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Integrated assessment models (IAMs) commonly used by policymakers in climate decision-making have been criticized for insufficiently incorporating certain justice considerations, and for being relatively closed to stakeholder inputs and feedback. Based on a comprehensive justice framework, this work responds to both criticisms and proposes a flexible and pragmatic approach to operationalize distributive justice: justice patterns. Justice patterns are stylized trajectories that represent a specific understanding of distributive justice, thereby representing either an Aggregate Utilitarian, Prioritarian, Egalitarian, Sufficientarian or Limitarian stand. Those justice patterns can be used to analyze a variety of distributional questions (the distribution of e.g. costs, benefits, impacts) as well as intra- and inter-generational justice problem statements.
Subsequently, we use justice patterns to derive justice diagnostics for all global mitigation scenarios that were part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment cycle, and identify the most prominent justice perspectives in current climate scenarios. Furthermore, we use justice patterns to develop an interactive web-app that systematically inquires justice perceptions of stakeholders.
We find that the app is effective in making justice discussions more accessible and tangible. We further find that what is perceived as just varies depending on the distributed object and that Aggregate Utilitarian – represented by growth in all regions – is not a preferred option.