The Environment

38.6.2: The Environment

The international community’s efforts to combat climate change have often been frustrated by the economic concerns of member states.

Learning Objective

Evaluate the efforts made by the global community to combat climate change

 

Key Points

  • Global warming and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth’s climate system and its related effects.
  • Most countries participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based on the premise that global warming exists and human-made CO2 emissions have caused it.
  • The current state of global warming politics is frustration over a perceived lack of progress within the UNFCCC, which has existed for 18 years but has been unable to curb global GHG emissions.
  • The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty that extends the 1992 UNFCCC based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, placing the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they are historically responsible for the current levels of GHGs in the atmosphere.
  • Of the 192 parties to the Kyoto Protocol, only 37 countries have binding targets within the framework of the Protocol, and only seven of the 37 countries have ratified their obligations within this framework.
  • The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the UNFCCC dealing with GHG emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance to be implemented starting in the year 2020. It is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement and has been described as an incentive for and driver of fossil fuel divestment.

Key Terms

fossil fuel divestment
The removal of investment assets, including stocks, bonds, and investment funds, from companies involved in extracting fossil fuels in an attempt to reduce climate change by tackling its ultimate causes.
greenhouse gas
A gas in the atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect, which warms the planet’s surface to a temperature above what it would be without its atmosphere.

 

Global warming and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth’s climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of evidence show that the climate system is warming. Many of the observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over tens to thousands of years.

Global Land-Ocean Temperature Anomaly

Global Land-Ocean Temperature Anomaly. Land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with base period 1951-1980. The solid black line is the global annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year lowess smooth, i.e. a non-parametric regression analysis that relies on a k-nearest-neighbor model. The function is evaluated using a fraction of data corresponding to a ten-year window of data, giving an effective smoothing of approximately five years. The blue uncertainty bars (95% confidence limit) account only for incomplete spatial sampling. The graph shows an overall long-term warming trend.

UNFCCC

Most countries participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based on the premise that (a) global warming exists and (b) human-made CO2 emissions have caused it. The ultimate objective of the Convention is to prevent dangerous human interference of the climate system. As stated in the Convention, this requires that GHG concentrations are stabilized in the atmosphere at a level where ecosystems can adapt naturally to climate change, food production is not threatened, and economic development can proceed in a sustainable fashion. The Framework Convention was agreed in 1992, but since then, global emissions have risen.

 

The current state of global warming politics is frustration over a perceived lack of progress within the UNFCCC, which has existed for 18 years but has been unable to curb global GHG emissions. Todd Stern—the U.S. climate change envoy—has expressed the challenges with the UNFCCC process as follows, “Climate change is not a conventional environmental issue … It implicates virtually every aspect of a state’s economy, so it makes countries nervous about growth and development. This is an economic issue every bit as it is an environmental one.” He went on to explain that the UNFCCC as a multilateral body can be an inefficient system for enacting international policy. Because the framework includes over 190 countries and negotiations are governed by consensus, small groups of countries can often block progress. As a result, some have argued that perhaps the consensus-driven model could be replaced with a majority vote model. However, that would likely drive disagreement at the country level by countries who do not wish to ratify any global agreement that might be governed via majority vote.

Annual GHG emissions by sector, 2010

Annual GHG emissions by sector, 2010. AFOLU stands for “agriculture, forestry, and other land use.” Emissions are given as a percentage share of total emissions measured in carbon dioxide-equivalents, using global warming potentials from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2nd Assessment Report.

The graph shows that 25% of direct emissions can be attributed to electricity and heat; 24% to agriculture, forestry, and other land use; 6.4% to buildings; 14% to transport; 21% to industry; and 9.6% to other energy. It also shows that, of the electricity and heat production, 12% of indirect carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to buildings; 11% can be attributed to industry; and 2.6 can be attributed to other.

 

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty that extends the 1992 UNFCCC. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997, and entered into force on February 16, 2005. There are currently 192 parties to the Protocol. The Protocol is based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities: it puts the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they are historically responsible for the current levels of GHGs in the atmosphere. This is justified on the basis that the developed world’s emissions have contributed most to the accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere, per-capita emissions (i.e., emissions per head of population) were still relatively low in developing countries, and the emissions of developing countries would grow to meet their development needs.

The Protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. A second commitment period was agreed on in 2012, known as the Doha Amendment to the protocol, in which 37 countries have binding targets: Australia, the European Union (and its 28 member states), Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine have stated that they may withdraw from the Protocol or not put into legal force the Amendment with second-round targets. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia have participated in Kyoto’s first round but have not taken on new targets in the second commitment period. Other developed countries without second-round targets are Canada (which withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2012) and the United States (which has not ratified the Protocol). As of July 2016, 66 states have accepted the Doha Amendment, while entry into force requires the acceptance of 144 states. Of the 37 countries with binding commitments, seven have ratified.

 

Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the UNFCCC dealing with GHG emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance to be implemented starting in the year 2020. The language of the agreement was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on December 12, 2015. It was opened for signature on April 22, 2016, (Earth Day) at a ceremony in New York. As of December 2016, 194 UNFCCC members have signed the treaty, 136 of which have ratified it. After several European Union states ratified the agreement in October 2016, enough countries had ratified the agreement that produce enough of the world’s GHGs for it to enter into force. The agreement went into effect on November 4, 2016.

The aim of the convention is described in Article 2. It outlines a goal of “enhancing the implementation” of the UNFCCC via the following means:

  • Holding increases in global average temperatures to below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit these increases to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels
  • Increasing adaptability to the adverse impacts of climate change while fostering climate resilience and low GHG emissions in a manner that does not endanger food production
  • Encouraging finance flows that are consistent with low GHG emissions and climate-resilient development.

The Paris Agreement is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement and has been described as an incentive for and driver of fossil fuel divestment.

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