Paul G. Harris

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.

Environmental change and the Asia Pacific: China responds to global warming

China has risen to become the Asian Pacific region’s pre-eminent economic and political force. While it has contributed to regional economic growth, it has simultaneously taken on the unenviable role of being the region’s largest polluter. Among its new distinctions, China is now the second largest source—after the United States—of pollutants that are warming the global atmosphere. More than two decades have passed since the world’s governments began to seriously consider the problems of global warming and resulting climate change. We know that global warming is caused by human activities—notably the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels—resulting in the emission of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHGs). Global warming in turn is causing climate change, which is manifested in rising sea levels, droughts, floods, spread of pests, harm to natural ecosystems and species, and other usually adverse consequences. As these impacts on environmental security have become clearer, governments have started to work unilaterally and in concert to adapt to and—much less robustly—to mitigate climate change. The first round of negotiations towards international cooperation on global warming resulted in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), signed at the Rio Earth Summit. Subsequent international negotiations, notably those surrounding the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the FCCC—which laid out very modest mandatory reductions in developed-country GHG emissions—and follow-on discussions regarding implementation have been fraught with difficulties and differences among states. The states of the Asia Pacific have been important participants in these international negotiations. Indeed, they are crucial to global efforts to address climate change, if for no other reason than that their economic growth has made them major emitters of greenhouse gases. Furthermore, the Asia Pacific encompasses many of the developing states and peoples who will be most adversely affected by climate change.

Misplaced Ethics of Climate Change: Political vs. Environmental Geography

Climate change diplomacy is routinely characterized by preoccupation with narrow and short-term perceived national interests rather than the pressing need to mitigate global warming and respond aggressively to its impacts. This was amply demonstrated by the much-anticipated December 2009 United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen, which failed to reach any formal or binding agreement on steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to deal with the impacts of global warming. The Copenhagen conference revealed a fundamental flaw in the international politics of climate change, namely underlying norms and ethics that place nearly all value and importance in states and their national interests, rather than in the people who ultimately cause and are affected by climate change. A major manifestation of this problem is recurring debate over the historical responsibility of developed states for greenhouse gas pollution. While those states surely deserve blame if we think in terms of states, this focus on state responsibility fails to account for rising greenhouse gas emissions among affluent people in less responsible states of the developing world. Given the misfit between historical responsibility and current emissions, this misplaced emphasis on states rather than people will have to be mitigated if the world is to take the extraordinary steps necessary to combat climate change aggressively in coming decades. One major step toward this objective would be to apply cosmopolitan conceptions of ethics to climate politics, policy and diplomacy (see Harris 2010).

China and climate justice: moving beyond statism

China is the largest national source of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution causing climate change. However, despite some rhetorical progress at the 2011 Durban climate conference, it has consistently rejected calls to take on binding targets to reduce its GHG emissions. The Chinese Government has understandably argued that developed states are responsible for the predominant share of historical GHG emissions, have greater capacity to pay for the cost of mitigation, and indeed have an obligation to do so before China is required to take action. However, due to the explosive growth in its GHG emissions, China is now in a position to single-handedly dash any hope of climate stability if its position does not change. On the diplomatic level, other big polluters, particularly the United States, will not enter into new binding agreements to reduce substantially their own GHG emissions without a credible commitment from China. Challenging the “statist” framing of the climate justice, this article explores the possibility for China to take on a leadership role in climate change diplomacy in a way that allows it to maintain its long-standing principled resistance to binding national emissions targets while making meaningful progress toward combating the problem. Action by China’s rapidly growing affluent classes may hold the key to long-term climate stability.

Peace, security and global climate change: the vital role of China

Climate change presents much of the world, and possibly most of it in the long term, with chronic human insecurity. More than any other country, China has become a central actor in the practical and political aspects of this problem. On a practical level, it is the largest national source of greenhouse gases (GHGs) causing global warming, and the rapid increase in its GHG emissions means that its contribution to climate change will continue to grow for some time. Politically, Chinas role in climate change diplomacy is crucial to so-far failed efforts by states to reach consensus on robust efforts to reduce GHG pollution and to respond to the inevitable consequences of climate change. Chinas domestic policy responses to the problem convey important signals that will influence the behaviour of other national actors. Without China playing a major part in efforts to curb GHG pollution, notably through limitations on its future emissions, international efforts to mitigate global warming substantially will certainly fail.

Adapting to dangerous climate change: implications for studies of politics, policy, and beyond

This essay interrogates the way that adaptation to climate change has been approached by environmental studies scholars focusing on politics, policy, and related perspectives. We describe how adaptation has gained prominence as awareness of climate change has increased, and we summarize the way that adaptation has been addressed. We argue that the types of environmental studies that are necessary to foster effective policies for adaptation must be much more mindful of the quite high potential for dangerous, potentially catastrophic, climate change. As the impacts of rising global temperatures become more severe, research pertinent to the problem changes. Put simply, the more severe the potential impacts, the more creative environmental policy studies will have to be if societies are to cope. Transformational, even radical, theories and approaches may be essential to understanding and preparing for a future that is greatly affected by climate change. We examine what this means for political and policy studies before highlighting some of the implications for several cognate environmental studies disciplines.

Climate-induced conflict or Hospice Earth: the increasing importance of eco-socialism

What are the implications of global climate change for peace and human welfare in the future? The answer depends on the actual effects of climate change and how the world responds to them. Current economic and political systems are unlikely to produce the policy and institutional changes needed to reduce adequately the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions causing the problem, so some of the most dangerous effects of climate change could occur this century. Some observers posit that climate change will result in catastrophe, but specifics of this catastrophe range widely. Does climate change mean painful but manageable social disruption, requiring, for instance, populations to move and cities to be rebuilt? Or does climate change portend much worse, including major wars, the end of modern civilization or, incredibly, even the eventual extinction of humanity? If these more severe consequences are likely or possible, what kind of global society would be best able to survive, or at least cope? The answer may be found in eco-socialism and a ‘Hospice Earth’ that nurtures people and societies regardless of how bad the future becomes.

Inviting People to Climate Parties: Differentiating National and Individual Responsibilities for Mitigation

The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action calls for development of ‘a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties’ (emphasis added). By definition, parties to the climate convention are sovereign states. This reiteration of the role of states reveals an attachment to statist responses to climate change that has so far failed to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Indeed, GHG pollution is increasing. The main reason for this increase is growth in emissions from many developing countries, which collectively now produce over half of global emissions. Under current climate agreements, these countries are not obligated to limit these emissions. To require them to do so would arguably defy the principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) among states that forms the basis of the climate regime.

Individual Duties to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in China

Christian Baatz (2014) argues that individuals have an imperfect duty to take reasonable steps to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and that governments should be working to implement structural changes that enable people to do this. He notes that ‘individuals both responsible for high GHG emissions and well endowed with other goods (money in particular) very likely exceed their fair share of overall goods and [emissions rights] respectively’. Baatz argues that this is not justified and, because government regulation is lacking, affluent individuals are therefore ‘morally obligated to reduce emissions because they are exceeding their overall fair share’. Baatz’s argument should apply globally, including in China. China is now the largest national source of GHG emissions, accounting for a quarter of the global total (WRI, 2013). These emissions are increasing, and will continue doing so because the Chinese government does not accept sovereign responsibility for emissions reductions and is encouraging citizens, notably hundreds of millions of them who are now affluent, to consume more—and thus pollute more—for the sake of economic growth. The importance of avoiding this cannot be understated: if hundreds of millions of Chinese pollute much as Westerners have done up to now, there is no hope whatsoever of preventing catastrophic climate change. Howmight China, Chinese people and the world avoid such an outcome? Baatz’s approach provides an answer by justifying individual responsibilities and positing a framework for bringing affluent Chinese—and indirectly the Chinese nation—into global efforts to reduce GHG emissions.