1. BROOME, CHAPTER 18 THE ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE Globalization and the Environment

2. Background Environmental challenges are a defining feature of the contemporary global political economy. Among the broad range of environmental issues that now receive more sustained attention in the study of the IPE, it is climate change that become widely accepted as being the highest ranked priority for global action.

3. Background The politics of achieving concerted action on climate change across national boundaries has proven to be a daunting task. The development of a political consensus on the causes and solutions to climate change lags far behind the scientific consensus on the scale and scope of the problem, even when there is political agreement that climate change is an emprirically quantifiable phenomenon.

4. Background According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was created in 1988 by the World Meterological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), climate change is defined as ‘a change in the state of the climate’ that can be quantitatively measured and which persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer, whether this is due to natural variability or as a result of human activity.

5. Background One of the key causes of changes in the planet’s climate system is the rate of increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the last two centuries. GHG emissions have grown substantially since the Industrial Revolution, but the rate of increase in GHG emissions has been especially pronounced during the past four decades, when global emissions increased by 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004.

6. Background Despite a decrease in global energy intensity during this period, measured as declining carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per unit of energy, which reduced global emissions by one third, global income growth and population growth respectively contributed to increasing emissions by 77 per cent and 69 per cent. Any environmental gains from a gradual shift towards less carbon-intensive use of energy during the period from 1970-2004 were more than wiped out by economic and demographic changes over the same period.

7. Sustainable development and economic growth One of the largest obstacles to meaningful and effective action to address climate change is the continuing dependence on the assumption that the pursuit of growth is an essential feature of modern economies. Growth is typically understood as an aggregate measure of the percentage change in the level of economic output in a given area, without taking into account the negative externalities that may be associated with existing modes of industrial production and consumption.

8. Sustainable development and economic growth Negative externalities: welfare costs such as social consequences and spill-over effects that are not incorporated within the price for a particular good. Advocates of environmentally friendly economic policies and production processes have argued that the global focus on growth should be replaced by the pursuit of the goal of sustainable development.

9. Sustainable development and economic growth The 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development- known as the Brundtland Commission- defined sustainable development as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. The Brundtland Commission’s definition of sustainable development strongly influenced the subsequent UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which was agreed at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and continues to be one of the most commonly used definitions of environmental sustainability.

10. Sustainable development and economic growth Sustainability as a political term is frequently used to refer to a wide variety of different policies and political objectives, ranging from more radical proposals for a transition to a steady-state economy (where total gross domestic product remains more or less constant) to less ambitious proposals for adapting existing economic processes and growth models to reduce the effects on environmental sources and the climate system.

11. Sustainable development and economic growth Effective policy solutions to environmental challenges are often assumed to depend upon succesful cooperation at the global or regional level. The existing literature provides substantial evidence of policy options that can help to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, and is also characterized by a high level of agreement on what actions will prove most effective.

12. Sustainable development and economic growth The costs of climate change will be distributed unevenly across the globe, with some geographic areas and economic sectors projected to make economic gains as temperatures rise, while other economic sectors and geographical areas will face substantial costs. Will climate change increase or decrease societal pressures in different countries for greater democratic accountability and responsiveness?

13. Sustainable development and economic growth Authoritarian regimes might have a comparative advantage that makes them better placed to impose necessary environmental adjustments on unwilling populations, who may face a trade-off between civil liberties and environmental sustainability. Yet it is difficult to predict the impact of climate change on political systems that are in transition (in continuing processes of democratization). In developing countries especially, competition for people’s votes at election time plays a premium on promises of economic progress, not reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

14. Sustainable development and economic growth Others have pointed to indicators of a global deliberative system emerging around environmental governance. This has produced a broad set of policy alternatives that might gradually result in an expansion of deliberative democratic processes at the global level to address the challenges of climate change.

15. Global environmental governance What are the problems associated with designing, negotiating and enforcing common rules and institutions at the international level to manage or mitigate the effects of climate change. “Debate continues to centre on how to motivate self- interested states to act in ways which protect and enhance the global commons- the planet’s un-owned natural resources. Common problems: free-riders, non-compliance, institutional fragility

16. Global environmental governance The evolving regulatory dynamics associated with the management of environmental challenges can be viewed as expressions of multi-actor and multi-site governance processes. Contemporary forms of environmental governance often embody hybrid formations whose governance practices are only possible through cooperation and competition between each of the key “governance providers”, including states, market actors and civil society organizations.

17. Global environmental governance A number of existing IOs have been slow to adapt their activities and roles to take account of the increasing salience of environmental challenges for the dynamics of growth and development in the global political economy. In the case of the IMF for example, environmental concerns have long been viewed as peripheral to the organization’s primary macroeconomic responsibilities Or conceived as causally linked to the challenge of increasing growth and per capita income based on the environmental Kuznets curve.

18. Global environmental governance Environmental Kuznets curve Pollution levels Income per capita The environmental Kuznets curve is the hypothesis that economic growth will increase pollution levels until per capita income reaches a certain threshold of development, after which environmental quality will improve.

19. Global environmental governance While the IMF views the achievement of macroeconomic stability and the removal of price distortations as generally beneficial for enhancing environmental protections, for at least the last two decades the IMF has recognized the problem of negative externalities resulting from market failures such as the over-exploitation of natural resources and the lack of accounting for social costs. More recently, the IMF has become engaged in advocating the use of fiscal policies to help countries mitigate the effects of climate change.

20. Global environmental governance The World Bank has a longer history of being closely involved in environmental policy initiatives. In 1970 the World Bank established an Office of Environmental and Health Affairs (later renamed as the office of Environmental Affairs), which, despite a poorly defined mandate and weak institutionalization, marked the organization out as an early pioneer at the global level on environmental issues. It became a key Implementing Agency of the Global Environment Agency of the Global Environment Facility, established in 1991, which funds environmentally friendly development projects around the globe.

21. Global environmental governance The United Nations has a strong track record that goes over four decades in shaping global debates and thinking on environmental issues. The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment helped to establish the agenda-setting role of the UN as a leading advocate of developing new strategies to respond to environmental issues.

22. Global environmental governance The Stockholm Conference led to the creation of the UNEP, which has responsibility for coordinating UN environmental activities and fostering the design and implementation of environmentally friendly policies and development projects around the world. A significant success of UNEP: negotiation of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (the Montreal Protocol). This established a Multilateral Fund to provide assistance to developing country parties to the agreement to control the release of certain chemicals that lead to ozone depletion. Considered a huge success

23. Global environmental governance Despite some notable areas of improvement in global environmental governance, more recent climate negotiations have been less succesful, either due to incomplete ratification among UN member states or because negotiations have ended in stalemate as a result of competing conceptions of national economic interests. With respect to inter-state cooperation to protect the environment, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which was agreed at the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’ established the principle that ‘states have common but differentiated responsibilities’ for addressing global environmental degredation.

24. Global environmental governance Negotiations during the 90s resulted in the signing of the Kyoto Prrotocol in 1997, which set explicit targets for countries to limit greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. Despite being signed and ratified by over 190 UN member states, the USA failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on the basis of competitiveness issues in relation to developing countries and the implementation costs of the agreement.

25. Global environmental governance The withdrawal of the USA reduced the scope of the Kyoto Protocol by excluding the world’s largest economy and one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions. Based on UN estimates, the USA accounted for some 23 per cent of global GPEs in 2002, and in 2010 was second only to China in its contribution to global emissions.

26. The Paris Climate Conference Successes: For the first time ever, 195 nations fully agreed on the science of climate change and that we must limit human-caused global warming to no more than 2 C and, preferably, 1.5 C. (This difference of.5 C could well result in the preservation or breakup of the Greenland ice sheet.)

27. The Paris Climate Conference For the first time, nations acknowledged collective responsibility for addressing the problem. Each country calculated its own nonbinding Nationally Determined Contribution toward the aforementioned temperature ceiling.

28. The Paris Climate Conference Nations also promised to review and ideally strengthen their commitments every five years. It is hoped that further advances in clean technology plus the mandatory, transparent and regular reporting of progress by each nation will lead to much improved results.

29. The Paris Climate Conference Causes for concern: While there is recognition that the developed countries must provide considerable funding for the further development of clean technology and for aiding the most vulnerable and least developed nations in adapting to and mitigating climate change, the financial commitments made thus far are very weak.

30. The Paris Climate Conference The agreement fails to include agriculture, aviation and shipping, all major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement makes no mention of a global carbon tax, a key means of controlling market supplies of fossil fuels.

31. The Paris Climate Conference Fossil fuel subsidies are not ended. How can states continue to subsidize something that must be eliminated? It is estimated that more than one third of global carbon emissions between 1980 and 2010 were driven by such subsidies. If global warming will be limited to 2 C (let alone the new 1.5 C threshold), at least 80 per cent of the known fossil fuel reserves should be kept in the ground.