Adger, W. Neil, Jouni Paavoli, Saleemul Huq, and M.J. Mace, Editors. Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change.

Adger, W. Neil, Jouni Paavoli, Saleemul Huq, and M.J. Mace, Editors. Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006, xvi + 335 pp., $62.00.

This book investigates the justice of the impacts of climate change and proposed plans to adapt to climate change. The book is not written by economists but it has important messages that economists need to hear. The book argues that, from a simple "polluter pays principle," the impacts of climate appear to be unfair. Most of the damages from climate change will fall heavily on low latitude countries that had very little to do with the emissions. From a sense of protecting the weakest, the book argues that impacts again are unfair because they will fall on the most vulnerable populations. Finally, the book argues that, from an income distribution perspective, climate impacts are once again unfair because they fall heavily on the rural poor in the poorest countries.

The authors of the book argue that international adaptation should be designed to address the inherent injustice of climate change impacts. In fact, they argue the primary justification of adaptation programs is to reduce the unfairness of impacts. They claim that international programs lack legitimacy unless they address equity and so fairness should guide how the adaptation program should be designed. This is in sharp contrast to welfare economics that generally argues programs are legitimate if their benefits outweigh their costs.

The authors argue for two kinds of justice: procedural and distributive. Procedural justice is concerned that all victimized groups be recognized and encouraged to participate in designing each national adaptation plan. The process of designing the adaptation plan should be democratic. Distributive justice is concerned with the outcome of the adaptation plan to winners and losers. Specifically, distributive justice is concerned with what happens to the most vulnerable and to the poor.

Chapter 2 makes quite clear that climate change does have impacts and that the impacts will fall heavily on low latitude countries. The author argues that impacts cannot be summed into a single meaningful index. Instead, the author argues for five indicators of climate change impacts: market impacts, lives lost, biodiversity loss, distributional impacts, and quality of life. Of course, one problem with describing outcomes in inconsistent units is that there is no way to compare them and make decisions. How much should be spent on mitigation or adaptation and how should adaptation dollars be allocated?

Chapter 3 reviews the current treaties governing climate change. The Marrakech Decision stated that it was important to aid adaptation to least developed nations. The Special Climate Change Fund was authorized to spend money on adaptation and the Adaptation Fund was created. The author notes that one limitation of current adaptation rules is that they require each project to provide a global benefit whereas most adaptation efforts provide only local benefits. This is an unfortunate carryover from rules established for mitigation where global benefits made sense. Interestingly, the oil rich nations claimed they needed adaptation funds as well to "adapt" to mitigation.

Chapter 4 notes that there are many forms of distributive justice. Welfare economics argues adaptation plans should supply the greatest good for the greatest number. However, one could focus on benefiting only the most vulnerable and devote all adaptation funds to the victims who will suffer the most. Alternatively, assuming income redistribution is critical, the adaptation program could charge those who can afford it to pay for the adaptation of those who can least afford to be harmed. Finally, from a responsibility perspective, one can use the adaptation program to charge the polluters for damages to the victims.

Chapter 5 asks whether it is worthwhile identifying winners and losers from climate change. Because of uncertainty about the science and because of the range of values held, it is not transparent who wins and loses if climate changes. Chapter 6 notes that countries in the midst of armed conflict are unlikely to be able to adapt and so are more vulnerable. Chapter 7 is more concerned with the fairness of emissions, asking which country has the right to emit different amounts of cumulative emissions. Chapter 8 attempts to derive a formal theoretical framework to capture equity.

Chapters 9 to 12 provide insightful case studies of adaptation plans in different countries. Chapter 9 looks at Bangladesh and compliments their national adaptation planning process because it was a very inclusive democratic process. Chapter 10 looks at the adaptation plan for Tanzania and also compliments their participatory effort. The authors stress that the most vulnerable in Tanzania are clearly the rural poor. Chapter 11 looks at adaptation efforts in Botswana and Namibia. The authors note that the urban programs were effective at encouraging economic diversity but the rural programs sometimes only narrowed people's choices by giving all the funds for one purpose. The authors also noted that remote people were not served by the program as the cost of participation was too high. These two observations are important insights for future adaptation planning. Finally, Chapter 12 looks at spreading flood risk in Hungary where the most vulnerable region to flooding is also the poorest. Although Hungarians recognize the need for individuals to take responsibility to avoid harm, they favor a burden sharing program with a flat rate for flood insurance and the government subsidizing the risk premiums of poor households. Although such burden sharing efforts seem fair, they encourage people to stay in the riskiest locations and thus to stay in harm's way.

Although there are many instances where fairness and efficiency can both be designed into a program, one weakness of this book is that it never addresses efficiency. For example, one can design a global adaptation program that is efficient and then have either the polluters or just the relatively wealthy countries pay for adaptation efforts in the very poorest countries. This would be both efficient and fair. However, there are a number of instances where the book advocates programs that are not efficient so that there is a direct tradeoff-between fairness and efficiency. For example, the flat rate flood insurance policy in Hungary, because it is not risk based, removes the incentive for private actors to avoid being harmed. This is a disastrous adaptation policy because it effectively eliminates private adaptation and increases the damages from climate change. Programs that targeted only the poorest members of society may also be terribly inefficient. Depending on how climate change unfolds, some people, even amongst the rural poor, will benefit. For example, drying in Africa is likely to hurt rainfed crop farmers but benefit livestock owners. An adaptation program that helped everyone would not effectively target the people hurt by climate change, the program would just redistribute income. Another important adaptation that countries would have to consider is to manage their water more efficiently. This means moving water from low valued users to high valued users. This process could involve compensation if current users were given property rights to their water. However, even in this case, it is likely that some people will find they do not have property rights and are made worse off. If such a program were judged by what it did to the weakest member in society, it probably would be turned down. However, failing to adopt such efficient changes will cost developing countries dearly.

Another criticism I would lay on this book is that it is very idealistic about the merits of managing natural resources through democratic processes. Several authors argue that, by giving democratic committees from local communities charge over local resources, this "just" participatory process would lead to happy outcomes. However, one of the great curses of developing countries is that so much of their natural resources are in common hands. Common grazing lands suffer from overgrazing. Common forest land suffers from overharvesting. Common agricultural land has insufficient investment. Common water is allocated by "first come and first use," not "highest use." By failing to adopt private property rights for natural resources, many developing countries are getting very little return from their natural assets. This serves neither equity nor efficiency as it keeps communities in poverty. Climate change just deepens these losses as common property is unlikely to adapt whereas private property will.

Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change does not have all the answers. However, it asks good questions and it should make economists think about more than just efficiency when designing adaptation plans for the future.

Robert Mendelsohn

Yale University

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