Towards Egalitarian Distributive Justice: The Need for a Transitional Retributive Justice in International Climate Negotiations

This paper questions the notion that 'common but differentiated responsibility' is blocking progress on achieving a new international agreement and argues that 'equal responsibility' between countries is in fact not an egalitarian approach. Through a re-reading of egalitarian distributive justice, I will be exploring the difficulties that the issue of climate change poses to an egalitarian distributive model, using Marx's theory of uneven development to highlight the importance of transitional retributive justice in achieving egalitarian justice.