AJUST Applied Justice Taxonomy and Assessment Framework: A descriptive guideline for science and policy

Abstract

Justice considerations have become a critical concern for researchers due to an increasing awareness that perceived injustices are a main barrier to effectively tackling the grand and interconnected global challenges posed by climate change. Insufficient attention to the varied perceptions of justice, particularly within scientific and policy-oriented literature, has slowed progress on major climate policy interventions. Justice, as a concept, is difficult to grasp given its multi-dimensional and culturally diverse usage. In the global field of socio-environmentalism, the term has yet to be formally and uniformly institutionalized.

This working paper introduces the Applied Justice Taxonomy and Assessment Framework (AJUST), formerly the IIASA/EQU Justice Framework: A descriptive guideline for science and policy. AJUST is a comprehensive justice outline aimed at facilitating justice assessments across a diverse array of research and policy contexts. AJUST is a descriptive framework with no normative objectives. Grounded in philosophy and tested through a variety of applications, this framework is useful for research and decision making. It is accessible across disciplines, powerful in its capacity to express justice concerns, and modular so that researchers can select and deploy the aspects that are most appropriate or useful.