Fairness Views About the International Distribution of Climate Change Costs

Speaker: Dr Davide Pace

Affiliation: LMU Munich

Location: Room 215, Chamberlain Building (#39), St Lucia Campus

Abstract: Thirty years of international climate negotiations have produced shared targets, but national contributions remain voluntary and insufficient. This paper measures how citizens believe the costs of climate policy should be allocated across countries, distinguishing between three cost categories: mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage. To elicit fairness views, the study introduces and validates a novel survey module. The project also measures citizens’ beliefs about their own country’s emissions and tests whether misperceptions shape policy support. Preliminary results indicate that the type of climate change cost affects the how people think the costs should be shared. For example, the weight given to current emissions for a fair allocation of mitigation costs is more than double the weight given to these emissions in the allocation of adaptation and loss and damage costs.