Abstract
Major reconfigurations of the United Nations climate convention occurred between 2009 and 2015, as countries struggled to define key terms that would bear consequentially on the distribution of responsibility among themselves, as well as their duties to each other. That legalistically framed debate, however, was always situated within and came ultimately to express stark differences in geopolitical power between formally equal negotiating parties. The evolution of the climate convention helps to illustrate how those differences are, in effect, mutually constitutive with the institutionalized socio-spatial and governmental separations of the international system, and climate changing fossil fueled development itself. At the same time, debates that unfolded in the course of that evolution illustrate the necessity of language in political struggle and some of the reasons why law so often supplies such a language.
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Notes
- 1.
Patterson 2011.
- 2.
Goodale and Merry 2007.
- 3.
United Nations 1992. In its entirety, Article 1 states: “The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”
- 4.
- 5.
UNFCCC 1997. The KP, agreed in 1997, entered into force in 2005. It binds “developed” countries (excluding the US) to emissions reduction targets. Among the framework instruments it created is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a system of financial transfers from developed countries to fund energy and economic development projects in developing countries, as a means of meeting developed countries’ obligations. Though the CDM has been considered by some parties to be an important model for future agreements, its efficacy in achieving mitigation or sustainable development in developing countries is much contested. Chapter 4 touches on critiques of the CDM and related exchange-based mechanisms for mitigation in terms of their justice implications and underlying relations. On KP financial instruments, see also Paterson 2011.
- 6.
See, for example, Grubb 2011.
- 7.
See, for instance, Klinsky and Winkler 2014.
- 8.
Derman 2014.
- 9.
Smith 2003.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
This is Steve Gardiner’s concern over the potential of existing institutions to resolve the climate political conundrum. See Gardiner 2011.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
See UNFCCC 2007. The two tracks of the “Bali Road Map” therefore respected the KP’s central commitment to CBDR, while seeking to address the major weaknesses in its structure: laying the groundwork for inclusion of the US and China, the world’s top emitters, as well as other developing countries in a more encompassing international regime.
- 17.
Fisher 2010.
- 18.
- 19.
For example, Khor 2010a.
- 20.
- 21.
For example, Bodansky 2010.
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
Khor 2010a, 11.
- 25.
- 26.
Khor 2010a, 12. Khor offers detailed analysis of the Cancun Agreements as reflecting the protracted debates and political calculations of a bifurcated negotiating landscape where developed and developing countries’ interests are rarely seen to coincide. Paterson 2011 characterizes this dynamic as a determining one in the longer trajectory of the UNFCCC.
- 27.
- 28.
Werksman 2010.
- 29.
Khor 2010a.
- 30.
Werksman 2011.
- 31.
Goldenberg 2010a.
- 32.
As the UNFCCC describes it, “The Umbrella Group is a loose coalition of non-EU developed countries which formed following the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. Although there is no formal list, the Group is usually made up of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the US.” UNFCCC 2014.
- 33.
For example, Anderson and Bows 2011.
- 34.
Kartha and Erickson 2011.
- 35.
Interviewees noted, for instance, that CBDR, as understood in the Kyoto Protocol’s Annexes, is inseparable from the power of the G77 negotiating bloc at the UNFCCC. Indeed, the Least Developed Countries’ alliance with the EU in Durban in 2011 represented the first consequential fracturing of the G77 bloc, considered the main factor in adoption there of the “Durban Platform.” See below.
- 36.
Winkler et al. 2011.
- 37.
See also Friman 2007.
- 38.
- 39.
It bears repeating, however, that the territorial assignment of emissions itself is dependent on specific political economic assumptions. Should gases released through industrial processes, for instance, be counted against the ledger of the country in which those processes occur, those whose citizens’ consumption practices drive those industrial processes, or those where accumulation from production and consumption ultimately focus? See Chap. 1 and Bergmann 2013.
- 40.
Pickering et al. frame their analysis of “fairness in the next global climate agreement” around a quip journalists recorded from a huddle of negotiators during the final wordsmithing hours of Durban’s COP, widely attributed to Todd Stern, that “if equity’s in, we’re out.” See Pickering et al. 2012. In the end, neither equity of CBDR appeared in the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action,” the central document agreed at COP17, which set the direction for the next major phase of the treaty, though the principles are referenced in the Paris Agreement. Gray 2011.
- 41.
Broder 2009.
- 42.
Goldenberg January 14, 2010a.
- 43.
Khor 2010b.
- 44.
Friedman 2012.
- 45.
See Roberts 2012.
- 46.
Sunstein develops a similar argument explaining the differential successes of the Montreal Protocol and UNFCCC in terms of economic impacts. See Sunstein 2007.
- 47.
- 48.
US Department of State 2013.
- 49.
UNEP 2010.
- 50.
Observation at COP16. See, for example, the several webpages of posts by the Climate Action Network tagged with “Gigatonne Gap” since 2010, CAN n.d.
- 51.
- 52.
Climate finance is difficult to quantify, and even to clearly define, but estimates place the $100B commitment made in Copenhagen far below the amount necessary to address developing country infrastructure needs by 2020. World Economic Forum 2013. Over the 2015–2016 period, 81% of climate finance is estimated to have been raised in the same country in which it was spent, rather than transferred internationally, as many justice advocates demand. Climate Policy Initiative 2018.
- 53.
See Werksman 2011.
- 54.
For subaltern legal mobilization as a strategic category, see Santos and Rodriguez-Garavito 2005. “Globalization from Below.”
- 55.
- 56.
See Santos and Rodriguez-Garavito 2005.
- 57.
- 58.
- 59.
The New York Times Magazine 2018.
- 60.
Cf. Routledge 2011.
- 61.
- 62.
Derman 2014.
- 63.
Delaney 2010.
- 64.
- 65.
Delaney 2010.
- 66.
See, for example, Bond 2011.
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Derman, B.B. (2020). Law, Power, and the COPs. In: Struggles for Climate Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27965-3_3
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