ICEPT staff and PhD students publish widely in a range of academic journals,  policy reports and technical papers. 

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Scheifinger:2026,
author = {Scheifinger, K and Brutschin, E and Mintz-Woo, K and Zimm, C and Kikstra, J and Rogelj, J and ebrowski, P and Schinko, T and Pachauri, S and Sovacool, BK and Fritz, L and Riahi, K},
journal = {npj Climate Action},
title = {Exploring patterns of distributional justice in global climate change mitigation scenarios},
year = {2026}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Collective climate action hinges on the distribution of benefits and burdens of climate change mitigation. Yet assumptions relevant to distributional justice are frequently made only implicitly in climate change mitigation scenarios. Here, we introduce the patterns of distributional justice framework that operationalizes philosophical justice theories as quantitative requirements for scenario trajectories. We then apply this framework to the IPCC AR6 scenario database to assess the distributional implications of global climate change mitigation scenarios across world regions. Focusing on scenario variables related to energy and meat consumption, we found a diversity of patterns of justice across scenario characteristics. The prioritarian perspective, which prioritizes improvements to those currently worse off, emerged as the most dominant pattern of justice. By contrast, futures with limited or reduced energy and meat consumption were the least represented in the database. Our research further indicates that most scenarios consistent with patterns of justice do not explicitly aim to model more just futures, suggesting that underlying scenario narratives – most often SSP2 – largely determine the distributional outcomes. We therefore propose a stakeholder engagement strategy to make distributional justice assumptions in scenario development ex-ante more diverse and transparent. Overall, this study provides a practical avenue for developing justice-conscious scenarios that may be more likely to motivate collective climate action.
AU  - Scheifinger,K
AU  - Brutschin,E
AU  - Mintz-Woo,K
AU  - Zimm,C
AU  - Kikstra,J
AU  - Rogelj,J
AU  - ebrowski,P
AU  - Schinko,T
AU  - Pachauri,S
AU  - Sovacool,BK
AU  - Fritz,L
AU  - Riahi,K
PY  - 2026///
SN  - 2731-9814
TI  - Exploring patterns of distributional justice in global climate change mitigation scenarios
T2  - npj Climate Action
ER  -
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