ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the multiple moral discourses on each of the issues, and argues that an understanding and respect of the plural views of fairness is important in crafting an agreement that can be implemented. It examines whether views of fairness can be related to recent theories concerning the social construction of environmental risks. The chapter illustrates the arguments with examples from an International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis study on distributing the burdens of hazardous waste disposal in Austria, which showed that views on fairness are empirically verifiable and related to both interests and culturally determined values. The Kyoto Protocol contains important principles of fairness for the future international response to the risks of climate change. Competing conceptions of what is good and bad – acceptable and unacceptable – characterize most policy issues, with an associated plurality of values and interests regarding distributive fairness.
