Responsibility for Increasing Mitigation Ambition in Light of the Right to Sustainable Development

The international community is currently in the midst of a facilitative dialogue about how to increase mitigation ambition under the terms of Paris Agreement.This dialogue concerns centrally considerations of equity,which includes matters of both justice and responsibility.I defend the importance of the right to sustainable development in this regard.I argue that if the right of states to pursue poverty eradicating human development is to be respected,then there is plausible interpretation of responsibility for mitigation in which a state’s ability to pay is the central consideration,where that ability is measured by its human development level.That conception of responsibility should be applied to considerations of how increase mitigation ambition.