors have argued in favor of the beneficiary pays principle (BPP), according to which "the countries benefiting the most from greenhouse emitting activities in the past bear the greatest responsibility of climate justice" (Page 2008, p. 562; see also Barry and Kirby 2017;Duus-Otterström 2017). 3 In one interpretation, the BPP is constructed around the legal doctrine of unjust enrichment (Page 2012;Heyd 2017).…”

The Beneficiary Pays Principle and Strict Liability: exploring the normative significance of causal relations

“…What is crucial is whether in Benefitting from Terrorism, one would feel morally bound to offer apology, 27 An implication of the non-identity problem is that in many cases, current people can't be said to be benefitting from past injustices if these injustices are also conditions for their existence, as there is no alternative world in which they exist but don't benefit (Caney 2006). Some have suggested that the BPP isn't entirely vulnerable to that objection as it could merely limit its application (Barry and Kirby 2017). Others have suggested possible ways of avoiding the problem altogether (Butt 2007).…”