Education for Climate Justice

The Many Faces of Climate Justice: An Essay Series on the Principles of Climate Justice Education for Climate Justice Ravi Kanbur Climate justice requires sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its resolution equitably and fairly. It brings together justice between generations and justice within generations. In particular it requires that attempts to address injustice between generations through curbing greenhouse gas emissions do not end up creating injustice in our time by hurting the presently poor and vulnerable. This essay considers the transformative power of education in its many dimensions as one entry point into expanding the scope of policy instruments for climate justice. First, education can change behavior, primarily in rich countries but also in poor countries, and thus help mitigate climate injustice between the generations. Second, resources targeted to the education of the poorest in poor countries can help their development but also help to counter some of the negative spillover effects of interventions to mitigate climate change. Hence the title of this essay - Education for Climate Justice. Introduction benefits of climate change and its resolution The Stern Review famously stated that equitably and fairly. climate change is the biggest market failure the Two dimensions of justice need to be world has ever seen (Stern, 2006). The Review borne in mind in the discussion of climate was referring to the inability of market change. The first is of course justice between mechanisms to adequately price in the future the generations, ensuring that the present societal costs of present economic activity. generation carries forth its stewardship role in Markets are also not known for necessarily what it bequeaths to the unborn generations to achieving social and distributional justice come. The second dimension, however, is objectives by themselves (Stiglitz, 2012). The justice within the generations, in particular combination of market failure and distributional justice within our own generation – justice in failure is fundamental to the climate change our time. It is easy to equate justice between discourse and to the dialogue on climate justice, the generations with addressing failures in which contributes to sharing the burdens and markets that are meant to stretch across time, 1 The Many Faces of Climate Justice: An Essay Series on the Principles of Climate Justice in other words pricing of present economic of wealthy countries, can lay the foundations activity to take into account its impact on future for protecting today’s vulnerable populations as generations. Indeed, little distinction seems to well as building a constituency for climate be made between these two in the climate change interventions. Thus we can harness the change discourse. However, justice in our time transformative power of education for climate is a separate, albeit related, issue which needs stewardship. to be assessed and addressed on its own terms. The plan of the paper is as follows. Particular attention needs to be paid to the use of policy instruments which, while addressing Section 2 elaborates on the intersection of intergenerational justice, may heighten intra- market failure and distributional failure in the climate change discourse, as a prelude to generational injustice. developing arguments for the transformational This paper argues that education plays role of education in climate justice. Section 3 and will play a key role in addressing the twin takes up the role of education in mitigating dimensions of climate justice, between and market failure in weighing up costs and benefits within generations. The failures of markets to across the generations, especially in light of price costs and benefits appropriately over recent Nobel Prize winning contributions to time, and the intergenerational justice to which behavioral economics. Section 4 turns the the failure can give rise, can be mitigated to a spotlight on the implications of climate change significant extent by educating present interventions for justice within our own generations about the future costs of their generation and the many senses in which actions so that they will themselves factor in education can play a role in addressing this these costs in their decisions and thus give dimension of climate justice. Section 5 markets the right signals on pricing. Recent concludes by emphasizing the policy development in behavioral economics establish implications of the arguments presented in this the scientific foundations of the claim and also paper. give guidance on how education combined with policy can contribute to a more environmentally aware population. Market Failure, Distributional Failure and Climate Justice Justice in our time, and especially What exactly are “market failure” and guarding the interests of the presently “distributional failure”, and why do they matter vulnerable so that interventions to safeguard to climate justice? Answers to these questions the future against climate change do not come are important to provide the bearings which at their expense, also turns out to require locate the role of education in climate justice. education in at least two senses. First, to the extent that assistance for compensation is When a market works well it balances necessary then assistance to the vulnerable in out supply and demand, and establishes a price the form of educational investment has high that serves as a marker of the scarcity of the priority in its own terms. Second, global commodity being traded on that market. When education to heighten awareness of ethical the scarcity signals work well relative to each issues in climate change, especially for citizens other, they induce shifts in supply towards 2 The Many Faces of Climate Justice: An Essay Series on the Principles of Climate Justice commodities which are scarce, and shifts in brought in by fishermen that day may well demand away from these commodities. If the come close to the text book model, and indeed system of markets and prices works as it is that was the example used by Alfred Marshall, meant to in economics text books, then it will one of the founders of the modern discipline of achieve an outcome that is economically economics, in the nineteenth century (Marshall, efficient. In common language, it will lead to 2014). However, markets for goods to be total economic wellbeing as large as possible delivered in the distant future, or markets for given the overall resources of the economy. goods whose consumption cannot be individualized, or goods whose production and Some markets do approximate to well- consumption has significant spillover effects on functioning text book markets, and it would be others which are unmediated by markets, are a foolish to disregard the basic economics of such different matter. markets. As policy makers over the years have discovered, undue interference in some Interestingly, before turning to climate markets, albeit well meaning, can have major change and in preparation for the discussion in unintended consequences, like the creation of later sections, it can be noted that education is parallel black markets in foreign exchange indeed such a commodity. Investment in which were a familiar feature of many low education for an individual, or for that income countries until the liberalization waves individual’s family, comes today but the return of the late twentieth century. will be reaped in an uncertain future. While it can plausibly be argued that education can be However, many, perhaps most, markets parceled and monitored as investment in a do not function well, in the sense that their specific individual, the social returns to operation leads to prices which do not signal education go beyond the return to an individual appropriate social scarcity. Indeed, there may and depend moreover on the education be a perverse effect where the market embodied in others. It is in this sense that underprices precisely those commodities which markets for education cannot fully signal the are socially most scarce. These are true social value of education at the individual commodities, in particular, whose consumption level, and hence the case for public intervention cannot be parceled out and priced individual by in this sector. individuals, a key requirement for the role of prices in signaling scarcity (for a standard text Climate change also involves precisely book treatment of these issues see Cornes and such commodities as make the operation of Sandler, 1996). Furthermore, markets do not markets inefficient or non-existent. A come into being spontaneously. Some market greenhouse gas polluter is in effect consuming maker has to find it profitable enough to create clean air, which cannot very easily be the market in question. This may not be the marketised into bundles to be bought and sold. case for some commodities so those markets Further, the consequences of greenhouse gas may simply not exist and thus price signals for pollution, going well beyond straightforward those commodities will not exist. reduction of clean air in the future to temperature change and its repercussions, will It matters a lot, then, which market we be borne by generations yet unborn. Clearly, a are talking about. Dockside markets for fish 3 The Many Faces of Climate Justice: An Essay Series on the Principles of Climate Justice market where they can express their demand capital. Labor income is the amount of human for clean air to today’s consumers of clean air capital embodied in an individual times the (in other words, today’s polluters) simply wage accruing to labor of that skill level. And cannot exist. And when such a market does not similarly for other assets such as land, and of exist, there is not a price which can signal course physical and human capital can be scarcity value and overconsumption of clean air, divided up into many constituent parts of assets and the environment more generally, will of different types. The basic point is that final continue apace.

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