Climate Justice and the Distribution and Scarce Resources

The global climate policy options of mitigation and adaptation are both characterized by the question of how to fairly distribute a scarce resource. Adaptation measures aim to prevent the materialisation of future climate risks that threaten the lives, health, homes, and economic prospects of many people. A central characteristic of global adaptation policy is the scarcity of adaptation finance. Accordingly, distribution criteria are applied to distribute adaptation finance for good reason. A recent proposal suggests basing decisions about the distribution of adaptation finance on a country’s level of democracy. Chapter 1 introduces the fundamental aspects of scholarly climate justice related to the distribution of scarce resources. It presents the relational egalitarian approach to justice as a response to the criticism of the distributive paradigm in climate justice debates. Chapter 2 reviews the well-established scholarly debate on climate justice with regard to mitigation and the just distribution of the remaining emissions budget. Chapter 3 highlights three injustices in global adaptation policy. Adopting the perspective of relational egalitarianism, this chapter considers not only aspects of distributive justice, but also relational justice. Chapter 4 scrutinizes the legitimacy and entitlement argument for the democracy criterion based on scholarly debates. Additionally, this chapter contributes a new argument to the debate: the additional side-benefit argument for the democracy criterion. Chapter 5 is a normative and empirical case study analysing the implementation of distributing scarce adaptation finance based on a government’s level of democracy. This case study focuses on the practical implementation of the democracy criterion and is represented by two of its pillars: participation and anti-corruption by using Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data. Chapter 6 concludes that from a justice perspective, in addition to the potential positive instrumental effects of democracy on the efficiency with which adaptation measures are implemented, democracy has valuable intrinsic aspects for global adaptation policy in particular and for social equality in general.

Level thesis:degree_level

thesis.doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher

Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel

Year

2026

Author dc:creator

• Schulan, Alexander

Contributors dc:contributor

• Baatz, Christian
• Konrad, Felix

• Climate Justice
• Adaptation Finance
• Relational Equality
• Democracy Criterion
• Climate Change
• Democracy

Repository record source_url

https://macau.uni-kiel.de/receive/macau_mods_00008703

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:macau.uni-kiel.de:macau_mods_00008703