SPECIAL SECTION: SAFEGUARDING FAIRNESS IN GLOBAL CLIMATE GOVERNANCE Climate Justice and Capabilities: A Framework for Adaptation Policy David Schlosberg* W e are already living with climate change. While the political argu- ments about causes and responses drag on, the people who are directly affected by its very real and increasing effects are beginning to face the urgent new reality of adaptation. As has been well documented, actual trends for a number of indicators—warming, rising sea levels, and extreme weather, for example—have far exceeded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) predictions of just a few years ago.  At the same time, one of the major political discourses surrounding climate change policy, at both the global and local level, has been that of climate justice. Climate justice theorists, governments of the most vulnerable nations, and activists and organiz- ations in both local and global civil society have articulated a range of frameworks for understanding the relationship between the effects of climate change and con- ceptions of justice and fairness. These approaches include fairly straightforward polluter pays models (based on historical responsibility), fair share models (based on the equal allocation of emissions), and various rights-based models (such as development rights, human rights, and environmental rights). The strong assumption behind these models is that normative theories of climate justice can ground global climate policies. The question here is how those can be applied to the reality and necessity of adaptation. This article offers four arguments with regard to the current state of climate jus- tice theory and its relationship to policy-making. First, most well-known approaches * I would like to thank the many colleagues who have commented on previous versions of this argument, in par- ticular Breena Holland, Paul Baer, Simon Caney, Jonathan Pickering, Steve Vanderheiden, and the reviewers for EIA. Financial support was provided by the Australian Research Council for Discovery Project, “Rethinking Climate Justice in an Age of Adaptation.” Ethics & International Affairs, , no.  (), pp. –. ©  Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs doi:./S 445