This article identifies social justice dilemmas associated with the necessity to adapt to climate change, examines how they are currently addressed by the climate change regime, and proposes solutions to overcome prevailing gaps and ambiguities. We argue that the key justice dilemmas of adaptation include responsibility for climate change impacts, the level and burden sharing of assistance to vulnerable countries for adaptation, distribution of assistance between recipient countries and adaptation measures, and fair participation in planning and making decisions on adaptation. (...) We demonstrate how the climate change regime largely omits responsibility but makes a general commitment to assistance. However, the regime has so far failed to operationalise assistance and has made only minor progress towards eliminating obstacles for fair participation. We propose the adoption of four principles for fair adaptation in the climate change regime. These include avoiding dangerous climate change, forward-looking responsibility, putting the most vulnerable first and equal participation of all. We argue that a safe maximum standard of 400–500 ppm of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and a carbon tax of $20–50 per carbon equivalent ton could provide the initial instruments for operationalising the principles. (shrink)

The precautionary principle has been widely discussed in the academic, legal, and policy arenas. This paper argues, however, that there is no single precautionary principle and we should stop referring to ?the? precautionary principle. Instead, we should talk about ?precaution? and ?precautionary approaches? more generally and identify and defend distinct precautionary principles of limited scope. Drawing on the vast literature on ?the? precautionary principle, this paper further argues that the challenges of decision making under conditions of uncertainty necessitate taking a (...) precautionary approach to decision making that will enable us to understand what particular precautionary principles require of us on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

The precautionary principle states, roughly, that it is better to take precautionary measures now than to deal with serious harms to the environment or human health later on. This paper builds on the work of Neil A. Manson in order to show that the precautionary principle, in all of its forms, is fraught with vagueness and ambiguity. We examine the version of the precautionary principle that was formulated at the Wingspread Conference sponsored by the Science and Environmental Health Network in (...) 1998. That version fails to indicate who must bear the cost of precaution; what constitutes a threat of harm; how much precaution is too much; and what should be done when environmental concerns and concern for human health pull in different directions. Whether this vagueness is a strength or weakness of the principle depends on what purpose(s) the precautionary principle is supposed to serve. (shrink)

Climate change is no longer a distant possibility. Potentially harmful climatic changes are already underway. If we want to or believe we ought to minimize the harmfulness of eventual climate impacts it will therefore be necessary for us to adapt to our changing climate. As people will be differentially affected by climate impacts depending on when, where, and in what circumstances they live, adaptive measures will have to vary with context. It turns out that those least causally responsible for climate (...) change are predicted to suffer the most from climate impacts. As these are disproportionally the world's poor and their vulnerability is partly due to their poverty, adaptation will often intersect with development. Determining who should be held responsible for meeting the costs of adaptation, the topic of this review, is therefore a difficult task. After reviewing the relevant literature, this review identifies the need for further work on the conceptual and practical issues that arise when thinking about the ethics of adaptation. (shrink)

In part one, I identify the core logical structure of the precautionary principle and distinguish it from the various key concepts that appear in the many different formulations of the principle. I survey these concepts and suggest a program of further conceptual analysis. In part two, I examine a particular version of the precautionary principle dubbed “the catastrophe principle” and criticize it in light of its similarities to the principle at work in Pascal’s Wager. I conclude with some suggestions for (...) advocates of the precautionary principle who wish their formulation to avoid the pitfalls confronting the catastrophe principle. (shrink)

Two interpretations of the precautionary principle are considered. According to the normative interpretation, the precautionary principle should be characterised in terms of what it urges doctors and other decision makers to do. According to the epistemic interpretation, the precautionary principle should be characterised in terms of what it urges us to believe. This paper recommends against the use of the precautionary principle as a decision rule in medical decision making, based on an impossibility theorem presented in Peterson . However, the (...) main point of the paper is an argument to the effect that decision theoretical problems associated with the precautionary principle can be overcome by paying greater attention to its epistemic dimension. Three epistemic principles inherent in a precautionary approach to medical risk analysis are characterised and defended. (shrink)

This paper argues that a precautionary approach to scientific progress of the sort advocated by Walter Glannon with respect to life-extending therapies involves both incoherence and irresolvable paradox. This paper demonstrates the incoherence of the precautionary approach in many circumstances and argues that with respect to life-extending therapies we have at present no persuasive reasons for a moratorium on such research.

Solar radiation management is a form of geoengineering that involves the intentional manipulation of solar radiation with the aim of reducing global average temperature. This paper explores what precaution implies about the status of solar radiation management. It is argued that any form of solar radiation management that poses threats of catastrophe cannot constitute an appropriate precautionary measure against another threat of catastrophe, namely climate change. Research of solar radiation management is appropriate on a precautionary view only insofar as such (...) research aims to identify whether any forms of solar radiation management could be implemented without creating new or exacerbating existing threats of catastrophe. (shrink)

The precautionary principle (“the Principle”) has been widely embraced as the new paradigm for contending with biological and environmental risk in the context of emerging technologies. Increasingly, it is being incorporated into domestic, supranational, and international legal regimes as part of a general overhaul of health and environmental regulation.1 Codifications of the Principle typically are vague, with their content intentionally left for scholars to debate, decision makers to interpret, and the courts to flesh out through case law. Generally speaking, the (...) Principle holds that scientific uncertainty will not be a bar to preventive regulatory action, and that decision makers should err on the side of .. (shrink)