Roshni Sengupta : Assistant Professor, Amity School of Liberal Arts, Amity University Haryana, Gurgaon
Abstract
The preliminary results of an ongoing survey conducted by Yale University and George Mason are perhaps the most pertinent manner in which an argument on politics, essentially domestic political compulsions and climate change and the policies therein, could be constructed. According to the study, most Americans would prefer scientists and not politicians to lead policies and practice towards combating global climate change.1 An entirely valid desire, considering the track record of the political class in finding workable and sustainable solutions to the climate change problem. At the same time, however, the irrevocable truth remains that the exclusion of politics and the political class from life-changing decisions on matters extremely crucial to the survival of nations is a distant possibility, especially since the world has moved far beyond one-party rule and dictatorial regimes (which proliferate in some parts still) to an inclusive structure of democratic governance and politics. As India and China, two developing economic giants with a multiplicity of factors at stake in the global climate change debate, are called upon to pledge their support to a new climate regime and binding targets, it becomes imperative to examine how the developing world, especially the BASIC nations—Brazil, South Africa, India, and China—would balance perilous domestic political issues with their commitments towards mitigating the impacts of a changing climate. Theoretically, for many developing countries climate change is a Northern issue, both because it is the North that is primarily interested in it and because the North created this problem (Paterson and Grubb 1992). However, while the historical responsibility argument continues, the global South is increasingly becoming more interested in climate policy and its implications at the national level. According to the latest report of the IPCC WGIII2, developing countries’ policies and plans account for the larger share of climate action globally compared to developed countries.
Even so, development of basic human services, such as infrastructure, food security, and water, along with the alleviation of poverty remains on top of the agenda for the developing world. A number of developing countries still remain unconvinced that the North, or the Western industrialized world, is keen on taking any concrete steps and see no reason why they should take action as the rest of the world stands by. The feeling of being persecuted and prevented from further economic progress, which compels them to make use of conventional forms of energy pervades the developing world, which is waiting to see if the North makes any substantial commitments towards technology transfer and financial aid. The developing countries, therefore see two primary concepts as key to the entire debate on climate change—fairness and equity.
Issues concerning each nation’s fair share of responsibilities for climate change mitigation now constitute the primary obstacle to an effective climate change policy, highlighting the critical importance of normative analysis of competing claims about the requirements of fairness. Anthropogenic climate change involves highly complex causal chains and is expected to produce consequences that are extraordinarily difficult to forecast, yet perhaps the most confounding aspects of the problem are political rather than scientific (Vanderheiden 2008). Humans have very aptly recognized climate change to involve issues of global justice, since it essentially entails a massive negative environmental externality created by the world’s affluent to be disproportionately borne by those least responsible for it among the poor and future generations. Therefore, all the nations have identified the principles of fairness, as embedded in the UNFCCC, to serve as normative guides to action. While scientists continue to battle the facts surrounding the causes and the consequences of the climate problem, it is up to the political theorists to address the social and political aspects of the issue as climate change challenges existing political institutions, ethical theories, and the manner in which the human relationship with the environment is conceptualized. The ensuing debate defies current principles of distribution, transcends existing discourses on rights, and disrupts the sense of place on which our connections to the world are based. The need of the hour is to think clearly about how best to understand the social and political obstacles to fair and effective global climate policy—the obstacles that are at the heart of the current international climate impasse.
1 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/05/idUS333949079520110705
2 IPCC WGIII. 2014. Summary for Policymakers. Details available on http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf