The Compound Injustice of the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)

Abstract

EU co-legislators recently approved the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which establishes a uniform carbon price on both EU and imported products, in ETS covered sectors. This violates the CBDR-RC principle. Yet, CBAM advocates claim that the resulting unfair mitigation can be offset by scaling up climate finance, to the benefit of poorer countries. I argue that the CBAM’s unfairness is compounded by previous climate injustice, as avoidable emissions by developed countries pushed the climate crisis to the point where fair mitigation is no longer viable. This implies that a disadvantage within the distributive sphere of emissions abatement cannot be counterbalanced by additional advantages within the distributive sphere of climate finance.