Justice in Global Warming Negotiations: How to Achieve a Procedurally Fair Compromise
Benito Müller
In the Kyoto round of the global warming negotiating process, justice was not a major concern. All the relevant parties shared the view that, as the agreement was binding solely for developed countries, the fair solution would be given by some form of ‘grandfathering’ (i.e. percentage reductions relative to some given emission base line). Future substantive rounds of these negotiations, however, will involve targets not only for developed but also for developing countries, and no such moral consensus is likely to be forthcoming. Considerations of justice will be a key factor in deter-mining the feasibility of any commonly acceptable agreement that has a chance of being ratified. Indeed, given the expected disparity of positions, there will be major obstacles to finding a solution which is likely to be ratified.
The aim of this study is to find a way in which this failure might nonetheless be averted. To this end, a practical method of determining concrete compromise solu-tions is proposed. The intention is that the procedural fairness and transparency of this method can bring the negotiating parties to see the compromise solution as sufficiently fair to be preferred to a breakdown of negotiations.
In situations where different moral positions can justifiably be upheld, the chances of there being a solution which all the (relevant) parties consider to be completely fair are negligible. Yet to avert a doomsday scenario we merely need a solution which is commonly regarded as sufficiently fair to remain acceptable. The method being proposed to generate such compromises is based on the use of the so-called ‘mixed proposals’. These are weighted arithmetic averages over the distribution proposals put forward by the parties as (completely) fair solutions. The problem with the mixed proposals suggested previously is that the weights employed in the aggregation were without exception meant to be determined by way of (strategic) bargaining. In practice, it is argued, this is highly unlikely to generate sufficiently fair proposals. Indeed, if we are dealing with more than two weights, it is unlikely to lead to a proposal at all.
The method advocated in this study, by contrast, determines the weights as reflecting the overall social preference given to the base distributions proposed by the parties: each party ranks all of the proposals according to preference. These rankings are then each expressed in terms of preference scores. The sum total of these scores pertaining to a particular base distribution is a measure (index) of the social desirability of this distribution amongst the parties involved. The weight with which a base distribution is to occur in the mixed proposal is to be given by this index, thus reflecting its social desirability.
This preference score method is presented as a contribution to a debate
that may bring about a commonly acceptable compromise solution in future
substantive climate change negotiations. As such it deserves to be
taken seriously by all involved parties.