Just climate experimentation: Distributive, procedural, and recognition justice in two low-carbon pilots in China

Climate experiments—innovative measures taken to mitigate or adapt to climate change—have become a global driver of low-carbon transitions. However, the social justice aspects of climate experiments have not been adequately explored. This study theorizes just climate experimentation from three perspectives of justice. From a distributive justice perspective, climate experiments should fairly distribute costs and benefits, ensuring that communities receive direct advantages while mitigating negative impacts. Procedural justice requires informed consent and equal decision-making for communities. Recognition justice involves understanding and respecting the perspectives of affected local populations. We mobilized these ideas to empirically analyze the interactions between experimenters and local communities in two low-carbon pilots in China. We found that: (1) while experimenters benefited financially and politically from climate experimentation, local residents faced material and non-material burdens; (2) procedural justice issues include a lack of informed consent and meaningful community involvement; and (3) experimenters selectively acknowledged community perspectives, leading to some changes but also dismissing certain views.