That the Arctic is undergoing transformative changes driven in large part by external forces is no longer news. The high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, which are not themselves significant sources of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) or short-lived climate pollutants (such as black carbon soot), are experiencing effects attributable to climate change that are equal to or greater than those occurring in any of the planet's other large regions. Prominent among these effects are rising surface temperatures, a deepening of the active layer of the permafrost, the collapse of sea ice, increases in the intensity of coastal storm surges made possible by the retreat of sea ice, the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the acidification of marine systems. The deposition of black carbon in the high north alone—almost 60 percent of which is thought to originate in Europe—appears to account for half or more of the increase in temperature occurring in the Arctic. Positive feedback processes, such as lowered albedo (that is, the capacity of Earth's surface to reflect incoming solar radiation back into space) following the melting of ice at sea and snow on land, have the effect of magnifying the impact of these external forces. Nowhere is the challenge of adapting to the impacts of climate change more urgent than in Arctic coastal communities confronted with the need to relocate to avoid physical destruction. And nowhere are the threats to individual species (for example, the polar bear) and whole ecosystems more severe than they are in the Arctic, where biophysical changes are outstripping the capacity of plants and animals to adapt to altered conditions.

Imagine that you could wave a magic wand and provide everyone in the world with easy access to clean and affordable energy. In one stroke you would make the world a far cleaner, richer, fairer, and safer place. Suddenly, a billion and a half of the world's poorest people could discover what it is like to turn on an electric light in the evening. The looming threat posed by climate change would largely disappear. From the South China Sea to the Middle East to the Arctic, geopolitical tensions over energy resources would fade away. Human health would benefit, too, as vaccines and perishable foods could be refrigerated the world over. And many of the world's most corrupt government officials could no longer enrich themselves by bleeding their countries dry of revenues from fossil fuel sales.

This article offer reasons why academics should feel compelled to play a more direct role in the alleviation of global poverty, specifically through participation in a new international network, Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP). Academics have the specialized training and knowledge, and the societal role, that make them particularly well equipped to make a significant contribution. They also have responsibilities to answer sometimes spurious or misleading claims made about aspects of global poverty by others in the profession, and to highlight ways in which their own governments are implicated in the perpetuation of severe global poverty. By joining forces with like-minded others in a group such as ASAP, they can enhance their own impact on poverty dialogue and policy outcomes. Those academics already playing prominent direct roles—for example, as government consultants, in public discourse, or through leadership in professional associations—can deepen their influence through sharing their insights and expertise with other ASAP members

This article suggests that the best available normative framework for guiding conduct in war rests on categories that do not echo the terms of an individual rights-based morality, but acknowledge the impossibility of rendering warfare fully morally justified. Avoiding the undue moralization of conduct in war is an imperative for a normative framework that strives to actually give behavioral guidance to combatants, most of whom will inevitably be ignorant of the moral status of the individuals they encounter on the battlefield and will often be uncertain or mistaken about the justice of their own cause. We identify the requirement of military necessity, applied on the basis of what we refer to as the “St. Petersburg assumption”, as the main principle according to which a combatant should act, regardless of which side or in which battlefield encounter she finds herself. This pragmatic normative framework enjoys moral traction for three reasons: first, in the circumstances of war it protects human life to a certain extent; second, it makes no false claims about the moral justification of individual conduct in combat operations; and, third, it fulfills morally important functions of law. However, the criterion of military necessity interpreted on the basis of the St. Petersburg assumption does not directly replicate fundamental moral prescriptions about the preservation of individual rights.

Academics are not a natural kind. They have varied expertise and aims, and most have no expertise that is particularly relevant to problems of poverty and development. This presumably is why the essay in this issue by Thomas Pogge and Louis Cabrera—a virtual “manifesto” of the newly formed Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP)—shifts to and fro between addressing “academics” and addressing “poverty-focused academics.” Even those academics whose work touches on poverty and development—a quite small minority—are mostly expert in some but not in other aspects of these topics. Some are expert in international law, but not in economics; others know about international trade, but not about aid; some study corruption, but know nothing about nutrition—and so on. A few know a lot about normative argument, but their credentials are sketchy when it comes to empirical evidence. Many more are interested in empirical evidence, usually of a specific sort, but are uncritical of or confused about normative argument. (I suspect that many suffer from a lingering positivist hangover, which suggests that there is no intellectually respectable way to support normative claims, and indeed that this fear may lie behind the appeals to the importance of academic neutrality that Pogge and Cabrera discuss.)

“Reimagining a global ethic” is a project worthy of Andrew Carnegie and of the Carnegie Council's upcoming commemoration of his founding gift in 1914. As a collaborative research project stretching forward over the next three years, it ought to be integrative and reconciliatory: that is, it must try to understand the globalization of ethics that has accompanied the globalization of commerce and communications and to figure out what ethical values human beings share across all our differences of race, religion, ethnicity, national identity, and material wealth. When human beings do disagree morally, the search for a global ethic becomes an attempt to elucidate by analysis what exactly people are disagreeing about, so that, after arguing out our differences, we can either agree to disagree or work together to find common ground. Finding common ground on large ethical matters and understanding more deeply why, in some instances, we remain at odds with each other is worthwhile in itself, but it might also further Andrew Carnegie's original goal in founding the Council, which was to reduce the amount of conflict and violence in the world.

It is generally assumed that, when judging the proportionality of a humanitarian intervention, the relevant costs that must be factored into the equation are not only those brought about directly and immediately, but also those brought about via the interceding agency of other parties; the mediated consequences. Here I want to challenge that assumption. First, I argue that rebels fighting off an oppressive regime cannot reasonably be held to a standard of proportionality under which mediated consequences count fully in the calculus. Given this, I ask whether we can justify holding international rescuers – using similar means in pursuit of similar ends – to a more stringent standard. If the answer is yes, then curiously it turns out that an intervention might fail to satisfy the principle of proportionality despite its expected costs and consequences being identical to those of an insurrection which is rightly judged to satisfy that principle. I argue, however, that every attempt to justify the asymmetry has shortcomings. If this is right, then the standard of proportionality to which we hold states or coalitions engaged in armed international rescue operations should be reviewed and, arguably, relaxed.

“National communities,” Michael Ignatieff writes in his thoughtful essay on the prospects for a global ethic, “have some good reasons, as well as some not so good ones, to privilege local ahead of universal priorities and interests.” And he goes on to explain the clash of local and universal priorities as rooted in a conflict between the values of “justice and democracy.” I would rather suggest that the conflict is an internal one—a conflict inherent in our thinking about what justice requires. But in any case, he is surely right that providing a compelling account of how to distinguish good from bad reasons for privileging local priorities, and identifying how weighty the good reasons for local priorities are, is fundamental to developing a plausible global ethic.

In this article I propose to explore two issues. The first concerns what kinds of contributions academics can make to reducing poverty. I argue that academics can contribute in a number of ways, and I seek to spell out the diversity of the options available. I concentrate on four ways in which these contributions might differ.

My second aim is to outline some norms that should inform any academic involvement in activities that seek to reduce poverty. I set out six proposals. These concern: (1) the need to construct coalitions among people with different ethical frameworks; (2) the value of constructing nonideal theory on the basis of our best understanding of an ideal world; (3) the need for integrated analysis that connects antipoverty initiatives to other areas of moral concern; (4) the vital importance of interdisciplinarity; (5) the need for epistemic modesty and revisability; and (6) the need for accountability.

At the United Nations climate change conference in 2011, parties decided to launch the “Durban Platform” to work towards a new long-term climate agreement. The decision was notable for the absence of any reference to “equity,” a prominent principle in all previous major climate agreements. Wealthy countries resisted the inclusion of equity on the grounds that the term had become too closely yoked to developing countries' favored conception of equity. This conception, according to wealthy countries, exempts developing countries from making commitments that are stringent enough for the collective effort needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In circumstances where even mentioning the term equity has become problematic, a critical question is whether the possibility for a fair agreement is being squeezed out of negotiations. To address this question we set out a conceptual framework for normative theorizing about fairness in international negotiations, accompanied by a set of minimal standards of fairness and plausible feasibility constraints for sharing the global climate change mitigation effort. We argue that a fair and feasible agreement may be reached by (1) reforming the current binary approach to differentiating developed and developing country groups, in tandem with (2) introducing a more principled approach to differentiating the mitigation commitments of individual countries. These two priorities may provide the basis for a principled bargain between developed and developing countries that safeguards the opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change without sacrificing widely acceptable conceptions of equity.

This article lays out a capabilities and justice-based approach to the development of adaptation policy. While many theories of climate justice remain focused on ideal theories for global mitigation, the argument here is for a turn to just adaptation, using a capabilities framework to encompass vulnerability, social recognition, and public participation in policy responses. This article argues for a broadly defined capabilities approach to climate justice, combining a recognition of the vulnerability of basic needs with a process for public involvement. Such an approach can be used to engage stakeholders with varied perceptions of what is at risk, and to develop priorities for adaptation policy. It addresses both individual and community-level vulnerabilities, and acknowledges that the conditions of justice depend on a functioning, even if shifting, environment.

In the lead essay of this symposium, Michael Ignatieff offers a characteristic blend of philosophical acuteness and political good sense on a topic that, we can all agree, is central to many of the most important questions on the contemporary political and international agenda. His analysis is prescient, challenging, and deserves pondering at some length; thus, in this short response I cannot deal with it in anything like the detail it deserves. But the enforced brevity is perhaps an advantage as well, in that it forces me to concentrate on where I differ from Ignatieff and on my own sense of what we might imply when we use such a term as “a global ethic.”

This article discusses ways in which academics and concerned individuals committed to the faster eradication of extreme poverty might make a contribution. It argues that this discussion needs to be informed by examining the lessons of academics who have been working in the development field for many decades tell us about success and failures and possible ways forward. Following the introduction, section two attempts to draw out from the work of academics, researchers and policymakers in the “world of development” what we know and have learned about how best to accelerate the process of reducing extreme poverty in the world, and what “doesn't work”. Against this backdrop, the third section discusses different ways that academics from outside the professional development community might effectively contribute to the faster or more effective eradication of global poverty. It considers in particular some current knowledge gaps in the development field which might be bridged by academic from the fields of moral and political philosophy. Finally, section four provides a brief discussion of the types of anti-poverty organizations concerned individuals might support, providing a check-list of questions to help assess their approaches, strengths and weaknesses. It suggests that as the faster eradication of poverty requires a series of interventions on many different fronts, academics need to approach poverty eradication through a multifocal lens and prioritize support to effective and transparent anti-poverty agencies working at the local, national and international levels.

Over the last two decades a spate of books, led by the ones cited in this essay, have illuminated and debated the bristly questions confronting contemporary “humanitarianism.” The definitional or, one might say, foundational question is whether the adjective “humanitarian” should be limited to only those independent agencies that are engaged (without reference to a political context) in the impartial delivery of emergency relief to all those in existential need—or, in the unique case of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), engaged in monitoring the application of the Geneva Conventions to armed conflict. An answer in the affirmative could be considered the “classic” position of the humanitarian, and one still championed by the ICRC. Today, however, many NGOs, such as CARE, OXFAM, and Catholic Relief Services, which certainly regard themselves as humanitarian agencies, engage in a broad range of rehabilitative and developmental activities and continue to deliver emergency relief, and they are prepared to do so under circumstances where their work has conspicuous political implications. The same is true of such UN agencies as UNICEF, UNHCR, and the World Food Programme, which are not infrequently involved in complex peace operations that have clear political goals as specified by the Security Council. Further, well-known humanitarian activists and writers, notably Bernard Kouchner and Samantha Power, also reject the ICRC's definitional canon. The unsettled boundaries of what properly constitutes humanitarianism brings a number of difficult questions to the surface, including:

• • Should relief be provided even if it could prolong a conflict, or could indirectly assist a belligerent, or possibly identify the relief giver with a government's political ends? And should the nature of those ends influence relief efforts?

• • Should relief agencies also assist in addressing the causes of humanitarian emergencies by joining in efforts to resolve a conflict, foster economic development, rebuild state institutions, and strengthen the protection of human rights?

• • Should such agencies accept funds from governments where governments specify how the funds are to be used?

• • Where necessary, should they advocate armed intervention to protect their personnel as well as the recipients of their aid?

• • In terms of the way they organize and structure themselves, should nonprofit agencies dedicated to humanitarian relief follow private-sector models?

• • Can organizations dedicated to the effective provision of emergency relief pursue that end without creating a culture of dependence, without discouraging local initiative, and without violating the liberal “right” to participate in life-shaping decisions?

• • Finally, how does humanitarianism relate to human rights, the other leading expression of what I would call “the humanitarian impulse”?