Indian Corporations, Climate Change, and The Law

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-233
Author(s):  
Trishla Dubey

Climate change is one of the biggest problems that humans have created for the whole of mankind. Discussions on combating climate change have been continuing since last 30 years when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted at the Rio Conference in 1992. Despite this, nothing significant has been achieved so far. Due to public sector’s finite capabilities and increasing footprint of globalization and privatization, the world is rolling its eyes now on the private corporations to take the lead in this fight against climate change. This article will discuss the historic role that these corporations have played since climate change negotiation days, their contribution at present, and the progressive or regressive role they are set to play in future. The special focus of this article will be on analysing the role of Indian corporations and the existing legal framework governing them and its challenges. At the culmination of this article, the author will try to suggest mechanisms to magnify and intensify private sector contribution in combating climate change with minimum friction and maximum accountability and cohesion.

Author(s):  
Henry Shue

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted in Rio de Janeiro at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in June 1992 establishes no dates and no dollars. No dates are specified by which emissions are to be reduced by the wealthy states, and no dollars are specified with which the wealthy states will assist the poor states to avoid an environmentally dirty development like our own. The convention is toothless because throughout the negotiations in the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee during 1991 to 1992, the United States played the role of dentist: whenever virtually all the other states in the world (with the notable exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) agreed to convention language with teeth, the United States insisted that the teeth be pulled out. The Clinton administration now faces a strategic question: should the next step aim at a comprehensive treaty covering all greenhouse gases (GHGs) or at a narrower protocol covering only one, or a few, gases, for example, only fossil-fuel carbon dioxide (CO2)? Richard Stewart and Jonathan Wiener (1992) have argued for moving directly to a comprehensive treaty, while Thomas Drennen (1993) has argued for a more focused beginning. I will suggest that Drennen is essentially correct that we should not try to go straight to a comprehensive treaty, at least not of the kind advocated by Stewart and Wiener. First I would like to develop a framework into which to set issues of equity or justice of the kind introduced by Drennen. It would be easier if we faced only one question about justice, but several questions are not only unavoidable individually but are entangled with one another. In addition, each question can be given not simply alternative answers but answers of different kinds. In spite of this multiplicity of possible answers to the multiplicity of inevitable and interconnected questions, I think we can lay out the issues fairly clearly and establish that commonsense principles converge to a remarkable extent upon what ought to be done, at least for the next decade or so.


Author(s):  
Sarah Louise Nash

This chapter explains that while much of the world was still preoccupied with scenes of people arriving at Europe's external borders in 2015 and the search for solutions to the crisis of migration that these scenes were widely taken to represent, in a setting that could not contrast more with the rawness of life and refuge being depicted in the viral images beaming their way around the world, negotiators from around the globe gathered in Paris for the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The bureaucratic, meticulous, and technical world of climate change negotiations was, however, being explicitly connected to these emotional images, amid warnings that climate change would be the ‘Syria refugee crisis times 100’. The prominence of the topic of the large-scale displacement of people thus reportedly added ‘an ominous, politically sensitive undercurrent in the talks and side events’ in Paris. In a COP that was already being seen as highly relevant for the policy community on migration and climate change due to the large coordinated advocacy effort leading up to it, events playing out beyond the walls of the conference arguably brought even more relevance to this policy juncture. The chapter then considers mentions of human mobility within the Cancun Adaptation Framework and the Doha decision.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (09) ◽  
pp. 148-155
Author(s):  
Shubham Yadav ◽  

Man is a creator and molder of his environment which vests him with physical sustenance and affords him an opportunity for overall growth and development. Development is a perpetual process enabling a man to realize his potentialities to achieve his targets by exploiting natureÂ’s resources. Sustainability is a pattern of socio structural economic transformation which optimizes the benefits without compromising or jeopardizing the interest and potentiality of future generations but ensuring the evolution of a common principle so that human beings can survive for a long time with the natural environment. People are one of nationÂ’s greatest resources for enforcement of environment laws and regulations are intimately related to the natural attributes as citizens are omnipresent, motivated and interested in environment quality. But at present time advanced use of science and technology or of manufacturing process has disturbed the ecological balance. Since 1972 many attempt has been made to reconcile this imbalance. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was an attempt to bring both these elements i.e. use of technology and maintenance of ecological fairness together and try to tackle the issues of sustainable development, environment degradation and climate change effectively. The UNFCCC was an idea which caused all the countries of the world to come together and look for a solution to this world problem. In this paper it has been attempted to understand the effectiveness of UNFCCC with respect to role of United States of America. The author has mentioned two particular conferences of parties which were proved to be two milestone steps for protecting our environment under international legal regime.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Bailey ◽  
Tor Hakon Jackson Inderberg

Following the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2015, governments around the world now face the task of developing strategies to meet their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – UN terminology for emissions reduction goals to 2030 – and their broader contributions to the Paris Agreement’s goal of maintaining global average temperatures to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC, 2015a, article 2.1(a)). Paris represented a crucial starting point, but the decisions by Paula Bennett, New Zealand’s new minister for climate change issues, and her international counterparts will determine whether COP21 produced just warm words or genuinely charted a course to avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change.


Author(s):  
Moses Metumara Duruji ◽  
Faith O. Olanrewaju ◽  
Favour U. Duruji-Moses

The Earth Summit of 1992 held in Rio de Janeiro awakened the consciousness of the world to the danger of climate change. The establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provided the platform for parties to negotiate on ways of moving forward. The global acknowledgement of the weightiness of the climate change and the future of the planet galvanized international agreements to this regard. Consequently, a landmark agreement was brokered in 1992 at Kyoto, Japan and 2015 in Paris, France. However, the strong issues of national interest tend to bedevil the implementation that would take the world forward on climate change. The chapter therefore examined multilateralism from the platform of climate change conferences and analyzed the political undertone behind disappointing outcomes even when most of the negotiators realized that the only way to salvage the impending doom is a multilateral binding agreement when nation-state can subsume their narrow interest.


Author(s):  
Mark Maslin

‘What is climate change?’ examines the role of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in moderating past global climate; why they have been rising since the industrial revolution; and why they are now considered dangerous pollutants. It considers which countries have produced the most GHGs and how this is changing with rapid global development. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regularly collates and assesses the most recent key research and evidence for climate change. Its assessments have a profound influence on the negotiators of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As more carbon is emitted into the atmosphere the effects of climate change will increase, which will threaten and challenge human society.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1985-2004
Author(s):  
Moses Metumara Duruji ◽  
Faith O. Olanrewaju ◽  
Favour U. Duruji-Moses

The Earth Summit of 1992 held in Rio de Janeiro awakened the consciousness of the world to the danger of climate change. The establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provided the platform for parties to negotiate on ways of moving forward. The global acknowledgement of the weightiness of the climate change and the future of the planet galvanized international agreements to this regard. Consequently, a landmark agreement was brokered in 1992 at Kyoto, Japan and 2015 in Paris, France. However, the strong issues of national interest tend to bedevil the implementation that would take the world forward on climate change. The chapter therefore examined multilateralism from the platform of climate change conferences and analyzed the political undertone behind disappointing outcomes even when most of the negotiators realized that the only way to salvage the impending doom is a multilateral binding agreement when nation-state can subsume their narrow interest.


Author(s):  
Matt McDonald

This chapter examines Australia’s engagement with the international politics of global climate change. It first provides an overview of the problem of global climate change and its likely effects, focusing on key complexities and dilemmas regarding climate change, and the evolution of the climate change regime through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. It then considers key drivers of climate diplomacy, from the ideology and foreign policy perspectives of different governments to the role of public opinion and the ebb and flow of international cooperation. It shows that Australia’s changing approach to climate change cooperation underscores the profound challenges for the climate change regime.


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