Greenhouse Justice: Moving Beyond Kyoto (original) (raw)
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Current international climate negotiations highlight a divergence between governmental proposals and civil society's demands for ecological justice. While the Kyoto Protocol sets specific binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions among developed and transitional countries, it raises concerns over efficacy and equity, particularly regarding the absence of major emitters like the U.S. The paper argues that the market-based strategies of the Kyoto Protocol may perpetuate climate injustice, advocating instead for clearer commitments to reduce emissions and uphold ecological principles.
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Climate change, also referred to as global warming, denotes the rise in normal superficial temperatures on Earth. It is scientifically assumed that climate change is essentially due to human use of fossil fuels, which discharges carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air. These gases then capture heat within the atmosphere, thereby causing adverse effects on ecosystems, including rising sea levels, severe weather events, and droughts, etc. Because of the global effect of this hazard, attempt has been made to create normative and institutional framework to checkmate this danger so as to avoid its catastrophic consequences. The Kyoto Protocol, which is considered the most fundamental normative instrument aimed at curbing this menace has integrated an array of flexibility mechanisms which are seen as wheels upon which the costs of diminishing emissions can be achieved. A critical component of the Protocol requires states to transfer or purchase Emission Reduction Units from others in a Joint Implementation Mechanism and to institutes the Clean Development Mechanism; a measure of implementation where developed countries are allow to obtain certified emission reductions from clean development projects jointly implemented and use them for computation in summing up their commitments. This article critically evaluated and captured climate change from this perspective and distilled major insufficienciesintegral in the Kyoto framework. In this connection, the work evaluated the foremost shortfalls in the three flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. Suggestions designed to emasculate the menace of climate change have been proffered.
Climate Change as a Political Process : The Rise and Fall of the Kyoto Protocol
2014
This research focuses on climate change as a political process: it describes the Kyoto Protocol, its origins and ratification process in the international climate-diplomatic arena, as well as the climate strategy based on the United Nations' framework convention on climate change, its results and consequences. It views the issue of climate change as a decision-making problem focusing on the relationship between climate science, policy development and politics. This monograph revisits the scientific discussion on the topic and prepares an advanced synthesis and a bigger picture on developing policies for mitigating climate change. Some unpublished and previously unpublished sources like notes, e-mails, transcripts of meeting minutes and diaries are used for the description and analysis of UN Climate meetings and UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COP). Parts of this study feature elements of action research: the writer has participated as an active legislator in the topic at hand, as is the case for emissions trading. The study discusses climate change as a so-called wicked problem-i.e. a multi-faceted bundle of problems. To sum up, it can be said that the Protocol has not met the expectations. There are many reasons for this. The climate problem has been assumed to be more onedimensional than it is in reality-a wicked problem-, which has led to excessive simplification. The relationship between science and politics has been problematic in the field of climate science. The public demands more certainty and more precise information than science is able to provide. For the climate scientist, this implies a pressure to act as committed advocators rather than objective scientists. One of the core claims of this research is that preserving the epistemic or cognitivist ideal of science is still necessary in climate science. Otherwise, the error margin of the research risks increasing and even multiplying, when the value-laden preferences accumulate at the various levels of this interdisciplinary field. Researchers should not make political accentuations or risk assessments on behalf of the politician or decision-maker, but rather restrict their research to the production of information as reliable as possible. The study evaluates the main instruments of EU climate policy, such as emissions trading (ETS). It explains why such a genius system in theory has not been able to show its strength and results in practice for the EU. The overlapping legislation can be considered a key reason. Also the unilateral economic burden has proven to be problematic, when solving the global problem of climate change has been attempted by local means. Future climate policy is likely to be more practical and is composed of parallel elements. The special position of carbon dioxide may be challenged and the prevention of pollutants like black carbon will also be placed parallel to it. Reaching a global agreement is more and more unrealistic. Instead of setting emission ceilings the major emitters prefer technological investments and decarbonising the economy. If the EU desires a global climate policy it should approach the others and stop waiting for others to jump onto a Kyoto-type bandwagon. Emissions trading may well be functional as an emissionreduction instrument. It could also work well in the reduction of soot, i.e. black carbon, which is China's most urgent pollution problem.
What Future for International Climate Politics? A Call for a Strategic Reset
Heinrich Böll Stiftung - Ecology series, 2013
International responses to the climate challenge have failed to address growing inequities and have lacked in ambition and urgency. They have generally ignored wider ecological and financial crises. The collapse of negotiations at Copenhagen contributed to disillusionment in civil society and signaled a gradual retreat from engagement in international climate policy processes. With a new international deadline approaching in 2015, a fundamental rethink is needed. This must cover existing strategies and make concrete proposals for action, as well as weave a new narrative that incorporates lessons learned from the climate and other international regimes. A change is needed in the ways in which civil society approaches international climate change politics and policy, the UNFCCC in particular. We are witnessing the failure of traditional civil society strategies and, therefore, advocate a strategic reset. The reset covers three fronts: A new narrative to confront the challenge of a rapidly warming world put in the context of other real life challenges; new insights to break the hold of vested interests on politics; and a reexamination of the suite of policies and instruments capable of delivering a rapid transformation. This paper articulates concrete proposals and puts forward ideas that we believe can aid in devising smarter strategies that deliver more than incremental change and that may make engagement by civil society in international climate policy more effective.
Fighting Climate Change - Human Solidarity in a Divided World
Development and Change, 2008
Climate change is one of the so-called 'global environmental problems'like water scarcity and biodiversity loss. In 1992 the UN member states established a Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. A significant number of these countries subsequently developed the Kyoto Protocol to curb climate change. Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-Moon has dubbed climate change 'a defining issue of our era'. The wide realization that it is, is one key precondition for a new global compact to succeed the current inadequate Kyoto Protocol which will come to an end in 2012. That new compact is rather slow in coming about, for all kinds of reasons-not least amongst these: vested interests and asymmetries in responsibilities for having caused the problem and in suffering the consequences. At the end of 2007 the latest conference of the parties to UNFCCC met in Bali and agreed on a plan to try and arrive at a multilateral agreement in 2009. Prior to the Bali conference UNDP issued its Human Development Report: Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World (UNDP, 2007). For its factual basis for assessing the prospects of climate change and its impacts, the UNDP report leans heavily on recent reports on climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). IPCC is a worldwide organization of scientists set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environmental Programme to periodically assess the state of knowledge about climate change, its causes and its impacts. It operates independently, albeit there has always been discussion about the way the IPCC process allows for influence by governments
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