Climate change as a common risk - Reconciling climate action and social justice

After having noticed that the struggle against climate change is threatened by paralysis because of the inability of States and international institutions to establish clearly shared justice principles, the authors propose new directions to reconcile climate change and social justice. They show that climate policies are stumbling on a dilemma between fairness and efficiency because envisaged instruments (such as economic incentives) above all aim at efficiency, and send back the fairness issue to political and societal arrangements. The authors propose a reverse approach, thinking that climate action can become more efficient as well as fairer as soon as it is acknowledged as a rescue action in front of a common threat. Based on this notion of common threat or common risk, they find inspiration in the notion of general average which is present in maritime law