The Responsible Path between Scylla and Charybdis: Making Sense of Appeals to Equity in Climate Change Loss and Damage Mechanisms

Abstract

Shockley uses equity to assess the moral significance of loss and damage in any successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. He argues that we might conceptualize loss and damage either in terms of the costs associated with rectifying a past wrong, a backward-looking accountability approach, or in terms of balancing uncertain future burdens in the face of unknown harms, a forward-looking distributional approach. Shockley argues that the forward looking approach is more practicable, better able to address problems that have not yet arisen but will arise, and better able to integrate intuitive strengths of the backward-looking view. He argues that there is good reason to think of loss and damage in terms of the opportunities and prospects that may accompany a changing climate.