Sino-Indian Cooperation at the Climate Change Negotiations: The Past, the Present and the Future

2014 ◽  
Vol 02 (01) ◽  
pp. 1450010
Author(s):  
Dhanasree JAYARAM
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Climate Change Negotiations ◽  
The Road ◽  
The North ◽  
The Common ◽  
India And China ◽  
Change Mitigation

India and China have been cooperating with each other at the climate change negotiations since the inception of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992. The paper makes a case that although the road has not been very smooth and has not been free of differences, the two powers have been at the forefront of decision-making in global climate governance and in this exercise, and cooperation has been more prominent than competition or rivalry. The paper analyzes the goals and positions of India at the negotiations within the larger framework of the North–South conflict and South–South cooperation. Whether it is the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) or the bottom-up approach toward climate change mitigation, concerns expressed by both countries have largely been similar, especially since they have championed the cause of equity and climate justice for safeguarding the developing countries' right to develop. The paper explains the manner in which India and China have played an influential role in shaping the technicalities and modalities of various climate mechanisms in the context of their relations with the other developing and least developed countries (LDCs). The paper argues that by building more South–South cooperation mechanisms related to climate change issues, India and China can bring about a just and equitable global climate order that assists developing and LDCs in tackling climate change that affects them most.

China’s Evolving Development Dilemma in the Context of the North-South Climate Governance Debate

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 699-727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyeeta Gupta ◽  
King Yip Wong
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Climate Governance ◽  
Climate Change Negotiations ◽  
The North ◽  
Zero Sum

This paper examines China’s policy and position in relation to the evolving climate change negotiations in order to explain how China is dealing with the dilemma of meeting its growing development needs while reducing ghg emissions. It argues that global climate governance requires steering and leadership to deal with the interlocked political process; that the developing countries (dcs) right to develop is challenged by the need for ecosystemic standards especially as climate change is seen as a zero-sum game as the more one country emits the less another one can. This is especially problematic as Industrialized countries (ics) appear to be both unwilling and unable to increase growth without increasing emissions. This explains China’s policy of insisting on its right to develop, of demanding that ics reduce their emissions and that they fulfil their obligations under the fccc, while expressing its willingness to take on a voluntary target. The paper argues that China’s state-led transition has eight unique characteristics that may allow it to lead as it moves beyond a no-regrets policy to a circular and green economy, cooperating with other dcs and mobilizing conscious green values in citizens. The question remains—will the initial success and scale of state-led transition lead the global green transition to a sustainable world?

Adaptation to Climate Change: Who Pays Whom?

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Baer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
The South ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
The North ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Principles Of Justice

The problem of adaptation to climate change is complex and multifaceted. At its core, however, are two simple questions: what actions should be taken to prevent or reduce harm that will be caused by anthropogenic climate change, and who should pay for those actions that have costs? In this chapter I focus on the latter question, concerning liability for the funding of adaptation. I argue that obligations for funding adaptation are based on ethical principles governing just relationships between individuals in a “life-support commons,” which are essentially the same as the norms of justice governing other forms of harm. Simply, it is wrong to harm others by abusing a commons, and if one does, one owes compensation. In this view, ethics and justice address the rights and responsibilities of individuals; obligations between countries are derivative, based on the aggregate characteristics of their populations, and pragmatic, given the existing state system. Furthermore, liability can be disaggregated in other ways; as I argue, it is equally important that the distribution of liability can be differentiated between classes within nations. A simple quantitative exercise applying these principles of justice to the adaptation problem suggests net liability from the North to the South but also net liability for adaptation from wealthy classes in the South. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) devotes a small but significant amount of attention to adaptation to climate change. Only in the last few years, however, with the creation of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) under the UNFCCC, the creation of an Adaptation Fund under the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the support for the development of National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs), have delegates and advocates begun to focus seriously on the problems of adaptation and adaptation funding. Given the disproportionate share of current and past emissions from the industrialized countries of the North and the evidence that the developing countries of the South are more vulnerable to climate damages, almost any plausible interpretation of “common but differentiated responsibilities” implies that the North should shoulder the major part of the costs of adaptation.

scholarly journals Impacts of Climate Change and Remote Sensing Technology in its Mitigation Options through Forest Management

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Rabindra Man Tamrakar
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Forest Management ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Forest Cover Change ◽  
Change Mitigation

Greenhouse effect causes global warming and its main consequence is the climate change. Average global temperature is rising significantly over the period. Despite the contribution of total GHG emission by Nepal to the global community is insignificant compared to the developed countries, Nepal has already encountered several adverse effects due to the global climate change, leading to the melting of Himalayan glaciers, reduced agriculture production, loss of biodiversity and ecosystems and changes in social structure and livelihoods. Forest land use change is responsible for CO2 emissions. Forest management therefore can play a significant role in climatic change mitigation. REDD has become the key mechanism in mitigating climate change. The success of REDD mechanism however depends primarily on availability of reliable forestry data including biomass changes and forest carbon estimates. Various Remote Sensing data including optical sensor data have been used for the analysis of forest cover change and estimation of degree of deforestation and degradation. LiDAR however has been widely used in estimating forest biomass for the climate change mitigation.

scholarly journals Advancing Comparative Climate Change Politics: Theory and Method

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Purdon
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Climate Change Politics

Central to this special issue is the notion that the methods and conceptual tools of comparative politics can improve our understanding of global climate change politics. Building on recent advancements in the field of comparative environmental politics, the special issues offers a more comprehensive treatment of climate change politics in developed countries, emerging economies and least developed countries. In this introduction, I distil the key features of comparative politics, advocate for the more rigorous application of comparative methods in climate politics scholarship and highlight three groups of political factors—institutions, interests and ideas—that hold considerable promise in explaining climate change politics at the domestic level. The introduction concludes with an appeal to (re)think how international and domestic politics interact. Examples drawn from the articles assembled for this special issue are used to substantiate the claims made.

scholarly journals Climate Change and Right to Development

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivek Mukherjee ◽  
Faizan Mustafa ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Climate Change Negotiations ◽  
Right To Development ◽  
Recent Climate ◽  
The Right

The Right to Development is a relatively new right in human rights law. Although its roots may be traced to pre-world war era, Right to Development took concrete shape with the passing of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986. Some renowned academic institutions in India are making recent efforts to make the “Right to Development” a Fundamental Human Right. Climate change poses a direct threat to human rights of people, especially in tropically situated countries of the south (including India), which are coincidentally home to a large number of vulnerable/marginalized people who are considerably poor to concern themselves with issues such as climate change. Due to mounting pressure from least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing countries (SIDSs), international community has lately shown greater interest in establishing a direct link between climate change and human rights. This interest may be a reaction to the recurrent failures in reaching a consensus in the climate change negotiations through mechanical Conference of Parties (COPs). Similar to a bottom-up approach that seems to have worked well for the Paris agreement, it was believed by experts that linking human rights to climate change would shake the conscience of the reluctant parties to act expeditiously. The importance of a human rights–based approach to climate change will be highlighted in the light of two recent developments in the climate change discourse: First, the recognition by scientists of several extreme disaster as climate change events directly violating the human rights of the vulnerable; second, the dilution of the differentiation created between developing and developed nations by the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) principle in the recent climate change agreements. This paper seeks to establish the efficacy of the human Right to Development (through tools such as Greenhouse Development Rights) in effectuating the third world approaches to the issue of climate change in the global south.

scholarly journals Influencing Factors and Future Trends of Global Climate Governance Pattern and China’s Responsive Measures

2021 ◽  
pp. 2150008
Author(s):  
Hongbo CHEN ◽  
Ying ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Climate Governance

Since the 1990s, the global climate governance pattern has kept evolving from the initial two camps of developed and developing countries to the current pattern of multi-polarity, featuring the withdrawal and return of Paris Agreement by the United States, the declining leadership of the EU, the coalition of BASIC countries, and the rise of the least developed countries and small island developing states as newly emerging forces. This evolution mainly results from the combined effects of three factors: (i) The changes in the carbon emission pattern driven by population, economic growth, and technological progress; (ii) the stronger influences and power of discourse of the least developed countries and small island developing states as derived from the impacts of and vulnerability to climate change; and (iii) the impacts brought about by uncertain factors such as the uncertainties in terms of science, politics, and technological progress. These factors will still affect the trend of global climate governance in the future. The carbon emissions of developed countries will continue to take a less share in the world’s total, while the proportion of India and the least developed countries in this respect will rise rapidly, which will make global climate governance face a dilemma. Technological progress and the positive actions of non-state entities indicate that the international climate system needs reform and innovation. The rapid development of China over the past three decades has been synchronized with the evolution of the global governance structure, and has naturally become one of the internal factors driving the evolution of climate governance pattern. In the face of various pressure and challenges, China has been pushed to the forefront of global climate governance. China should observe the general trends within and outside the country, and respond to them rationally: (i) Set the proper role of China in the new pattern of global climate governance, i.e. a cooperation leader who should make positive contributions and avoid premature advance; (ii) innovate the concept and institutional system of global climate governance, and study and put forward the Chinese approach that is positive, pragmatic, and operable; (iii) help low-income countries cope with climate change by virtue of renewable energy technology and industrial cooperation, and achieve a win–win situation by encouraging Chinese enterprises to “go out” and helping low-income countries effectively control carbon emissions; and (iv) strengthen the climate cooperation with non-state actors, give play to their special role, and promote China’s comprehensive reform and opening-up.

Global Climate Change and the Futility of the Kyoto Process

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin S. Soroos
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The North ◽  
The Hague ◽  
The Developed Countries ◽  
North And South

This article assesses continuing international efforts to establish an international regime to limit global climate change based on the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. It is highly unlikely that enough states will ratify the protocol for it to enter into force. Even if it does come into force, few of the developed countries are positioned to comply with their commitments to reduce or limit emissions of greenhouse gases by the target years 2008 to 2012. Furthermore, the Kyoto-man-dated reductions will at best be a first step toward the emission reductions needed to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Among the reasons for the failure of the Kyoto process are the indeterminancy of the science of climate change, the complexity of the Kyoto Protocol's flexibility mechanisms, the tendency for differentiated responsibilities to encourage self-serving negotiating strategies, and the stalemate between the North and South. The prospects for reviving and energizing the Kyoto process are dim in the wake of the collapse of the climate change talks at COP6 in The Hague in November 2000 and the new Bush administration in Washington.

scholarly journals Financing Climate Change Adaptation: International Initiatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6515
Author(s):  
Govinda R. Timilsina
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Island States ◽  
Small Island States

Climate change adaptation is one of the main strategies to address global climate change. The least developed countries and the small island states that lack financial resources to adapt to climate change are the most vulnerable nations to climate change. Although it would be more economical to adapt to climate change compared to the anticipated damage of not doing so, the demand for capital is estimated to range to hundreds of billions. The crucial question is how to manage investments to adapt to climate change globally. This study provides an overview of existing international provisions on climate finance for adaptation. It includes provisions through international financial institutions, United Nations agencies, bilateral and multilateral channels, and the private sector. It also explores how private sector finance can be further attracted to invest in climate change adaptation.

EMPOWERING WOMEN THROUGH ENTREPRENEURSHIP: ASPECTS AND APPROACHES

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
JAVED ALAM SHEIKH
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
Economic Empowerment ◽  
World Population ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
The Road ◽  
Road Map ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status

Almost 50 per cent of the world population is constituted by the women and they have been making substantial contribution to socio-economic development. But, unfortunately their tremendous contribution remains unrecognized and unnoticed in most of the developing and least developed countries causing the problem of poverty among them. Empowering women has become the key element in the development of an economy. With women moving forward, the family moves, the village moves and the nation moves. Hence, improving the status of women by way of their economic empowerment is highly called for. Entrepreneurship is a key tool for the economic empowerment of women around the world for alleviating poverty. Entrepreneurship is now widely recognized as a tool of economic development in India also. In this paper I have tried to discuss the reasons and role of Women Entrepreneurship with the help of Push and Pull factors. In the last I have also discussed the problems and the road map of Women Entrepreneurs development in India.

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