Climate justice and the difference principle: A justificatory approach to global climate governance

Abstract

This article proposes the Global Climate Difference Principle (GCDP) as a forward-looking evaluative standard for assessing the moral permissibility of inequalities within global climate governance. Dominant burden-sharing principles, “Polluter Pays,” “Beneficiary Pays,” and “Ability to Pay,” identify who caused or can address climate harms. They say much less, however, about the conditions under which climate-related inequalities themselves can be considered justifiable. The GCDP responds to this gap by adapting the reasoning behind Rawls's difference principle: inequalities in climate-related domains such as emissions access, adaptive capacity, climate finance, and resilience are permissible only insofar as they remain within ecological limits, are structured to provide the greatest feasible benefit to those most disadvantaged by climate-related harms, and do not restrict emissions necessary to sustain essential public services. The GCDP is not an extension of Rawls's domestic framework to the global level, nor does it replicate sufficientarian or prioritarian approaches to climate justice. It operates as a climate-specific test for evaluating whether such inequalities can be justified. The test applies at the level of institutional arrangements rather than individual entitlements and asks whether climate-related inequalities, as governed through international climate arrangements, can be justified to those most disadvantaged by their effects. The article situates this principle within debates on the global scope of Rawlsian justice, demonstrates its evaluative force across key domains of climate policy, and responds to objections concerning its conceptual foundations. In doing so, it reorients the normative analysis of climate governance from retrospective liability toward the prospective justification of climate-related inequalities under ecological constraint.