The lecture is organised by the CAS project What is a Good Policy? Political Morality, Feasibility, and Democracy (GOODPOL).

Practical information

This seminar will be a hybrid event. This means people can attend physically or online via Zoom. If you wish to join via Zoom, please register using the link below. The organisers will share login detail with registered participants before the event.

About the seminar

The topic of compensation becomes more pressing as the climate problem continues to worsen. Many argue that international justice requires a system through which states can demand, and receive, compensation for climate harms that they are subjected to. This talk explores a set of unresolved conceptual and normative issues that such a system would face, in particular what it refers to as the ranking challenge. Climate change raises peculiar challenges to the notion of compensation since it is jointly produced and involves causal contributions from the putative victims. The talk also sketches an international institution that would overcome at least some of these challenges.

About the speaker

Göran Duus-Otterström is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg who specialises in normative political theory.

Duus-Otterström's main research areas are climate ethics and climate justice, and the justification of legal punishment. His work has been published by journals such as Environmental Politics, European Journal of Political Theory, Global Environmental Change och Law & Philosophy. He is also the author (with Bengt Brülde) of the popular science book Klimatetik: Rättvisa, Politik och Individens Ansvar (Thales, 2015). Duus-Otterström is co-PI of the research programme 'Climate Ethics and Future Generations' (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, 2018-2023), which explores central ethical questions raised by climate change and climate policies.