Jonathan Symons

The legitimation of international organisations: Examining the identity of the communities that grant legitimacy

‘Legitimacy’ is commonly cited as one of three fundamental mechanisms of social control within both domestic politics and international society. However, despite growing attention to the legitimacy of global governance, little consideration has been given to the identity of the political communities that must grant legitimacy to an international organisation or to the conditions under which legitimacy is valuable for the functioning of that organisation. In raising and responding to these questions, this article rejects the argument that actors must gain legitimacy among all subject social constituencies within their political realm of action. Instead, the importance of legitimacy within a particular constituency is a variable. The article labels this variable a ‘legitimacy nexus’ and outlines five factors that are hypothesised to contribute to calibrating a legitimacy nexus. The plausibility of the proposed schema is explored through discussion of the role of legitimacy in the trade regime and analysis of the origins of the International Labour Organizations anomalous tripartite representative structure.

Justice in adaptation to climate change: Cosmopolitan implications for international institutions

The creation and funding of international institutions for adaptation to climate change involve questions of justice. Should unconditional assistance flow to governments or should assistance be provided in ways that ensure benefits flow to vulnerable populations? Do major emitters of greenhouse gases have special obligations to assist the developing world adapt to climate change? Which actors are the proper bearers of obligations to assist? After reviewing both state-centred and cosmopolitan arguments about adaptation assistance, it is argued that neither philosophical perspective justifies the statist design of existing institutions. A more just and effective international agreement on climate change adaptation must achieve a higher degree of consistency between the principles of burden sharing applied internationally and domestically. Adaptation assistance should target human welfare rather than provide compensation to states, and should be funded through measures that impose similar emission costs on affluent people in both developed and developing countries. These arguments are briefly demonstrated using the case of China.

Norm Conflict in Climate Governance: Greenhouse Gas Accounting and the Problem of Consumption

Accounting rules used for compiling national greenhouse gas inventories play a significant role in constituting the global climate change regimes character. These rules have major political and policy implications. Production-based accounting and national production-based emissions targets contribute to the deadlock in climate negotiations by deflecting attention away from consumption patterns and by accentuating tensions among the climate regimes underlying norms. These dynamics contribute to inefficient domestic mitigation policies, conflict over the norm of “common but differentiated responsibility,” weak international agreements, and continued political neglect of consumption as a driver of emissions. In contrast, consumption-based emissions accounting would shift attention from production to consumption. Consumption-based targets could potentially provide an alternative path by which differentiated responsibility could be implemented. Adoption of consumption-based inventories might also prompt reappraisal of underlying norms and opposing conceptions of justice among states.

International norm polarization: sexuality as a subject of human rights protection

International norm polarization is a rare but recurring process within international norm dynamics. Polarization describes the most combative response to attempted norm change: ‘a candidate norm is accepted by some states but resisted by others, leading to a period of international disputation between two groups in which socializing pressures pull states toward compliance with rival norms’. We identify several cases of polarization and explain this phenomenon by elaborating the constructivist model of the norm life cycle to processes of international resistance to norm change as well as to norm acceptance. We also draw on social identity theory (SIT) to examine group-psychological responses where disputed norms become closely linked to state identity. We illustrate these dynamics with reference to conflict over the norm that recognizes sexual orientation and gender identity as subjects of international human rights protection. Over the past decade this candidate norm has become increasingly contentious internationally, and bitter debates over resolutions concerning extra-judicial killings and discrimination have divided the United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Council. The article makes a primary contribution to analysis of international norm change and also contributes to an emerging literature concerning sexuality and international relations.

China and the blunt temptations of geo-engineering: the role of solar radiation management in China's strategic response to climate change

Abstract Amid growing alarm over the rising atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, increasing attention is being given to ‘geo-engineering’ technologies that could counteract some of the impacts of global warming by either reducing absorption of solar energy (solar radiation management (SRM)) or removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Geo-engineering has the potential to dramatically alter the dynamics of global climate change negotiations because it might cool the climate without constraining fossil fuel use. Some scholars have expressed concern that certain states may be tempted to act unilaterally. This paper assesses the approach that China is likely to adopt towards governance of SRM and the implications this holds for broader international climate negotiations. We survey Chinese public discourse, examine the policy factors that will influence Chinas position, and assess the likelihood of certain future scenarios. While Chinese climate scientists are keenly aware of the potential benefits of geo-engineering as well as its risks, we find that no significant constituency is currently promoting unilateral implementation of SRM. China will probably play a broadly cooperative role in negotiations toward a multilaterally governed geo-engineering programme but will seek to promote a distinctive developing world perspective that reflects concerns over sovereignty, Western imperialism and maintenance of a strict interpretation of the norm of common but differentiated responsibility.

Energy research within the UNFCCC : a proposal to guard against ongoing climate-deadlock

We propose that an international ‘Low-Emissions Technology Commitment’ should be incorporated into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiation process in order to promote innovation that will enable deep decarbonization. The goal is to accelerate research, development, and demonstration of safe, scalable, and affordable low-emissions energy technologies. Such a commitment should be based on three elements. First, it should operate within existing UNFCCC negotiations so as to encourage developed states to offer directed funding for energy research as part of their national contributions. Second, pledges should be binding, verifiable, and coordinated within an international energy-research plan. Third, expert scientific networks and participating governments should collaborate to design a coordinated global research and technology-demonstration strategy and oversee national research efforts. To this end an Intergovernmental Panel on Low-Emissions Technology Research might be established. This proposal offers some insurance against the risk that the political impasse in international negotiations cannot be overcome. The higher costs associated with low-emissions alternatives to fossil fuels currently creates significant economic and political resistance to their widespread adoption. To breach this impasse, a mechanism supporting accelerated energy research is needed that seeks to reduce future abatement costs, share experience and ‘learning-by-doing’ in first-of-a-kind demonstrations, and thus facilitate future widespread deployments. These actions will also assist in addressing inequalities in energy access. Policy relevance Over the past decade, global fossil-fuel use and associated carbon emissions have risen steadily, despite the majority of nations agreeing, in principle, to work to limit global warming to less than 2 °C above pre-industrial conditions (IPCC, 2014). Accelerated research, development, and demonstration of low-emissions technologies will be required for successful and economically efficient decarbonization of the global economy, but how can the current deadlock be broken? The UNFCCC does not contain adequate mechanisms to promote increased investment in research, so climate-governance institutions are not capturing the gains that could be achieved through a globally coordinated approach. Here, we outline reform proposals that would enhance both the economic effectiveness of global abatement efforts and the political feasibility of accelerated innovation.

Green political theory in a climate-changed world: between innovation and restraint

The implications for Green political theory of the international community’s failure to avert dangerous warming are evaluated. An emerging conflict is identified between the Green-romantic value of restraint and the Green-rationalist value of protection, between a desire to preserve biotic systems and a distrust of scientific solutions to problems that are intrinsically social. In response, approaches are outlined that can help to navigate the current period of overshoot beyond safe planetary boundaries by informing choices among bundles of environmental harms. An ethic of restraint, encompassing non-domination and post-materialist values, can validly be justified without reference to ecological catastrophe. Meanwhile, in respect of preservation from climate-linked harms, the need for cooperation in support of scalable abatement measures suggests the necessity of accelerated research into ‘breakthrough’, low-emissions energy technologies. However, since technophilic preservationism is incompatible with existing environmental ‘logics of practice’, this strategy must mobilise political support outside the traditional environmental movement.

Scalability and Realist Climate Insights

AbstractRecent scientific findings have underscored the need for a rapid global decarbonization. Yet, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise despite vast investments in small-scale renewable energy. Meanwhile, the prolonged international climate negotiations have yet to deliver effective mitigation action. By problematizing the issue of scalability and taking into consideration a realist analysis of international relations, this article suggests 1) that national transitions to a low-carbon economy can only serve as stepping-stones to global decarbonization if they contribute to the development of scalable technologies that are significantly cheaper than existing fossil alternatives and 2) that the current diplomatic gridlock can only be broken by technological innovation that severs the link between economic prosperity and greenhouse gas emissions, and thus also severs the link between decarbonization and military power.

Ecomodernist citizenship : rethinking political obligations in a climate-changed world

ABSTRACT Green accounts of environmental citizenship typically seek to promote environmental sustainability and justice. However, some green theorists have argued that liberal freedoms are incompatible with preserving a planetary environment capable of meeting basic human needs and must be wound back. More recently, ‘ecomodernists’ have proposed that liberalism might be reconciled with environmental challenges through state-directed innovation focused on the provision of global public goods. Yet, they have not articulated an account of ecomodernist citizenship. This article seeks to advance the normative theory of ecomodernism by specifying an account of ecomodernist citizenship and subjecting the theory’s core claims to sympathetic critique. We argue that state-directed innovation has the potential to reconcile ambitious mitigation with liberal freedoms. However, full implementation of ecomodernist ideals would require widespread embrace of ecophilic values, high-trust societies and acceptance of thick political obligations within both national and global communities. Ecomodernism’s wider commitments to cosmopolitan egalitarianism and separation from nature thus amount to a non-liberal comprehensive public conception of the good. Furthermore, ecomodernism currently lacks an adequate account of how a society that successfully ‘separates’ from nature can nurture green values, or how vulnerable people’s substantive freedoms will be protected during an era of worsening climate harms.

Response to Queer Wars special commentary section

In the spring of 2014, we sat together with an extraordinary range of activists and academics at the University of Southern California for a three-day workshop devoted to thinking through current global battles around sexual rights. At this meeting, we were struck by a divide between many of the Americans present and those who came from the ‘developing word’ (including Brazil, South Africa, Kenya, Jamaica and India). If at times we sound overcautious, it is in part because we were influenced by these southern responses to (liberal) US exceptionalism. We wrote Queer Wars (Altman and Symons 2016) with a particular kind of reader in mind: well-meaning Western activists and officials who are engaged with human rights questions, but who may not appreciate the contexts in which battles for sexual freedom are fought, or the importance for activists in many countries of action in international forums such as the United Nations Human Rights Council. We sought to unpick and examine the cultural clash we experienced in that Los Angeles meeting, where seasoned southern activists locked horns with would-be allies. Queer Wars urges caution on Western governments, activists and non-governmental organisations because we believe that modest allies are the most useful. Yet we also agree with Anthony Langlois that were we addressing grass-roots movements in our own country, caution would be an inappropriate message. When it comes to support for rights in other countries’ governments, Western activists need first to engage with local communities (the example we give was the reaction of a number of Americans to the introduction of shariah law in Brunei, without any attempt to check with affected communities in the country and region). We are enormously heartened by the care and scholarship with which our critics have engaged with our book, and we agree with many of their claims (and are chastened by the fact that, in places, we must not have communicated our views sufficiently clearly). We share their critique of identity politics; we agree with Cai Wilkinson that we must move beyond marriage equality and the normalisation of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people and propose wider sexual freedoms; we echo Cynthia Weber’s arguments that polarisation over ‘gay rights’ bristles with multiscalar complexities, and that inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity within human rights practice risks obscuring intersectional injustices and co-option by imperialist agendas. We also agree that existing philosophical conceptions of human rights are inadequate, and we find both Langlois’s bottom-up account of rights and Colin Wight’s grounding of universal claims in ontological ‘species being’ attractive. However, no philosophical argument can alter the political realities that Queer Wars addresses: that around half of states