Alessandro Piazza

This paper sets out a proposal for framing collective responsibility as a central element within the cooperative governance of climate change. It begins by reconstructing the analysis of climate change as a Tragedy of the Commons in the economic literature and as a Problem of Many Hands in the ethical literature. Both formalizations are shown to represent dilemmatic situations where an individual has no rational incentive to prevent the climate crisis and no moral requirement to be held responsible for contributing to it. Traditionally both dilemmas have been thought to be solvable only through a vertical structure of decision-making. Where contemporary research in political economy has undergone a “governance revolution”, showing how horizontal networks of public, private, and civil society actors can play an important role in the management of the climate crisis, little research has been carried out in the ethical field on how to secure accountability and responsibility within such a cooperative structure of social agency. Therefore, this paper contributes by individuating some conditions for designing responsible and accountable governance processes in the management of climate change. It concludes by claiming that climate change is addressable only insofar as we transition from a morality based on individual responsibility to a new conception of morality based on our co-responsibility for preventing the climate crisis.

This paper critically re-examines the role of accessibility sufficiency in transport justice, arguing that traditional sufficientarian approaches rooted in basic needs, social exclusion, and basic flourishing fall short. While these frameworks aim to prevent participation poverty by guaranteeing “enough” accessibility, they overlook how inequalities above the poverty line can entrench social hierarchies. Drawing on Relational Egalitarianism, the paper develops an account of sufficiency grounded in the Principle of Social Equality, according to which everyone is entitled to accessibility sufficient to participate as equals in society, free from structural disadvantage and second-class status. At the same time, when socio-economic privilege can be systematically leveraged into durable accessibility advantage, relational equality requires a Limitarian Principle that constrains this conversion. Transport justice thus requires a relational sufficiency threshold, together with constraints on the disproportionate capture of accessibility by privileged groups.

This paper proposes a relational egalitarian framework for conceptualising justice in transport planning and policymaking. Drawing on Elizabeth Anderson’s work, it argues that transport justice should be understood in terms of dismantling structural inequalities rather than merely redistributing resources. The paper outlines three key dimensions of relational inequality in transportation: hierarchies of power, standing, and esteem. It explores how these hierarchies are embedded in governance processes, transport infrastructure and service delivery, evaluative frameworks, and the social and physical fabric of cities. By focusing on relational inequalities, this approach broadens and sharpens our understanding of transport injustice, providing planners with guiding principles to identify and address forms of discrimination often overlooked in conventional approaches. The aim of the paper is thus to propose a framework that reorients transport planning as a powerful driver of social equality.