Abstract
Chapter 1 presents the thesis that the climate change negotiations run the risk of a ‘horizontal deadlock’ where neither ICs nor DCs feel motivated to take further action on the grounds that the other party would then be perceived as getting a free ride. Further, as the policies are crafted at international level, there is also the risk of vertical standstill if domestic actors do not feel motivated to support internationally decided measures on the various issues. Chapter 2 explained that when a problem is structured, i.e. when there is both consensus between negotiators from different countries and the negotiators represent views that are held within the country, there is less likelihood of horizontal and vertical deadlocks. In such a situation countries may have common or converging interests and it can be presumed that the international treaties will be implemented within the domestic context and that the treaty design can be improved by the ‘realist’ approach to negotiation (9.2). However, if there are conflicting definitions of the problem, the follow-up process may have to be different.
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References
Bodansky (1993: 479; 499) explains: “the North tended to see climate change as an environmental issue, whereas the South saw it as a development issue”. Hence, the FCCC does not include the proposed DC text (Consolidated Working Document in Report of the 4th Session, Preamble, para 16) that improving the international economic order is a prerequisite for DCs to address climate change.
“In fact, the two phenomena — the global environmental crisis and socio-economic decline in the South — are the result of unsustainable systems of production and consumption in the North, inappropriate development models in the South, and a fundamentally inequitable world order. South-North relations are based on gross over-exploitation of, and underpayment for Southern resources and human labour” (Nyerere et al. 1990: 17; see also Khor et al. 1992). “From a third world perspective, the development crisis and the environmental crisis in fact constitute a single social-ecological crisis — the most pressing challenge of our times” (Agarwal et al. 1990: 18).
Interview 128.
Today 40% of humanity lives in poverty and 30% of DC populations (UNEP 1995: 8).
“Poverty and environmental degradation (climate change) are not opposites. Both are part of ‘development’ defined in the conventional sense of unlimited economic growth” (Impact team 1994: 5). “Both poverty and environmental degradation are the result of tendencies inherent in our economic system to externalise environmental and social costs of market transaction — unless adequately checked by social and environmental policies and international agreements” (UNEP 1995: 3). “The only solution to poverty and climate change- which are twin consequences of the reigning economic arrangement — is fundamental restructuring of economic relations between and within countries. The poor are the victims, not the cause of climate change” (Ong’wen 1994: 2).
Interview 1993, 11.
“I hope we don’t follow the path of the North, we can’t. Colonialism is dead, chattel slavery hopefully never will be brought back. One must never forget that the conquest of other people’s lands was an important aspect of the systematic looting of the environment, those were development tools utilised in the past and cannot be utilised now and should not be. .. There must be another way, and all of us have to search, North and South, for that path” (Interview 1993, 9).
There is a realization that a “development strategy designed to imitate the life styles and consumption patterns of affluent industrial societies is clearly inconsistent with our vision for development of the South. It would accentuate inequalities, for it would be possible to secure such high consumption levels for only a small minority of the population in each country. Because it leads to a high level of imports and energy use, it would also cripple the growth process and intensify economic and environmental strains’ (Nyerere et al. 1990: 80). “Another deeper struggle is between those who equate development with money, and those who equate it with empowering people” (Impact 1992a: 1). As Nyerere (1983) explains, DCs need to have a new definition of development. If they define it as ‘catching up with the North’ then they will place ourselves in a dependency mode. He argues that the problem is that resources are limited, the development patterns are based on an extraordinary high use of the earth’s resources, and that the catching up philosophy will imply that basic needs on the one hand will not be met and on the other hand, DCs will remain technologically dependent; in addition DCs will be competing with each other to enter the rich man’s club and to emulate his behaviour, creating perhaps also a fourth world.
For example, colonialism was more costly for the victim than for the coloniser, because the resources gained during colonialism provided the latter enormous wealth. As a Kenyan explained, “In poverty, you sell basics. That is the dilemma. That is the cause of environmental destruction in Kenya. Industrialised countries have also sold their natural resources in the past. That is how they got rich. Now they ask developing countries to avoid doing that. But that is duplicity in the moral sense. They cannot have their cake and eat it too” (Interview 1994–95, 1).
Some of these recommendations are based on ideas published in Gupta et al. 1995a; 1995b and Gupta/Wurff 1996c.
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Gupta, J. (1997). Towards Enhanced Cooperation. In: The Climate Change Convention and Developing Countries: From Conflict to Consensus?. Environment & Policy, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8925-3_10
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