What Determines US Public Support for Climate Reparations?

• In Event: Environmental Justice

Abstract

I assess public support for humanitarian organizations when they frame the issue of climate reparations in both financial and non-financial (in-migration to Western countries) terms. The subject of reparations remains controversial in many Western countries, particularly the United States. Yet, countries in the Global South need to be compensated for the damage caused by the emissions from the countries in the Global North. The issue of migration is even more controversial; indeed, Western countries do not employ the phrase “climate refugees” because of the obligations this terminology imposes on them under international law. This paper assesses support among the American public for two forms of climate reparations: direct financial transfers, and acceptance of climate refugees.

Climate reparations may be financial, (Dolšak & Prakash, 2022) or non-financial, e.g. pledging to resettle those displaced by extreme weather events or other hazards caused by climate change, as Australia has recently pledged to do for residents of Tuvalu, the world’s first bilateral agreement on climate mobility. Climate reparations are also costly, with one recent study estimating a fair bill of USD 192 trillion (Fanning & Hickel, 2023). In terms of climate migration (i.e. non-financial reparations), public attitudes are less clear, with some studies arguing that climate migrants are viewed more favorably than other migrants (Arias & Blair, 2019), while another study found diminishing support among the Japanese public as the number of migrants increases (Uji et al., 2021). Humanitarian aid organizations engage in some of the most critical advocacy on climate change, stressing the worsening effects of climate change on violent conflict and the increased humanitarian costs of more prevalent natural disasters, while demanding states make increased financial obligations to the new loss and damage fund. Some, though notably not all, of these organizations explicitly champion commitments to racial justice and reparative justice discourse in doing so, though it is unclear why this variation occurs. The project is motivated by the research question: What are the determinants of public attitudes toward humanitarian advocacy for financial, and non-financial, forms of climate reparations?

While research on attitudes toward climate aid and migration is becoming more abundant, there remains limited research that considers varying forms of how humanitarian aid organizations ought to leverage their limited resources to advocate for reparative justice for aid-recipient states. Fewer still have empirically tested attitudes toward policies that explicitly leverage the framing of reparative justice, as opposed to more common loss-and-damage framing (Kugler & Moraga Sariego, 2016).

I shall use the services of a commercial research firm to assess support for a hypothetical NGO advocating for different types (the treatment frames) of climate reparations. I shall conduct a proposed survey experiment of N = 3,000 members of the American public. In the experiment, respondents will be presented with a vignette in the form of a press release from a hypothetical humanitarian NGO’s policy and advocacy team, with a given demand for the US government. The control vignette is a press statement that does not make policy demands related to loss and damage. The financial reparations treatment offers a press release calling for the US to pledge a total of $10 billion in direct transfers to affected states, while the immigration treatment calls on the US government to welcome 100,000 new climate migrants. The dependent variable is willingness to donate $30 to this hypothetical NGO’s appeal to support its continued advocacy work. This is followed by questions on attitudes toward foreign aid, climate change, political affiliation, and respondent demographics as covariates. If support for reparations framing is weak, this will illustrate some NGOs have embraced a more neutral ‘loss-and-damage’ frame. Through exploration of the tension between principled solidary humanitarian advocacy that embraces restorative justice for those in the Global South, and more instrumental advocacy that focuses more narrowly on the impacts that climate change has on humanitarian response, this paper explores when the discourse of climate reparations may garner support for humanitarian NGO advocacy, making important contributions to climate policy and advocacy organization literature. Grant funding has been secured to be able to execute this survey, which will be fielded in early Spring 2024.

Author

• Jana Foxe, University of Washington