ABSTRACT

Climate change is overwhelmingly seen as a moral and ethical problem due to the fact that those who contributed least to the problem will be most impacted. 1 Starting from this premise, we argue that justice and fairness, as embodied in the principle of equity, must underpin a comprehensive integrity framework for governing the international climate regime. In this chapter we examine to what degree human rights and equity contribute to the Public Institutional Justification (PIJ) of the climate regime through looking at the governing values of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 2 Governing values are similar across many global regimes: they include sustainable development, the rule of law, sovereignty, human rights, democracy and equity. 3 In the context of this volume, these can be considered as governing values of the UNFCCC rather than governance values, as they govern the goals and priorities of the regime. Building on the analytical framework of thick and thin governance as presented in Chapter 2 , we situate human rights and equity as ‘thick’ governance values – with thickness of governance referring to how substantial and wide-ranging the values under consideration are. ‘Thick’ governance values move beyond procedural concerns to incorporate substantial ethical goals, including the demands of morality, justice and legitimacy. 4 At the thickest end of the spectrum, the distinction between governance values and governing values begins to overlap. The thicker the governance values, the more they potentially become political and therefore more difficult to generate consensus around.