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| Climate capitalism, por Pedro Méndez Suárez (cartoonista Cubano) |
The Cancun Agreements of the 2010 UN Climate Summit do not represent a success for multilateralism; neither do they put the world on a safe climate pathway that science demands, and far less to a just and equitable transition towards a sustainable model of development. They represent a victory for big polluters and Northern elites that wish to continue with business-as-usual. (IBON, 2010)
fonte:Rock Ethics Institute
Climate change is an ethical problem because: (a) it is a problem caused by some people in one part of the world that puts people and the natural resources on which they depend in other parts of the world at great risk, (b) the harms to these other people are not mere inconveniences but in some cases catastrophic losses of life or the ability to sustain life, and (c) those who are vulnerable to climate change cant petition their government to act to protect themselves but must rely upon a sense of justice and responsibility of those causing the problem. Because climate change raises civilization challenging ethical questions, any proposed climate change regime must be examined through an ethical lens.
This post reviews the Cancun outcome through an ethical lens in light of the overall responsibility of those nations who are exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions in regard to their duties: (a) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels necessary to prevent harm to others, (b) to reduce greenhouse gas emission to levels consistent with what is each nation's fair share of total global emissions, and (c) to provide financing for adaptation measures and other necessary responses to climate change harms by those who are most vulnerable and least responsible for climate change.
To understand the significance of what happened in Cancun, it is necessary to briefly review the history of international negotiations leading up to Cancun. That is, it is not sufficient to simply examine what happened in Cancun without seeing Cancun in the context of twenty-year negotiating history that had as its goal the prevention of dangerous climate change and the harms that each year of delay in agreeing to a global deal exacerbate.
II. The Path To The Cancun Agreement.
The Cancun conference took place from November 29 to December 10, 2010. The Cancun goals were modest in light of the failure of COP-15 in Copenhagen the year before to achieve an expected global solution to climate change. Copenhagen was expected to produce a global solution to climate change pursuant to a two-year negotiating process that was agreed to in Bali, Indonesia, two years before Copenhagen in December 2007.
To understand the ethical significance of the Cancun, it is necessary to review the twenty-year history of climate change negotiations that led to Copenhagen and Cancun. This history constitutes a mostly failed attempt over two decades to adopt a global solution to climate change.
Negotiations on a global climate change deal began in 1990 that led in 1992 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (Bodansky,2001) The negotiation process began in December 1990, when the UN General Assembly established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change, to negotiate a convention containing "appropriate commitments" in time for signature in June 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. This treaty itself did not contain binding greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions limitations for countries but nevertheless included numerous other binding national obligations. Among other things, for instance, the parties to the UNFCCC agreed that:
(a) They would adopt policies and measures to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system; (b) Developed countries should take the first steps to do this; (c) Nations have common but differentiated responsibilities to prevent climate change; (d) Nations may not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not taking action; and, (e) Nations should reduce their ghg emissions based upon "equity." (UN, 1992)
In the early UNFCCC negotiations, the European Union and Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) advocated establishing a target and timetable to limit emissions by developed countries in the UNFCCC, while the United States and the oil-producing states opposed this idea. (Bodanksy, 2001). Other developing states generally supported targets and timetables, as long as it was clearly understood that these targets and timetables would apply only to developed states. (Bodanksy, 2001)
The UNFCCC has 192 parties, a number that includes almost all countries in the world including the United States which ratified the UNFCCC in 1993.
The UNFCC is a "framework" convention because it has always been expected that additional requirements would be added to the initial framework in updates that are known as "protocols" or in annual decisions of the conferences of the parties (COPs).
Each year as the parties to the UNFCCC meet in COPs , decisions were made that affect the responsibilities of the parties. The UNFCCC COPs were as follows:
• 1995 - COP 1, The Berlin Mandate
• 1996 - COP 2, Geneva, Switzerland
• 1997 - COP 3, The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change
• 1998 - COP 4, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• 1999 - COP 5, Bonn, Germany
• 2000 - COP 6, The Hague, Netherlands
• 2001 - COP 6 (Continued), Bonn, Germany
• 2001 - COP 7, Marrakech, Morocco
• 2002 - COP 8, New Delhi, India
• 2003 - COP 9, Milan, Italy
• 2004 - COP 10, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• 2005 - COP 11 Montreal, Canada
• 2006 - COP 12, Nairobi, Kenya
• 2007 - COP 13 Bali, Indonesia
• 2008 - COP 14, Poznań, Poland
• 2009 - COP 15, Copenhagen, Denmark
• 2010 - COP-16, Cancun.
Each year nations have meet in COPs to achieve a global solution to climate change and each COP for the most part continued to add small steps toward the goals of the UNFCCC. Yet in all COPs some nations have resisted calls from some of the most vulnerable nations to adopt a solution to climate change that would prevent dangerous climate change.
As the international community approached Cancun, no comprehensive global solution had been agreed to despite the fact that the original negotiations on the UNFCCC began in 1990 with a goal of achieving a global climate change solution. For this reason, Cancun must be understood as the latest attempt in a twenty year history of mostly failed attempts to structure a global solution to climate change.
