Justice in Climate Policy: Distributing Climate Costs Fairly (Research for Policy)

This open access book is looking into ways to achieve just climate policy within a country. The authors of this monograph share a unique, timely and original vision: continuous support for climate policy is more likely to emerge when citizens find that the distribution of the bill for climate costs is fair. But what is a fair distribution of climate costs? This is an important question because financial costs of mitigation (reducing greenhouse gases), adaptation (adapting to climate change) and damage (compensating or compensating after weather extremes) increase significantly in the coming decades. Drawing on philosophy and ethics, the authors propose ten principles for achieving just distributions of domestic climate costs. Examples of such principles are individual responsibility, the polluter pays, greatest utility and capacity to pay. Yet what a fair distribution is, depends on, for example, political preferences and the policy issue at hand. Empirical research on designing climate policies, however, shows that distributive principles are not part of the political, policy, and public discussions. The authors therefore argue that explicit attention to principles of just distribution at the start of a policy process contributes to support for climate policy. This book provides tools to professionals and students to achieve justice in climate policy.

Dr. Annick de Vries is senior research fellow at the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR). As project coordinator she was responsible for the study about justice in climate policy. She also works on a report on climate adaptation. Previous to her work for the WRR, she worked at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, at the Rathenau Institute for technology assessment and for a Dutch consultancy company. She holds a PhD in Public Administration (Twente University) and a MSc in Economics (Erasmus University Rotterdam). Dr. Gijsbert D.A. Werner is a senior research fellow at WRR. He was a project coordinator of the team responsible for this study of justice in Dutch climate policy. At the WRR, he also worked on reports on global population ageing and on financially sustainable health care. Previously, he worked as an evolutionary biologist studying social evolution and the evolution of cooperation at the University of Oxford and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Elisabeth A.W. (Elsenoor) Wijlhuizen (Msc) obtained a research master in Urban and Economic Geography at Utrecht University. From 2021 until 2023, she was a research fellow at the WRR. After that, she worked as a Social Innovation scientist in the Energy Transition Studies department at TNO, a Dutch not-for-profit research organization. She is currently a PhD-candidate at the Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. Her research focusses on international regulations for a just transition in agriculture. Her PhD is part of the CROP-XR project that is dedicated to developing climate-adaptive crops. Dr. Victor Toom is a research fellow at the WRR. He holds a PhD in the social sciences from the University of Amsterdam (2010). He held academic positions in England and Germany (2010-2018). He is an interdisciplinary scholar, with publications in, amongst others, the British Journal of Criminology; Forensic Science International: Genetics; Science, Technology & Human Values; Security Dialogue and Medical Anthropology.Prof. Dr. Mark Bovens was a member of WRR from 2013 until 2024. He is the co-founder of the Utrecht University School of Governance in the Netherlands where he holds the chair of Public Governance. He studied Law, Political Science, and Philosophy at Leiden University and at Columbia University Law School in New York. He has published more than twenty monographs and edited volumes in the field of politics, government, and public policy. Prof. dr. Suzanne J.M.H. Hulscher is a member of WRR since 2019. She leads the cluster in Marine and Fluvial systems, department of at the University of Twente. She studied Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University and received her PhD at the Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Studies, Utrecht University on work partly done at Deltares. Her work mainly involves rivers, coasts and offshore areas. Herein she investigates physical processes as well as adaptation measures in these water systems to deal with climate change induced issues as sealevel rise, extreme weather patterns and more extreme river discharges. She (co-)authored over 200 journal papers and she has chaired the WRR study on climate justice.