scholarly journals Worldview Struggles under a New Climate Regime

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Johannessen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Common But Differentiated Responsibility

Abstract The UN summit on climate change in Durban constituted an important moment in the continuous discourse on how to understand climate change and the framing of the problems and solutions. A new emergent frame of understanding could be detected in the press, which the author calls the ‘out-dated worldview’ frame. This frame contains a critique of the clear-cut division between developing vs. developed countries from the 1992 Rio Convention, and may influence how we understand burden-sharing roles in a new global climate deal. In an eager attempt to include all major polluters within a new climate regime, there is a danger that the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ will be ignored, which may be an attempt to excuse the rich industrialized countries from their responsibility after 150 years of benefitting from fossil-fuel-driven development.

Greenhouse Development Rights: A Framework for Climate Protection That Is “More Fair” Than Equal Per Capita Emissions Rights

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Kemp-Benedict ◽  
Sivan Kartha
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
Right To Development ◽  
Precautionary Action ◽  
The Rich

There is a fairly broad consensus among both the philosophers who write about climate change and the majority of the climate-policy community that efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions—“mitigation” in the jargon—should not harm the ability of poor countries to grow economically and to reduce as rapidly as possible the widespread poverty their citizens suffer. Indeed, this principle of a “right to development” has been substantially embraced in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) itself. Yet as the evidence of the risks from climate change has continued to mount and calls have grown for more stringent mitigation targets, the need to give substance to this right has come into conflict with the evident unwillingness of already “developed” countries to pay the costs of adequately precautionary mitigation. The long and the short of it is that almost any reasonable ethical principles lead to the conclusion that, as Henry Shue (1999) put it straightforwardly, “the costs [of mitigation] should initially be borne by the wealthy industrialized states.” In the words of the UNFCCC, “the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof,” and this point is embodied in practical terms in the Kyoto Protocol itself, in which only the 40 developed “Annex I” countries have binding emissions limits. Yet particularly because of the rejection of Kyoto by the United States but also because of the weak efforts at mitigation that have taken place so far in Europe, Japan, and other industrialized countries, we find ourselves in a situation in which precaution requires that emissions be reduced extremely soon in poor countries, too, but the rich countries can’t yet be said to have fulfilled their obligations to “take the lead.” The delay in taking action so far, the increasing evidence of current climate-change impacts and greater risks than previously estimated, and the speed with which we must now move all imply substantially greater costs for adequately precautionary action than were previously estimated.

International Governance on Carbon Tariff and Its Vacuum in International Regime

2013 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 1350008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mou WANG
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
International Governance ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
Climate Governance ◽  
Emission Quota ◽  
Carbon Tariff

Drawing on the idea that countries are eligible to implement differentiated emission reduction policies based on their respective capabilities, some parties of UNFCCC attempt to weaken the principle of “Common but differentiated responsibilities(CBDR)” and impose carbon tariff on international trade. This initiative is in fact another camouflage to burden developing countries with emission cut obligation, which has no doubt undermined the development rights of developing countries. This paper defines Carbon Tariff as border measures that target import goods with embodied carbon emission. It can be import tariffs or other domestic tax measures that adjust border tax, which includes plain import tariffs and export rebates, border tax adjustment, emission quota and permit etc. For some developed countries, carbon tariffs mean to sever trade protectionism and to build trade barriers. Its theoretical arguments like “loss of comparative advantage”, “carbon leakage decreases environmental effectiveness” and “theoretical model bases” are pseudo-propositions without international consensus. Carbon tariff has become an intensively debated issue due to its duality of climate change and trade, but neither UNFCCC nor WTO has clarified this issue or has indicated a clear statement in this regard. As a result, it allows some parties to take advantage of this loophole and escape its international climate change obligation. Carbon tariff is an issue arising from global climate governance. To promote the cooperation of global climate governance and safeguard the social and economic development of developing countries, a fair and justified climate change regime and international trade institution should be established, and the settlement of the carbon tariff issue should be addressed within these frameworks. This paper argues that the international governance of carbon tariff should in cooperation with other international agreements; however, principles and guidelines regarding this issue should be developed under the UNFCCC. Based on these principles and guidelines, WTO can develop related technical operation provisions.

Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Caney
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Common But Differentiated Responsibility

. . . It’s exciting to have a real crisis on your hands when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum things like the environment. . . . The world’s climate is undergoing dramatic and rapid changes. Most notably, the earth has been becoming markedly warmer, and its weather has, in addition to this, become increasingly unpredictable. These changes have had, and continue to have, important consequences for human life. In this chapter, I wish to examine what is the fairest way of dealing with the burdens created by global climate change. Who should bear the burdens? Should it be those who caused the problem? Should it be those best able to deal with the problem? Or should it be someone else? I defend a distinctive cosmopolitan theory of justice, criticize a key principle of international environmental law, and, moreover, challenge the “common but differentiated responsibility” approach that is affirmed in current international environmental law. Before considering different answers to the question of who should pay for the costs of global climate change, it is essential to be aware of both the distinct kind of theoretical challenge that global climate change raises and also the effects that climate change is having on people’s lives. Section 1 thus introduces some preliminary methodological observations on normative theorizing about global climate change. In addition, it outlines some basic background scientific claims about the impacts of climate change. Section 2 examines one common way of thinking about the duty to bear the burdens caused by climate change, namely the doctrine that those who have caused the problem are responsible for bearing the burden. It argues that this doctrine, while in many ways appealing, is more problematic than might first appear and is also incomplete in a number of different ways (sections 3 through 8). In particular, it needs to be grounded in a more general theory of justice and rights.

scholarly journals The risk of carbon leakage in global climate agreements

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Nielsen ◽  
Nicolai Baumert ◽  
Astrid Kander ◽  
Magnus Jiborn ◽  
Viktoras Kulionis
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Kyoto Protocol ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Carbon Leakage ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Climate Agreements ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Nationally Determined Contributions

Abstract Although climate change and international trade are interdependent, policy-makers often address the two topics separately. This may inhibit progress at the intersection of climate change and trade and could present a serious constraint for global climate action. One key risk is carbon leakage through emission outsourcing, i.e. reductions in emissions in countries with rigorous climate policies being offset by increased emissions in countries with less stringent policies. We first analyze the Paris Agreement’s nationally determined contributions (NDC) and investigate how carbon leakage is addressed. We find that the risk of carbon leakage is insufficiently accounted for in these documents. Then, we apply a novel quantitative approach (Jiborn et al., 2018; Baumert et al., 2019) to analyze trends in carbon outsourcing related to a previous international climate regime—the Kyoto Protocol—in order to assess whether reported emission reductions were offset by carbon outsourcing in the past. Our results for 2000–2014 show a more nuanced picture of carbon leakage during the Kyoto Protocol than previous studies have reported. Carbon outsourcing from developed to developing countries was dominated by the USA outsourcing to China, while the evidence for other developed countries was mixed. Against conventional wisdom, we find that, in general, countries that stayed committed to their Kyoto Protocol emission targets were either only minor carbon outsourcers or actually even insourcers—although the trend was slightly negative—indicating that binding emissions targets do not necessarily lead to carbon outsourcing. We argue that multiple carbon monitoring approaches are needed to reduce the risk of carbon leakage.

Filling in for Governments? The Role of the Private Actors in the International Climate Regime

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Charlotte Streck
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
State Actor ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Private Actors

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.

Promoting Green and Low-Carbon Development to Address Challenges of Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 1750008
Author(s):  
Zhenhua XIE
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Development Path ◽  
International Obligation ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Low Carbon Development ◽  
Major Progress

A general consensus has been developed to proactively address climate change and promote green and low-carbon development in the international community. China, as a responsible major developing country, takes green and low-carbon development not only as its due international obligation to tackle global climate change, but also a priority in the implementation of the “Five Key Concepts for Development” ( http://keywords.china.org.cn/2016-03/01/content_37907679.htm ) and the realization of the “Two Centenary Goals” ( http://www.china.org.cn/china/china_key_words/2014-11/18/content_34158771.htm ). In this paper, the author reviews the major progress in tackling climate change worldwide in recent years, explores the nature of climate change based on the experiences of developed countries and China’s choice of development path, and analyzes China’s achievements and future development potential in green and low-carbon development.

Building the Forest-Climate Bandwagon: REDD+ and the Logic of Problem Amelioration

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance L. McDermott ◽  
Kelly Levin ◽  
Benjamin Cashore
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Forest Decline ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Forest Stewardship ◽  
Institutional Solution ◽  
Policy Mechanisms

For those championing an international institutional solution to climate change, the forest-climate linkage through reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and forest enhancement (REDD+) may be one of the most promising strategic linkages to date. Following a series of forest-focused interventions that did not live up to their promise, global forest politics have now, through REDD+ deliberations, been institutionally subsumed into the climate regime. We argue that to realize its potential, REDD+ policy mechanisms must be careful to move away from the commodification of forest stewardship that reinforces short-term strategic positions of powerful producing and consuming interests whose current activities are the culprits of global forest decline. To achieve such an outcome, we argue that institutions must develop on the basis of a “logic of problem amelioration” in which the rationale for achieving clearly defined environmental and social goals is rendered transparent. This could be achieved through the formalization of a “dual effectiveness test” in which interventions are evaluated for their potential to simultaneously ameliorate both global climate change and forest degradation.

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?

Book Reviews

2010 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 786-788 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Development Policy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Innovation And Technology ◽  
World Development

Robert Mendelsohn of Yale University reviews “World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change” by. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Explores what climate change means for development policy and considers how public policy can change to better help people cope with new climate-related threats and risks. Discusses understanding the links between climate change and development; reducing human vulnerability--helping people help themselves; managing land and water to feed nine billion people and protect natural systems; energizing development without compromising the climate; integrating development into the global climate regime; generating the funding needed for mitigation and adaptation; accelerating innovation and technology diffusion; and overcoming behavioral and institutional inertia. Glossary; bibliographic note; index.”

scholarly journals Mesoscale Simulations of the Land Surface Effects of Historical Logging in a Moist Continental Climate Regime

2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (8) ◽  
pp. 2166-2182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas P. Klingaman ◽  
Jason Butke ◽  
Daniel J. Leathers ◽  
Kevin R. Brinson ◽  
Elsa Nickl
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Heat Flux ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Latent Heat ◽  
Latent Heat Flux ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Atmosphere System ◽  
Regional Climates

Abstract An enhanced knowledge of the feedbacks from land surface changes on regional climates is of great importance in the attribution of climate change. To explore the effects of deforestation on a midlatitude climate regime, two sets of two five-member ensembles of 28-day simulations were conducted using the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model (MM5) coupled to the “Noah” land surface model. The four ensembles represented conditions in summer (August) and winter (February) across the northern mid-Atlantic United States before and after extensive late-nineteenth-century logging of hardwood forests in central and northern Pennsylvania. Prelogging ensembles prescribed a vegetative cover of an evergreen needleleaf forest; postlogging ensembles prescribed sparse vegetation and bare soil to simulate clear-cut deforestation. The results of the MM5 experiments showed a decided seasonality in the response of the land surface–atmosphere system to deforestation, with much stronger effects arising in summer. In August, deforestation caused a repartitioning of the surface energy budget, beginning with a decrease in the latent heat flux of more than 60 W m−2 across the land cover–forcing area, representing almost one-half of the latent heat flux under prelogging land cover. Concomitant with this decrease in evapotranspiration, mean 2-m air temperatures warmed by at least 1.5°C. Increases in sensible heat flux led to a 150-m mean increase in the height of the atmospheric boundary layer over the deforested area. Low-level atmospheric mixing ratios and total precipitation decreased under clear-cut conditions. Mean soil moisture increased in all model levels to 150 cm because of a decrease in vegetative uptake of water, except at the 5-cm level at which such decreases were effectively balanced by greater soil evaporation and less precipitation. A strong diurnal variation in the response to deforestation of ground and lower-atmosphere temperatures and heat fluxes was also identified for the summer season. The February simulations showed the effects of deforestation during low-insolation months to be small and variable. The strong response of the summer land surface–atmosphere system to deforestation shown here suggests that land cover changes can appreciably affect regional climates. Thus, the role of human-induced and naturally occurring land cover variability should not be ignored in the attribution of climate change.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document