Alexandre Sayegh’s presentation – Carbon Pricing and Climate Justice (05/04)

The GRÉEA is pleased to welcome Alexandre Sayegh for the following talk:

“Carbon Pricing and Climate Justice”

Tuesday, 5 April 2016 – 12.15 – 2 pm

Room 307, Philosophy building

2910 Boulevard Edouard-Montpetit – Montréal

The talk will be given in English, followed by an English/French discussion.

Abstract:

This paper focuses on one particular case that connects climate justice and climate economics. It addresses the following question: how can market-based instruments for climate change mitigation (MBIs) respond to requirements of justice? It aims at exploring how principles of climate justice are realized in practice. The contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it is to show that MBIs help exposing and relaxing the trade-off between efficiency and fairness in climate policy debates. This trade-off can be observed in the tension between allocating the revenues generated by market-based mechanisms to incentivise the development of green technologies and allocating them as a compensatory measure to lower income populations who will suffer most the price increase of carbon intensive goods. Secondly, it is to identify the normative elements from theories of climate justice that should constrain the design of MBIs so that these become instruments of justice and efficiency at the same time.

Alexandre Gajevic Sayegh is Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at University College London. He was also a fellow of the Global Justice Program at Yale University in 2015. His main work focuses on different aspects of the dynamics between ideal and non-ideal theory in politics. The empirical dimension of his thesis targets two case studies: illicit financial flows and climate change. He has an ongoing book project titled Justice in a Non-Ideal World. His research is supported by the UCL Overseas Research Scholarship and the FQRSC Doctoral Scholarship.