“The fundamental proposition of this work is that the current discussion of equity at the international level has overlooked the central importance of psychology: how people feel about fairness may be as, or more important, in climate negotiations than principle-based analysis of justice. Several key insights and questions for further thought emerge from this overview. First, it has highlighted the psychological elements in play when people make judgments about what is fair when. Central to these processes are judgements about causality (including intention and control); distance and partiality; and process. Second, and highly related to these elements, it has emphasized that underlying ideas about what the problem is, and how actors are related to one another, are key in shaping various psychological positions on fairness. It should not be assumed that different Parties understand the context similarly, or that they are working from identical perspectives about the contours of global society or the nature of moral obligations within global “society”. Differences in these underlying perspectives may be tied to interests, interpretations of the geopolitical context, and perceived power and can strongly shape ideas of fairness. Finally, based in these insights from social-psychological theories of justice this paper has suggested that mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage are sufficiently distinct from a social-psychological perspective that different frameworks for equity may need to be pursued in order to find sufficiently overlapping ideas of a ‘fair enough’ deal.”
