Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-1 (section)

=== 1.4.1 What is Equitable, Just and Effective Adaptation? ===

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Articulating the goals of adaptation is an important initial step in the decision-making process ( [[#Jones--2014|Jones et al 2014]] ). Adaptation often involves trade-offs among various options of adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development, as well as judgements based on science, engineering and economics, and questions of distribution and democratic participation ( [[#Jafry--2018|Jafry et al., 2018]] ). Articulating the goals of adaptation at the international, national and local levels thus requires engaging with the concepts of equity, justice and effectiveness ( ''high confidence'' ).

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==== 1.4.1.1 Equitable Adaptation Informed by Concepts of Justice ====

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Assessing climate action involves ethical considerations that the literature often describes as climate justice. The term ‘climate justice,’ however, has been used in different ways in different contexts and by different communities. Grassroot organisations and activists often focus on unequal global power relations, wealth, and interests within communities, within nations, and along the North–South divide, as well as the historical responsibility for climate change ( [[#Chatterton--2013|Chatterton et al., 2013]] ). Some national governments also view climate justice as the right of developing countries to industrialise. Balancing these issues, international climate change negotiations have primarily focused on current capacities and responsibilities for addressing climate change as reflected in the UNFCCC principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ ( [[#Fisher--2015|Fisher, 2015]] ).

Since principles of justice are substantive normative commitments that have been debated for centuries, it would be unrealistic to expect a universal consensus. Nevertheless, there is broad agreement about the core issues. Just normative principles are ones that result in fair and equitable allocation of goods, vulnerabilities and risks ( [[#Caney--2014|Caney, 2014]] ; [[#Schlosberg--2009|Schlosberg, 2009]] ; [[#Schlosberg--2013|Schlosberg, 2013]] ; Jafry et al., 2018)

It is common to distinguish between distributive justice, procedural justice and recognition ( [[#Fraser--1999|Fraser, 1999]] ; [[#Schlosberg--2003|Schlosberg, 2003]] ; [[#Schlosberg--2009|Schlosberg, 2009]] ; [[#Reckien--2017|Reckien et al., 2017]] ; [[#Forsyth--2018|Forsyth, 2018]] ; [[#Olazabal--2021|Olazabal et al., 2021]] ). The first refers to the distribution of burdens and benefits; the second to who decides and participates in decision making; while recognition entails basic respect and robust engagement with and fair consideration of diverse values, cultures, perspectives, and worldviews. Recognition is closely linked to distributive and procedural justice ( [[#Hourdequin--2016|Hourdequin, 2016]] ). Without recognition, actors may not benefit from the two other aspects of justice ( ''medium confidence'' ). Recognition thus represents both a normative principle as well as an underlying cause of unjust distribution and lack of democratic participation ( [[#Svarstad--2020|Svarstad and Benjaminsen, 2020]] ). However, recognition is still under-represented in climate justice compared to general scholarship and debate on justice principles ( [[#Chu--2018|Chu and Michael, 2018]] ; [[#Benjaminsen--2021|Benjaminsen et al., 2021]] ).

Three principles of distributive justice are especially relevant to adaptation: ''fairness between individuals'' , ''fairness between states'' and ''fairness between generations'' (Fleurbaey et al., 2014 '')'' . Fairness between individuals means that the distribution of goods, vulnerabilities and risks of climate change should not fall on individuals for arbitrary reasons. It would be arbitrary if, say, a family were disproportionately affected by climate-induced drought by chance alone. Similarly, an adaptation action that protects some and creates risks for others is unfair if the final distribution of burdens and benefits is arbitrary.

The second consideration of distributive justice is ''international justice'' , or fairness between states. An important idea in international climate negotiations has been ''common but differentiated responsibilities'' (CBDR ''')''' and respective capabilities ''',''' stated in Principle 7 in the Rio Declaration (1992), as well as by the Kyoto Protocol (1997). The principle reflects the underlying idea that ''all'' countries must address climate change, but the form of climate action depends on the situation the country finds itself in. Developed countries may find themselves in a position where they can decarbonise more rapidly and ensure financial flows, while the responsibilities of LDCs and SIDS may primarily come in the form of adaptation actions. This means that uneven distribution of wealth and power between (and within) countries is a key driver of climate injustice.

The third consideration of distributive justice relevant to climate adaptation is fairness between generations and the obligation to ensure that future generations are guaranteed at least a minimally decent life ( [[#Jonas--1985|Jonas, 1985]] ; [https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/chapter-1/Llavador--2010 Llavador et al., 2010] ). For example, youth climate activists and political philosophers have argued that today’s children, as well as generations yet unborn, will be exposed to far greater risks than most living adults so that policymakers should work to avoid shifting all burdens of adaptation to future generations.

Procedural justice addresses the fairness of the processes by which decisions are made and the legitimacy of those making the decisions ( [[#Gutmann--2009|Gutmann and Thompson, 2009]] ; [[#Kitcher--2011|Kitcher, 2011]] ). Criteria include transparency, the application of neutral principles among parties, respect for participants’ rights and inclusive participation in decision making, which often takes the form of participatory processes. Article 6 of the Framework Convention creates a binding commitment on parties to promote public participation in addressing climate change. Increased participation by civil society in climate policy discussion, including new forums such as the Local Communities and Indigenous People’s Platform of the UNFCCC work toward this goal ( [[#UNFCCC--2021|UNFCCC, 2021]] ). Genuine, not merely formal, participation requires communities be well-acquainted with the climate change risks they face and are given a full voice in the process of adaptation planning. Many local communities, especially those most vulnerable to climate change, remain excluded, which is inconsistent with principles of procedural justice. In addition to a normative principle, models of decision making also suggest that diverse, representative decision makers can be expected to make better decisions than more limited groups ( [[#Hong--2004|Hong and Page, 2004]] ; [[#Landemore--2013|Landemore, 2013]] ; [[#Singer--2019|Singer, 2019]] ).

In AR5 WGIII ( [[#IPCC--2014a|IPCC, 2014a]] ) discussions of justice and ethical concepts were combined with discussions of economic principles while the adaptation chapters did not explicitly discuss climate justice. This report moves beyond AR5 by connecting the assessment of policy choices to normative principles and showing how better outcomes are obtained by choosing just ones.

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==== 1.4.1.2 Equitable and Effective Adaptation Informed by Concepts and Measures of Well-being ====

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Planning and assessment of effective and just adaptation require appropriate measures of both criteria. This report uses both single and multi-criteria measures. Local and regional decision makers employ benefit–cost analysis to efficiently allocate scarce resources among alternative adaptation efforts and among adaptation and other societal needs. Decision makers at national and global levels can employ measures of social welfare to consider trade-offs and synergies among adaptation, mitigation, and development. Such measures can avoid wasteful allocation of resources and help avoid maladaptation. Such measures also prove useful because well-established approaches exist to evaluate such quantities, and because income is highly correlated with a wide range of indicators of social progress and climate change adaptation capacity ( [[#Dasgupta--2018|Dasgupta et al., 2018]] ).

Aggregate, monetised economic measures are, however, insufficient to address issues of climate justice fully or to reflect that wide range of worldviews and values that different people bring to questions of climate action and development ( [[#Chambwera--2014|Chambwera et al., 2014]] ). While recent work has enriched the consideration of distributive justice in aggregate social welfare functions ( [[#Adler--2012|Adler, 2012]] ), multi-objective approaches that separately report several biophysical and socioeconomic attributes can prove valuable (Section 17.3.3). Many adaptation measures, in particular those that encompass transformational social changes (Section 1.5), involve complicated trade-offs among multi-dimensional benefits and costs ( [[#Adger--2016|Adger, 2016]] ). Different people commonly value such trade-offs differently, particularly in heterogeneous societies. Multi-objective measures can thus enhance transparency, fairness, legitimacy and participation by highlighting the different outcomes that different people and communities might find important, making the specific trade-offs more transparent and explicit, and avoiding privileging any particular view on the appropriate trade-offs ( [[#Lempert--2018|Lempert et al., 2018]] ; [[#Siders--2019b|Siders, 2019b]] ; [[#Siders--2020|Siders and Keenan, 2020]] ).

The SDGs and Key Representative Risks (Chapter 16) exemplify such multi-criteria measures. In addition, many communities increasingly measure policy outcomes using multi-objective measures, often organised around the concept of well-being and designed to allocate resources and implement policies to advance social progress ( [[#Lee--2015|Lee et al., 2015]] ; [[#City%20of%20Santa%20Monica--2018|City of Santa Monica, 2018]] ). Similarly, the Human Development Index (HDI), which derives from the capabilities approach, combines income (as gross national income, GNI, and parity purchasing power, PPP) with an education and a health indicator and integrates human and socioeconomic factors (Herrero et al., 2012; [[#USEPA--2016|USEPA, 2016]] ; [[#Leal%20Filho--2018|Leal Filho et al., 2018]] ; [[#Nagy--2018|Nagy et al., 2018]] ; [[#UNDP--2018|UNDP, 2018]] ). The inequality-adjusted HDI value, or IHDI, can be interpreted as the level of human development when inequality is accounted for ( [[#UNDP--2018|UNDP, 2018]] ).

The multi-criteria concept of well-being has been increasingly employed as a structured framework for measuring social progress in many areas of public policy ( [[#Lamb--2017|Lamb and Steinberger, 2017]] ) including climate and health (Chapter 7) and, to a lesser extent, in other areas of the climate change adaptation literature ( [[#Singh--2021|Singh et al., 2021]] ). Well-being reflects the ability of a person to pursue and realise the goals that they value ( [[#Sen--1985|Sen, 1985]] ). The disaster risk management community employs well-being to evaluate mental health impacts in terms of peoples’ abilities to cope with trauma and loss because of natural disasters ( [[#Berry--2010|Berry et al., 2010]] ; [[#MacDonald--2015|MacDonald et al., 2015]] ; [[#Willox--2015|Willox et al., 2015]] ). The term appears in the literature with concepts such as human security ( [[#Koren--2006|Koren and Butler, 2006]] ; [[#Adger--2010|Adger, 2010]] ; [[#Pasgaard--2017|Pasgaard et al., 2017]] ), subjective well-being or happiness ( [[#Sekulova--2013|Sekulova and van den Bergh, 2013]] ; [[#Rehdanz--2015|Rehdanz et al., 2015]] ; [[#Fanning--2019|Fanning and O’Neill, 2019]] ), welfare ( [[#Gough--2015|Gough, 2015]] ) and living standards or quality of life ( [[#Degorska--2018|Degorska and Degorski, 2018]] ; [[#Rao--2018|Rao and Min, 2018]] ).

Recent work has used quantified measures of well-being and multi-objective decision-support tools to balance among equity and efficiency objectives in disaster risk management (Section 1.5.2; Chapter 17; [[#Markhvida--2020|Markhvida et al., 2020]] ). Rather than focus on the economic value of lost assets, the well-being measure evaluates disaster impacts and recovery policies by considering the fraction of consumption lost at the household level for different income cohorts. Not surprisingly, poor households account for twice as much of the disaster losses when evaluated by effects on well-being rather than by asset losses. The most effective policy responses also differ when using well-being and asset loss-based measures. Ciullo et. al. (2020) compare flood control strategies using multi-objective decision criteria that include both benefit–cost and distributional components, show how the favoured strategy can depend on whether one seeks equitable risk or equitable risk reduction, and propose tools that can help embed both ethical and efficiency considerations in adaptation decisions. Widespread use of such approaches could strengthen consideration of climate justice along with efficiency in the evaluation of climate risks and adaptation (Section 1.5.2; [[#Dryzek--2013|Dryzek et al., 2013]] ).

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