Climate Justice and the Paris Agreement : Dimensions of Climate Justice in the Nationally Determined Contributions

Climate change is a critical threat to all the countries of the world today, not least because of the severe human rights infringements it may well lead to. However, although climate change is a collective, global challenge, there are considerable inequalities regarding contribution to cause and burden of the effects. Those suffering the most from the effects of climate change tend to be least responsible for the emissions causing it. The theoretical concept of climate justice aims to address these injustices, between different countries as well as societal groups and generations. To contribute to the understanding of how this concept is present in the global climate debate today, this thesis examines a selection of the Paris Agreement parties’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from a perspective of climate justice. The analysis is based on a theoretical framework developed by Andrea Schapper, focusing on three dimensions of climate justice – international, intra-societal and intergenerational. Through this framework, a total of 36 NDCs are studied, the top and bottom three countries for each world region based on levels of cumulative CO2-emissions. The aim of the case selection has been to obtain a variation regarding development status, vulnerability to the effects of climate change, levels of greenhouse gas emissions and geographical location of the studied countries. The results of the study show that all the dimensions are present in at least some of the studied NDCs, but to a very different extent. Primarily, the parties discuss the issue of international justice. Intra-societal justice is touched upon quite frequently but very few bring up the matter of intergenerational justice. Moreover, all three dimensions are predominantly handled by countries classified as ”developing” (according to the UN statistics division). This implies that climate justice is a higher priority for the most vulnerable to and least responsible for climate change, which is problematic for many reasons. Above all, it indicates that rich, industrialized countries are reluctant to take responsibility for their current and historical emissions, as well as the effect those emissions have on others