The unavoidability of justice – and order – in international climate politics: From Kyoto to Paris and beyond
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This article reviews the role that normative claims about climate justice have played in international climate politics and traces how international society's approach to equity questions has changed between the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015).In an anarchic international environment, international society can be expected to prioritize order over justice, and the interest of the most powerful states over those of the most vulnerable states.Interestingly, the UN climate regime managed to establish an unusually strong version of distributive justice as part of its core regulatory instrument, the Kyoto Protocol, but this has been weakened and remodeled in the switch to the bottom-up logic of the Paris Agreement.As a consequence, the global justice debate has seen the weakening of established substantive principles of climate justice and the rise of a new procedural focus on how to subject national climate policy ambition to international scrutiny.Henry Shue's admonition that the question of the fair sharing of burdens cannot be evaded remains relevant today, but the transition towards the Paris Agreement clearly shows the limitations of any effort to realize strong claims of distributive climate justice in international society.
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Climate diplomacy research draws from the distinction between order and justice and inherits it in part from English School work on norms.
“Climate diplomacy research draws from the distinction between both concepts and inherits it in part from the English School work on norms (Falkner, 2019).”
From EU Climate diplomacy between justice, order and systemic change (2026) · cites this paper as Falkner, 2019
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- Authors
- Falkner, R.
- Affiliations
- London School of Economics and Political Science (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Falkner, Robert
- ORCID
- Falkner, Robert
- Venue
- The British Journal of Politics and International Relations
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2019-02-20
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 270-278
- ISSN
- 1369-1481 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-856X
- OpenAlex
- W2916989710
- Cited by
- 31
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- orcid.org
- Locations
- The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (publishedVersion)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › International Environmental Law and Policies
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Philosophy and Ethics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Keywords
- climate justice, distributive justice, international climate regime, Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agreement, climate equity, procedural justice, bottom-up approach, Henry Shue, burden sharing, international order, UNFCCC
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