International Climate Justice: What the People Think

Are countries contributing their fair share to the Paris Agreement? The answer to this central question can rely on knowledge about existing– and potentially shared– views about fairness. Yet, current studies on existing fairness views are rare and often have a limited practical scope. In this article, we design and administer a survey to elicit fairness judgements among French and US citizens regarding these issues. We find that in both countries, most respondents think that principles of climate justice should be settled internationally even if they go against some countries’ interests, and express a preference for common (rather than differentiated) responsibilities - all the more likely when they are concerned about climate change. We observe support for two theoretical effort sharing rules: a convergence towards equal per capita emissions, and an operationalized version of grandfathering. Our survey also shows inconsistencies in observed fairness judgements, and that citizens have difficulties coordinating on simple judgements regarding existing nationally determined contributions. We eventually call for the progressive development of standardised surveys on these questions.