The Importance of the Climate Change Regime
Author: Mason Evers
I. Introduction
Global climate change is arguably the most critical and defining challenge of this generation. For hundreds of years, anthropogenic processes like industrialization, deforestation, and transportation have pumped carbon gas emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in an enhanced greenhouse effect that has lead to a steady rise in global temperatures. Though the legitimacy of anthropogenic climate change has been debated for decades, the consequences of rising global temperatures are rapidly coming to undeniable fruition, showcasing the nascent effects and threats of this phenomenon. Recognizing this, the international community has spent the past quarter century working towards formulating an ambitious and comprehensive multilateral agreement that would be able to bring the world together to address this existential issue. The result was the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Hailed as a historic breakthrough, the Agreement achieved a global consensus from 195 countries to declare their commitment to alleviating the rise of global temperatures and to working together to mitigate the consequential international security threats of climate change. However, unlike the Montreal Protocol, the Paris Climate Change Agreement is inherently flawed in ways that could potentially stand in the way of progress, and given the current state of global warming and its ensuing international security implications I will demonstrate why it is important for the climate change regime — especially the United States in light of recent developments — to uphold the Paris Agreement and to acknowledge rising temperatures as an urgent and significant issue that needs to be addressed immediately and collectively.
I. The Example of the Montreal Protocol
The anthropogenic role in environmental change first came to an initial, frantic realization within the international community during the mid-1970s, when it was discovered that industrial chemicals, specifically chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), were depleting the ozone layer that protects the health and environment of the earth and its inhabitants. The consequences of ozone depletion would be drastic: increased skin cancer, potential genetic mutations, crop damage, and the possibility of changes to the world’s climate. Over the next decade, the threat of ozone depletion called to action scientists and policymakers from around the world to further understand and address this issue, culminating in the 1987 Montreal Protocol.
The United Nations Secretary General at the time, Kofi Annan, stated that the Montreal Protocol was “the single most successful international environmental agreement to date”, achieving “universal participation” and the phase-out of nearly 100% of the ozone-depleting chemicals from production and consumption.[1] However, it is important to note that the unparalleled success of the Montreal Protocol is attributed to several factors. First and foremost, upon the discovery of a connection between human industrial processes and ozone depletion, there was a rapid mobilization of scientific and political will that was necessary to address this alarming phenomenon. Secondly, if it were not for the crucial support of important industrial groups like the DuPont Company, which produced approximately a quarter of the world’s CFCs, any limits on the production and use of ozone-depleting substances would have been weak and undermined.[2] Lastly, the Protocol itself has built-in provisions and mechanisms that helped facilitate its international prominence: it includes an “Adjustment” provision that allows the controls of ozone-depleting substances to be adapted to new scientific findings without needing to go through national ratification, thereby bypassing the years of delays that come out of such processes; it clearly enumerates for the ratifying parties which substances are under control; it allows states to be flexible in how they achieve their reduction targets; it grants developing nations a “grace period” and assists them in their implementation of reduction targets through the 1990 Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol; and it establishes “a reasonable plan for bringing a Party back into compliance”[3] if it fails to comply. The long-term success of the Montreal Protocol is an example to the international climate change regime of how the international community can successfully come together across multiple platforms to address an endangering environmental issue, and it serves as a benchmark model for an effective way to address the issue of rising global temperatures.
II. Current Effects of Global Climate Change
Today, similar to the issue of ozone depletion, the international community is faced with the multifaceted issue of climate change, an issue that poses an existential threat to the global order. In order to understand why, it is necessary to look at the current state of global climate change. Human processes like industrialization, deforestation, advanced transportation, and the reliance on fossil-fuels for energy have caused global temperatures to steadily increase since the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, yet the impact has only recently become more and more evident. The burning of fossil fuels, specifically in regards to advanced transportation methods and industrial manufacturing practices, is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, while deforestation is the second biggest source.[4] Beyond the direct impact that the anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels has on pumping carbon into the atmosphere, the burning and clearing of forests significantly reduce one of the Earth’s two essential carbon sponges, which simultaneously releases thousands of tons of stored carbon into the atmosphere. It should come as no surprise then that over time these processes have resulted in an increase in global temperatures that are “approximately 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” as stated by the World Meteorological Organization in its announcement that preliminary data shows that 2016 will be “the hottest year on record, with global temperatures even higher than the record-breaking temperatures in 2015.”[5] In fact, 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have occurred during the 21st century alone, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2015 Global Temperature Analysis.[6]
The environmental implications of rising temperatures have sounded alarms throughout the international community as its effects are rapidly emerging around the world. Currently, ice sheets in Greenland, the Arctic, and Antarctica are experiencing rapid melting rates alongside slower recovery rates, causing sea levels to rise more quickly. The east coast and the gulf coast of the United States are experiencing an increase in high tide flooding, commonly known as sunny-day flooding, along coastal streets, towns, and neighborhoods, consequently placing financial burdens on these regions to meet and adapt to this challenge.[7] West Africa, specifically the coasts of Togo, Ghana, and Mauritania, are being swallowed up by the ocean as rising sea levels and industrial activities have accelerated coastal erosion, forcing people to resettle farther inland.[8] Also, oceanic temperature stresses have resulted in almost three sequential years of thousands of miles of coral reefs, thereby threatening the ecosystems that marine species rely on and the fish stocks that feed more than one billion people.[9] Furthermore, many small island nations around the world are directly vulnerable to rising sea levels, as nations like Kiribati lie no higher than six feet above sea level.[10] Within North Africa, the Middle East, and Western Asia, heat waves and droughts have become much more frequent and intense, causing higher rates of dehydration and disease while also threatening the region’s agricultural yields and water supplies. These scenarios around the world are only the beginning of what is to come if this issue is not addressed effectively through the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the Climate Change Regime.
III. International Security Implications of Climate Change
In order to understand the urgency behind the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the importance of addressing global climate change, there has to be an evaluation of the international security threat that rising temperatures pose to the global order. The Department of Defense released a report[11] in July of 2015 that in part examined the issue’s international security implications, and underscores the importance of immediate and ambitious action. Climate change, as previously mentioned, will lead to higher rates of flooding from rising sea levels, drought, and higher temperatures, as well as more frequent and more severe extreme weather events.[12] Flooding from rising sea levels threatens more people than any other natural hazard since many densely populated regions lie along coasts, while some Pacific island nations face the risk of being entirely submerged by rising seas in the future. Droughts and higher temperatures will place pressure on agriculture yields as water scarcity, shorter growing seasons, and more crop pests may threaten food security in some regions.[13] Not only that, but with lower agricultural yields, prices will increase around the globe for commodities, resulting in higher rates of undernutrition or malnutrition and political and societal destabilization. Freshwater supplies are threatened by droughts, heat waves, and salinization along the coasts, and some regions could see the resource becoming scarce. The Department of Defense, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has assessed that “climate change will have the greatest impact on areas and environments already prone to instability, and views climate change as a threat multiplier.”[14]
Their assessment continues by describing how the issue is a source of insecurity and conflict, stating that “climate change will exacerbate existing economic, social, and environmental vulnerabilities, while conditions of drought, disease, and economic stagnation may tip states toward systemic breakdowns.” For example, a severe multi-year drought-plagued Syria from 2006 to 2011, contributing to massive agriculture failures, water shortages, and large movements of rural dwellers to Syrian city centers. This sudden rise in the urban populations “effectively overwhelmed institutional capacity to respond constructively to the changing service demands”,[15] and together these factors played a huge role in developing the permissive conditions that influenced the conflict in Syria that is still devastating the region today. It is clear that many governments, especially those situated on the front lines of climate change, do not have “the infrastructure or the civil and military might to implement adaptive mechanisms”[16] that address the debilitating consequences of climate change.
Resource competition for limited and scarce resources will only heighten the possibilities of conflict in and between these unstable, fragile states, which will then, in turn, affect the states’ economic and military partners. Human displacement and intra and inter-state migration will become much more prevalent and routine as a result of climate change and climate change-related conflicts. The World Meteorological Organization said in its statement on the status of global climate change that “population migration is expected to increase as a result of more frequent and potentially more intense weather-related disasters, competition and conflict over shrinking resources, and rising sea levels rendering coastal and low-lying zones uninhabitable.”[17] For example, Major General Muniruzzaman, President of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies, argued at the 2012 NCSE “Environment and Security” Conference that a sea level rise of just one meter would mean a “territorial loss of twenty-percent, creating a refugee population of 35–40 million people and a consequent destabilization of borders, resulting in a cascading level of violence.”[18] This issue is a transnational, existential threat that entails many financial, economic, and security burdens, and it is clear that there are more than enough compelling reasons as to why it was imperative that the Paris Climate Change Agreement be developed and implemented as soon as possible.
IV. The Paris Climate Change Agreement
The backbone purpose of the Paris Climate Change Agreement (otherwise known as the Agreement for the duration of the section) is the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”[19] In a lot of ways, the Agreement addresses many crucial areas necessary to combat climate change. The Agreement makes a commitment to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below [two degrees Celsius] above pre-industrial levels”[20] and to promote efforts that limit the temperature increase even further to one and a half degrees Celsius. The Agreement specifically states that this would “significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”. The hope behind this goal is that keeping it below this threshold would forestall some of the more severe effects of rising temperatures. In order to do this, the Agreement proposes that Parties (state signatories to the Agreement) peak their greenhouse gas emissions “as soon as possible.”[21] Furthermore, the Agreement promotes “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” while encouraging the “conservation [and] sustainable management of forests.”[22] This provision is important as it gives provisional recognition to the role forests have in pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Conservation is extended further to include “sinks and reservoirs”[23] of greenhouse gases — oceans, soil, plants — which would help prevent such strong sources for emissions from being released.
In regards to direct mitigation of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, the Agreement establishes “binding commitments by all Parties to prepare, communicate, and maintain a nationally determined contribution (NDC).”[24] These are domestic reduction measures that Parties will work to implement into their domestic economies. For purposes of collective transparency and continued Party participation, Parties will communicate a more ambitious NDC successor every five years. On top of that, developed country Parties are called to take the lead in “mobilizing climate finance”[25] so as to assist the adaptation and sustainability measures of developing country Parties. Developing countries do not have the infrastructure or capabilities to adequately achieve such measures alone, so it “reaffirms the obligations of developed countries to [financially support their efforts] to build clean, climate-resilient futures.”[26] Therefore, the Agreement established the Green Climate Fund to serve and fulfill this goal. In order to strengthen these provisions and augment the effectiveness of the Agreement’s implementation, the Agreement achieved the establishment of “an enhanced transparency framework.”[27] The framework is a single system means to measure, report, and verify the carbon reductions of the Parties, and represents the means for holding states accountable to their NDCs.
However, despite the clear existential and global threat that climate change poses the international community as well as the historic accomplishment of the Agreement itself, the anarchic nature of the international system presents difficult challenges to the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Due to the sovereign nature of states and an international governing body based on voluntary cooperation, it is difficult to hold non-Party states and Parties themselves to the provisions of the Agreement. Ratifying the Agreement — which signifies the Parties’ commitment to abiding by the provisions set forth within it — is voluntary. It is important to note though that 147 out of 195 signatories have ratified it.[28] However, as was seen on June 1, 2017, remaining a part of the Agreement after ratification is also voluntary. The United States exhibited that when it announced that it would withdraw from the Agreement in 2020. Moreover, the recommendation that states peak their emissions as soon as possible is just that, a recommendation. The funding and emission targets are not legally binding and the enforcement and penalty mechanisms that can ensure that commitments are met are essentially nonexistent, an aspect that was strategically decided so as to “ensure that a deal could be reached and that it would not require congressional approval in the United States.”[29] Therefore, any financial obligations set forth through the support of Green Climate Fund are basically voluntary, and could be stopped if the Party decided it was in its best interest. However, none of this means that the Parties are not going to abide by the provisions in the Agreement and collectively work together to address climate change. It just means that if said Parties no longer want to participate in the Agreement, or that if they fall short of their commitments, then there are no legal ramifications or enforcement mechanisms to prevent this. Hopefully, the threat of climate change alone will encourage compliance.
Regardless of these inherent weaknesses, there is a fear that the Agreement will be “insufficient to keep the temperature change below the two-degree goal.”[30] Experts estimate that the current NDCs and policies would “result in an increase [in temperatures] between 2.7 degrees Celsius and 3.9 degrees Celsius”[31] by the end of the century. For that reason, the Parties need to remain committed to meeting their NDCs and developing more ambitious successors. Also, the international community is limited by the agendas of the states that are more influential and consequential to climate change — the United States and China.[32] China is the world’s biggest contributor, contributing about 28% of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, with the US falling in second with around 17% of the greenhouse gas emissions.[33] So, even if every single state decided to participate and abide by the Agreement’s provisions, there cannot be significant progress without the committed participation of both China and the US. And if China and the US do not comply, then that significantly erodes the strength, legitimacy, and effectiveness of the Agreement. Therefore, their leadership in addressing climate change and mitigating the effects of rising temperatures is indispensable to upholding the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
V. Conclusion
Climate change is the most critical and urgent issue that the international community faces today. The environmental, social, economic, and security implications of it will be widespread and detrimental, with the evidence supporting this claim being inexhaustibly undeniable. The Paris Climate Change Agreement did something that no other multilateral agreement has been able to do: achieve the consensus of 195 countries to declare that they are committed to addressing climate change. This international consensus on such a complex and nuanced issue makes its precedence and influence moving forward that much more important. However, the inherent weaknesses of the Agreement pose their own threats to the ability of the regime to make significant progress in diminishing the foretold consequences of rising temperatures and keeping the rise below two degrees Celsius. Therefore, in order to properly address climate change, it is essential that developed nations take a leading role in supporting adaptation and sustainability around the world; that the United States and China recognize and uphold their role in augmenting climate change and their role in potentially leading the climate change regime; and that the international community use the undeniable security implications of rising global temperatures to emphasize the urgency behind the Paris Climate Change Agreement and to collectively work towards its participation, implementation, and observance.
Citations
[1] Benedick, Richard Elliot. “Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer.” United Nations Environment Programme. International Negotiation, 2012. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] “Deforestation in the Amazon.” Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2016.
[5] “Provisional WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2016.” World Meteorological Organization. N.p., 15 Nov. 2016. Web. 25 Nov. 2016.
[6] Sanchez-Lugo. “Global Analysis — Annual 2015.” Global Analysis — Annual 2015 | State of the Climate | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2016.
[7] Gillis, Justin. “Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Sept. 2016. Web. 25 Nov. 2016.
[8] Fagotto, Matteo. “West Africa Is Being Swallowed by the Sea.” Foreign Policy. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2016.
[9] Innis, Michelle. “Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Apr. 2016. Web. 25 Nov. 2016.
[10] Ives, Mike. “A Remote Pacific Nation, Threatened by Rising Seas.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 July 2016. Web. 25 Nov. 2016.
[11] National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate. Rep. Department of Defense, 23 July 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] Marzec, Robert P. “Introduction.” Militarizing the Environment: Climate Change and the Security State. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2015.
[17] supra note 5
[18] Marzec, supra note 16
[19] United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “Introduction to the Convention.” Introduction to the Convention. United Nations, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.
[20] Davenport, Coral, Justin Gillis, Sewell Chan, and Melissa Eddy. “Inside the Paris Climate Deal.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 Dec. 2015. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.
[21] “UNFCCC EHandbook.” UNFCCC EHandbook — Startpage. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.
[22] Davenport, supra note 20
[23] supra note 21
[24] supra note 21
[25] Davenport, supra note 20
[26] supra note 21
[27] Davenport, supra note 20
[28] supra note 19
[29] “The Global Climate Change Regime.” Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.
[30] Id.
[31] Id.
[32] “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data.” EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.
[33] Id.
