US backsliding will drag on global climate progress

Subject The Paris Agreement and US withdrawal. Significance President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change on June 1, prompting criticism from around the world. While current pledges are unlikely to change and the agreement will not see flight or withdrawal by other countries, US withdrawal imperils the ability of the agreement’s structure to accelerate climate action to a scale necessary to meet its objective of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees centigrade by 2100. Impacts The US private sector and sub-national polities will increase their climate action, though the loss of federal support will still be felt. A future US administration could re-enter the agreement, but substantial momentum will be lost diplomatically in the intervening years. Calls for greater adaptation -- rather than mitigation -- funds from climate-vulnerable states will grow more strident.

Author(s):  
Chris Riedy ◽  
Jade Herriman

On 26 September 2009, approximately 4,000 citizens in 38 countries participated in World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews). WWViews was an ambitious first attempt to convene a deliberative mini-public at a global scale, giving people from around the world an opportunity to deliberate on international climate policy and to make recommendations to the decision-makers meeting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP-15) in December 2009. In this paper, we examine the role that deliberative mini-publics can play in facilitating the emergence of a global deliberative system for climate change response. We pursue this intent through a reflective evaluation of the Australian component of the World Wide Views on Global Warming project (WWViews). Our evaluation of WWViews is mixed. The Australian event was delivered with integrity and feedback from Australian participants was almost universally positive. Globally, WWViews demonstrated that it is feasible to convene a global mini-public to deliberate on issues of global relevance, such as climate change. On the other hand, the contribution of WWViews towards the emergence of a global deliberative system for climate change response was limited and it achieved little influence on global climate change policy. We identify lessons for future global mini-publics, including the need to prioritise the quality of deliberation and provide flexibility to respond to cultural and political contexts in different parts of the world. Future global mini-publics may be more influential if they seek to represent discourse diversity in addition to demographic profiles, use designs that maximise the potential for transmission from public to empowered space, run over longer time periods to build momentum for change and experiment with ways of bringing global citizens together in a single process instead of discrete national events.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Charlotte Streck

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change abandons the Kyoto Protocol’s paradigm of binding emissions targets and relies instead on countries’ voluntary contributions. However, the Paris Agreement encourages not only governments but also sub-national governments, corporations and civil society to contribute to reaching ambitious climate goals. In a transition from the regulated architecture of the Kyoto Protocol to the open system of the Paris Agreement, the Agreement seeks to integrate non-state actors into the treaty-based climate regime. In 2014 the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Peru and France created the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (and launched the Global Climate Action portal). In December 2019, this portal recorded more than twenty thousand climate-commitments of private and public non-state entities, making the non-state venues of international climate meetings decisively more exciting than the formal negotiation space. This level engagement and governments’ response to it raises a flurry of questions in relation to the evolving nature of the climate regime and climate change governance, including the role of private actors as standard setters and the lack of accountability mechanisms for non-state actions. This paper takes these developments as occasion to discuss the changing role of private actors in the climate regime.


Subject Prospects for renewable energy to end-2017. Significance On June 1, US President Donald Trump's administration announced its intent to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Later that week, the US Energy Information Administration revealed in a report that renewables set a record of generating 10% of the country’s electric power in the month of March, highlighting that renewable energy has strong momentum that should carry it through shorter term policy fluctuations.


Author(s):  
Henry Yonanda ◽  
Rudy Trisno

Millennials have been touted as the generation that will do something about global warming. Conversely, some social scientists studying generational differences have found evidence that younger generations are less likely to engage in civic matters like environmental activism. Lack of civic engagement among Millennials may reduce their likelihood of engaging in collective action on global warming. On the other hand, the world is drastically changing. Within the recent years, climate change has become a growing concern worldwide. The various modes of destruction imposed on the environment are targeted to be the catalyst to these changes. According to climate scientists, sea level rise is one of the most important impacts of global climate change. Fishermen as one of the professions that depend their life on the sea, is affected so much by this condition. This condition might destroy their houses on the coastal area. Urban Kampong in Jakarta as the most dense human settlements in urban area has become one of the main economic generator for a city. With all the contradict characteristics and forms, urban kampongs are the part of the city that cannot be separated from one to another. The existence of kampong has become the main embryo of the development of Jakarta. Jakarta is one of the biggest coastal city in the world. The coastline of this city has become the main economic generator for the coty and the nations. The existence of fishermen’s kampong in Jakarta has also become an essential program for the city, in order to fullfill the needs of fresh catch of sea products. Therefore, The project is aimed to create a sustainable and adaptive coastal kampong community, that has the resilience to the rising sea level. By concerning on the kampong’s behaviour, and doing research of the typological transformation of the kampong, the design is also expected to serve as an archetype fot the future development of endagered coastal settlements all across the country. several sustainable approach and behaviourial approach are also injected in this project to create a contextual design that would help the kampong to grow, and adapt to all the conditions, and situation in the future. AbstrakGenerasi milenial dianggap sebagai generasi yang akan melakukan perubahan nyata terkait dengan pemanasan global. Akan tetapi, beberapa studi pun menunjukan bukti bahwa generasi millenial justru memiliki kesadaran serta kepekaan yang tidak lebih tinggi dibandingkan dengan generas-generasi sebelumnya. Pada satu sisi, bumi kian melakukan perubahan yang begitu derastis. Berbagai macam kerusakan pun terjadi dalam berbagai jenis yang menjadi generator dari perubahan iklim yang drastis ini. Nelayan sebagai salah satu profesi yang menggantungkan nasibnya pada lautan, kian terganggu dengan kondisi ini. Hal ini menyebabkan kerusakan pada rumah-rumah di kawasan pesisir pantai. Kampung kota di Jakarta, sebagai permukiman terpadat di daerah urban menjadi salah satu kenerator utama pada suatu kota. Dengan segala karakteristiknya yang berbanding terbalik dengan perkotaan, kampung kota merupakan bagian yang tidak dapat dipisahkan dari suatu kota. Eksistensi suatu kampung telah menjadi embrio dari perkembangan kota Jakarta. Jakarta merupakan salah satu kota pesisir terbesar di dunia. Daerah pesisir dari kota ini telah menjadi generator ekonomi utama dari kota itu sendiri dan juga nasional. Keberadaan kampung nelayan di Jakarta pun menjadi salah satu program penting yang perlu mendapatkan perhatian. Maka dari itu, proyek ini bertujuan untuk menciptakan suatu komunitas kampung pesisir yang berkelanjutan, adaptif serta memiliki ketahanan terhadap kenaikan permukaan air laut yang terjadi. Metode perancangan pada proyek ini dibagi menjadi 2 bagian utama yaitu analisis mikro yang membahas mengenai tipe dan perilaku, serta analisis makro yang membahas proyek dari segi perancangan urban. Dengan menitik beratkan pada studi perilaku, dan melakukan riset mendalam terhadap transformasi tipologi yang terjadi pada kampung, desain ini diharapkan dapat menjadi suatu arketipe untuk pengembangan kampung di daerah pesisir di masa depan di seluruh Indonesia. Sehingga dapat disimpulkan, bahwa dengan adaptasi tipe, perilaku serta sistem berkelanjutan yang sesuai dan tepat, desain dari kampung nelayan berkelanjutan ini dapat menjadi suatu respon yang tepat dalam menjawab permasalahan yang terjadi di kampung-kampung pesisir.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 343-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kuyper ◽  
Heike Schroeder ◽  
Björn-Ola Linnér

This article takes stock of the evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through the prism of three recent shifts: the move away from targeting industrial country emissions in a legally binding manner under the Kyoto Protocol to mandating voluntary contributions from all countries under the Paris Agreement; the shift from the top-down Kyoto architecture to the hybrid Paris outcome; and the broadening out from a mitigation focus under Kyoto to a triple goal comprising mitigation, adaptation, and finance under Paris. This review discusses the implications of these processes for the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of the UNFCCC's institutional and operational settings for meeting the convention's objectives. It ends by sketching three potential scenarios facing the UNFCCC as it seeks to coordinate the Paris Agreement and its relationship to the wider landscape of global climate action.


2021 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Dawn Holland ◽  
Hande Kucuk ◽  
Miguel León-Ledesma

Climate change is one of the most serious risks facing humanity. Temperature rises can lead to catastrophic climate and natural events that threaten livelihoods. From rising sea levels to flooding, bush fires, extreme temperatures and droughts, the economic and human cost is too large to ignore. More than 190 world leaders got together in Glasgow during November 2021 at the UN’s COP26 climate change summit to discuss progress on the Paris Agreement (COP21) and to agree on new measures to limit global warming. In Paris, countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2° and aim for 1.5° as well as to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate and raise the necessary funding to deliver on these aims. However, actions to date were not nearly enough as highlighted by the IPCC (2018) special report. The world is still on track to reach warming above 3° by 2100. As evident from figure 1, global temperatures have been on a steadily increasing path since the start of the 20th century and this process has substantially accelerated since the beginning of the 1980s. This has been unevenly distributed, with temperatures in the Northern hemisphere being a full 1°C higher than for the 1961–1990 average, whilst temperatures in the Southern hemisphere have increased by almost 0.5°C.


Subject The Paris climate agreement. Significance The Paris agreement is the first major international pact to combat climate change since the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. If implemented, the pact envisions robust national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the adverse effects of global warming, with significant political, economic, social and sectoral implications. Impacts Paris accord transparency measures will facilitate carbon divestment campaigns in the West. Aviation and shipping emissions are likely to be addressed in a future Paris accord review conference. Migration from climate change-vulnerable states will reopen the legal issue of internationally recognised 'climate refugee' status.


Subject The prospects for global climate governance in 2018. Significance The 2017 UN COP23 Climate Change Conference, chaired by Fiji, ended in the shadow of news that 2017 is expected to see a 2% rise in global carbon emissions. After three years of roughly stable emissions, this estimated increase magnifies the challenge of making the sharp emission reductions needed to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming to below 2 degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels, even as the renewable energy sector grows and electric vehicle technology makes further progress.


Subject Regional migration issues. Significance Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) on October 3 said US President Donald Trump “looks favourably” on his plans to stem northward migration by promoting economic development in Central America. The remarks followed a call between the leaders that Trump described as “great”, with the US president adding that “we will work well together”. Whether such goodwill will last is doubtful, particularly regarding the issue of migration, on which the leaders have thus far taken diametrically opposed stances. Impacts Increased migration from Nicaragua and Venezuela could test stability in Costa Rica and Panama. Global warming will hit Central America hard, with droughts and flooding affecting food security, fuelling migration. Toughened security on the US-Mexico border will make people smuggling highly profitable for crime cartels.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-97
Author(s):  
Jinhyun Lee

The Paris Agreement made a breakthrough amid the deadlock in climate negotiations, yet concerns are raised regarding how much impact the new voluntary climate regime can make. This paper investigates the socialization mechanism that the Paris Agreement sets up and explores the prospects of “institutional transformation” for it to make a dent. It examines the factors that can facilitate voluntary climate action by using the cases of the most recalcitrant emitters, the United States and China. It argues that the US and China cases suggest that the socialization from the bottom-up by domestic actors may be one of the critical elements that determine states’ position on climate change.


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