Resilience and Nonideal Justice in Climate Loss and Damage Governance

From a nonideal justice perspective, this article investigates liability and compensation in their wider theoretical context to better understand the governance of climate loss and damage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The usual rationale for considering compensation takes a backward-looking understanding of responsibility. It links those causing harm directly to its remedy. This article shows that, under current political circumstances, it is more reasonable to understand responsibility as a forward-looking concept and thus to differentiate responsibilities on grounds of capacity and solidarity. The article argues that loss and damage entitlements in UNFCCC governance should be understood as entitlements to a threshold of capabilities for resilience. While compensation merely means redressing the situation ex ante a threat, entitlements to capabilities for resilience can entail more demanding responsibilities of support. This means that Article 8 of the Paris Agreement has much more demanding implications than it might at first appear.