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By: Steve Vanderheiden

Abstract:Ìý

Following the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, national responsibilities to contribute toward climate change mitigation have been guided by that treaty’s provisions that parties contribute on the basis of their ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ (or the CBDR+RC principle). Initially, this was though to entail that developed country parties to the convention be exempted from any mitigation responsibilities, as they were under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This so-called ‘Bali firewall’ has remained controversial despite the Paris Agreement’s move away from centrally assigned and binding mitigation commitments, which has been maintained through the 2021 Glasgow Accord, with the ethical question of whether and how much such parties ought to contribute toward global mitigation efforts despite their relatively small historical or current responsibility for climate change remaining central to the normative basis of climate justice itself. This chapter explores this question, proposing and defending a framework for specifying such remedial obligations and considering the various ethical issues that such mitigation burden-sharing involves.