Course info

EnvStud 722 – Global Greenhouse Regime

Content:

As the 1992 Rio UNCED ('the Earth Summit') made clear, the interrelated issues of the environment and development, and the search for sustainable development, are among the most urgent problems on the international political agenda. The global community must now face directly the problem of accommodating in the twenty-first century a likely doubling of population and a fivefold economic growth without destroying its global life support system. A key problem to be resolved is the limitation of the build-up of the greenhouse gases with their potential for altering global climate patterns. The needed greenhouse gas regime will require a contract between rich and poor nations, and will only follow arduous negotiations. A central issue in these negotiations will be the allocation of costs.

Course Lecturer: Gerhard Berchtold, PhD

ECTS credits: 6

Coursebook:

The Global Greenhouse Regime • Who Pays?

Edited by Peter Hayes and Kirk Smith

United NationsUniversity Press
Tokyo • NEW YORK • PARIS

Earthscan Publications Ltd. London

Science, economics and North-South politics in the Climate Change Convention

First published in 1993 by
Earthscan Publications Limited
120 Pentonville Road, LondonN1 9JN, and

United Nations University Press
The United Nations University
53-70 Jingumae 5-chome, Shibuya-ku
Tokyo 150, Japan
© The United Nations University, 1993

The United Nations University Press has exclusive rights to distribute in Japan and South-East Asia.

Earthscan Publications Limited has exclusive rights to distribute throughout the rest of the world.

All rights reserved
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 185383136 0

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd. Guildford and King's Lynn

Earthscan Publications Limited is an editorially independent subsidiary of Kogan Page Limited and publishes in association with the International Institute for Environment and Development and the World Wide Fund for Nature.

United Nations University Press is the publishing division of the UnitedNations
University

ISBN (United NationsUniversity Press): 92-808-0836-2

After the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, a central issue in the Climate Change Convention relates to the amounts and sources of the greenhouse gases emitted from the various countries and regions, both industrialized and developing, and their relation to international governance. To date, the lack of agreed principles has stalled agreement as to what concrete and practical steps should be taken to meet the needs for stabilizing climate change.

The present book is the outcome of the UNU international collaborative research carried out under the Human and Policy Dimensions of Global Change programme. It is aimed at presenting the state of the art in greenhouse indices, and related international policy making and governance, clarifying key technical issues relating to greenhouse gas emissions, and outlining the economic responsibilities of various countries based on the emissions. It makes an argument for the necessary North-South resource transfers.

A unique contribution of this book is its proposed composite index to determine who should pay for creating a global greenhouse gas regime, an index that incorporates both ability to pay - that is, economic realism - and historical contribution to climate change - that is, equity based on the polluter pays principle.

This, however, is only one of the contributions of the book to environmental diplomacy debates, which inevitably involve issues of science and technology, politics and economics, and, not the least, ethics. Environmental diplomacy must therefore be based on comprehensive interdisciplinary viewpoints as illustrated in this work. It must also be sensitive to varying regional approaches and views, as also reflected in this work, itself the product of a global network of scholars drawn from Australia, North America, India, Africa, South America, the PacificIslands, and Europe.

This is a timely, important book. It deserves to be read by a wide audience of policy makers, academics and a public interested in the future of the earth.