Distributive fairness and environmental sustainability: Theoretical framework with application to the climate change negotiations

This dissertation provides a conceptual formulation of environmental sustainability as a problem of distributive fairness between and within generations and applies it to the currently pressing problems of climate change and global warming. The focus is on developing principles of fairness and deriving principles of allocation that a sustainable society should adopt. The Principle of Minimum Egalitariansim is proposed as a minimum condition for consistency between the two kinds of distributive justice. An illustration of these issues is provided in the context of climate change negotiations. A framework is developed for allocation of emission quotas between different parties to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. It identifies goals that can be sequentially achieved in five stages to fulfill the overall aim of limiting climate change. In particular, the inequalities in international carbon dioxide emissions are studied. Further empirical evidence is provided on the link between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in order to evaluate economic growth as a possible mechanism for limiting carbon dioxide emissions.