A Framework for Compensating Climate Change Damages
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A Framework for Compensating Climate Change Damages Joachim Wündisch 1 Received: 5 August 2019 / Revised: 27 March 2020 / Accepted: 6 July 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Anthropogenic climate change is expected to contribute to mass migration from many different regions. Heyward and Ödalen (2016) propose a tailor-made migration option for victims of total territorial loss: a Free Movement Passport for the Territorially Dispossessed (PTD). The PTD presents a significant advancement over standard proposals for individual migration in response to total territorial loss. However, I argue that the compensatory obligations of states are more restrictive than the PTD scheme assumes (sec. 5), and that the contents of the right to compensation of the territorially dispossessed are not as far-reaching as required by it (sec. 6). In response to these difficulties, I argue that its purpose is better served by means of collective migration and propose a Passport for Territorially Dispossessed Collectives, which is also well positioned to serve as a framework for compensating a range of other climate-change related losses (sec. 9). Keywords Climate . Migration . Autonomy . Identity . Voluntariness . Culpability
1 Introduction Anthropogenic climate change is expected to contribute to mass migration from many different regions. Heyward and Ödalen (2016) identify citizens of low-lying small island states as being particularly vulnerable because a rise in the sea level may make their entire territory uninhabitable. Commonly discussed examples of such states are Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Maldives. In response, Heyward and Ödalen (2016) propose a tailor-made migration option for victims of total territorial loss: a Free Movement Passport for the Territorially Dispossessed (PTD).
* Joachim Wündisch [email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraße 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
Philosophia
This proposal makes an important contribution to the development of the non-ideal theory of climate migration in that it builds extensive compensatory rights for the territorially dispossessed on a nuanced analysis of theories of compensation. The resulting proposal for far-reaching institutional reform is characterized by a concern for implementability as well as an emphasis on the normative weight of the relocation preferences of climate refugees. This emphasis is important because it goes against the grain of the discussion within the ethics of migration. Therefore, the PTD deserves careful scrutiny. Section 2 lays the groundwork by providing a preliminary sketch of the proposal and contrasting it with its main rival. Section 3 presents the compensatory theories grounding the PTD before section 4 shows how the PTD is thought to derive from them. Section 5 demonstrates that in one important dimension the compensatory obligations of states are more restrictive than the PTD assumes. In particular, it argues that duties to support the PTD cannot be established for non-culpable state
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