Redressing Historical Responsibility for the Unjust Precarities of Climate Change in the Present

2021 ◽  
pp. 170-189
Author(s):  
Sarah Mason-Case ◽  
Julia Dehm
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Historical Responsibility

Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities: Did This Principle Ever Exist?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Armin Rosencranz ◽  
Kanika Jamwal
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Clean Development Mechanism ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Historical Responsibility ◽  
Common But Differentiated Responsibilities ◽  
Self Differentiation

This article argues that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s conception of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC) was never effectively implemented through the Kyoto Protocol. The investments under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism suggest that CBDRRC has been used by developed countries to buy a “right to pollute”, i.e., maintaining or even increasing their greenhouse gas emissions, while investing in clean energy in developing nations, thus defeating the essence of CBDRRC as intended under the UNFCCC. Second, it points out that the Paris Agreement reflects a significant shift in the CBDRRC, both in terms of its textual understanding as well as its implementation. A qualifier, “in the light of national circumstances”, was added to the principle of CBDRRC in the Paris Agreement, allowing a form of voluntary self-differentiation. This qualifier diluted a top-down, objective analysis of States’ commitments. For several scholars, this shift has meant a softening of the principle, making the “differentiation” more dynamic and flexible. In the authors’ opinion, the qualifier is a fundamental modification of the principle to make it politically more palatable. It completely disregards the notion of historical responsibility for climate change, which was the cornerstone of CBDRRC as conceived under the UNFCCC. Therefore, rather than presenting a more flexible understanding of UNFCCC’s conception of CBDRRC, the Paris Agreement marks a total departure from it. Lacking an explicit redefinition of the principle of CBDRRC, it is misleading to contend that the Paris Agreement is still anchored in it.

scholarly journals Climate Change and "historical responsibilities"

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Goldemberg ◽  
Patricia Maria Guardabassi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Historical Responsibility ◽  
Copenhagen Accord ◽  
Reduce Emissions ◽  
Climate Convention

The historical responsibility of countries listed in the Annex I of the Convention on Climate Change has been used extensively as a justification for the lack of action of countries not included in Annex I to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. We analyzed the contribution of non-Annex I countries to the CO2 emissions in the period 1850 - 2006 to assess their relative contribution to total CO2 emissions. In the period 1980 - 2006 non-Annex I countries represented 44% of the total but this contribution increased in the period 1990 - 2006 to 48%. If we extrapolate present trends to 2020 they will represent 56% in the period 1990 - 2020. The "historical responsibility" of Annex I countries is therefore decreasing. If we take 1990 as the starting year in which the Climate Convention recognized clearly that greenhouse gases are interfering dangerously with the climate system, it becomes very difficult to attribute "blame" and "guilt" to Annex I for their historical contributions. It becomes also quite clear the need of non-Annex I countries to engage with Annex I countries in the effort to reduce emissions. The Copenhagen Accord has no mention of "historical responsibilities".

scholarly journals Responsibility for Climate Change as a Structural Injustice

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Hybrid Approach ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Skewed Distribution ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Historical Responsibility ◽  
Climate Vulnerability ◽  
The Common

This chapter critically explores the political and moral challenges involved in understanding the harms of climate change as the product of structural injustices with a specific focus on political responsibility. The chapter stages a critical encounter between Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility, and the debate among climate justice theorists on how to assign responsibility for mitigation and adaptation to citizens and states. This encounter demonstrates the value of a hybrid approach that includes, and bridges, forward looking shared responsibility and backward looking liability models, but also reveals a major predicament. The more that structural injustices based on historical responsibility are backgrounded, the easier it becomes to reach agreements between the world’s most vulnerable and most privileged. Yet doing so accelerates the skewed distribution of climate vulnerability toward the least privileged, diminishing the common ground needed to achieve an equitable allocation of responsibility for climate change.

Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Shue
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Harm Principle ◽  
Ability To Pay ◽  
Historical Responsibility ◽  
Single Argument ◽  
Practical Convergence ◽  
Moral Arguments ◽  
No Harm Principle ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to map the relationships of various moral arguments for action on climate change to each other in a particular case rather than to explore any single argument in depth or to make any abstract claims about the priorities among the arguments themselves. Specifically, it tries to show that “historical responsibility”, that is, responsibility (moral or legal) for past emissions, is very important, although not quite in the way usually argued, but that it is not by itself determinative. Other, independent considerations also greatly matter, although it happens that as a matter of fact all considerations strongly tend to converge towards the same conclusions about which states are responsible to act in order to slow climate change. “Historical responsibility” is shown to involve both contribution to, or causation of, climate change and benefit from climate change. Other factors that play roles in this case are ability to pay, the no-harm principle, and the duty to preserve the physical pre-conditions of human life.

A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics, and the Problem of Moral Corruption

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Gardiner
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
General Level ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Essential Information ◽  
Future Aspirations ◽  
Historical Responsibility ◽  
Scientific Report ◽  
Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference ◽  
Intergenerational Ethics

The most authoritative scientific report on climate change begins by saying: . . . Natural, technical, and social sciences can provide essential information and evidence needed for decisions on what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” At the same time, such decisions are value judgments. . . . There are good grounds for this statement. Climate change is a complex problem raising issues across and between a large number of disciplines, including the physical and life sciences, political science, economics, and psychology, to name just a few. But without wishing for a moment to marginalize the contributions of these disciplines, ethics does seem to play a fundamental role. At the most general level, the reason is that we cannot get very far in discussing why climate change is a problem without invoking ethical considerations. If we do not think that our own actions are open to moral assessment, or that various interests (our own, those of our kin and country, those of distant people, future people, animals, and nature) matter, then it is hard to see why climate change (or much else) poses a problem. But once we see this, then we appear to need some account of moral responsibility, morally important interests, and what to do about both. And this puts us squarely in the domain of ethics. At a more practical level, ethical questions are fundamental to the main policy decisions that must be made, such as where to set a global ceiling for greenhouse-gas emissions and how to distribute the emissions allowed by such a ceiling. For example, where the global ceiling is set depends on how the interests of the current generation are weighed against those of future generations, and how emissions are distributed under the global cap depends in part on various beliefs about the appropriate role of energy consumption in people’s lives, the importance of historical responsibility for the problem, and the current needs and future aspirations of particular societies. The relevance of ethics to substantive climate policy thus seems clear. But this is not the topic that I wish to take up here.

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