Equity and the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement 9783534401956, 9783534401970, 9783534401963

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Content
List of figures
Introduction
1. Climate change as a moral problem
1.1 Why is climate change morally relevant?
1.2 Who is the main addressee for solving the problem of climate change?
1.3 Basic rights in the context of climate change
1.3.1 Subsistence rights
1.3.2 States as the main addressees for protecting subsistence rights
1.3.3 Are all states morally responsible to the same degree?
1.4 Relevant moral principles
1.4.1 The Contributor Pays Principle
1.4.2 The Beneficiary Pays Principle
1.4.3 The Ability to Pay Principle
1.4.4 Historic responsibility
1.4.5 Harm avoidance
1.4.6 Combining the principles
1.4.7 Does historic responsibility matter?
1.4.8 Are the moral principles still relevant?
2. Equity and the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement
2.1 Description of the UN-process
2.1.1 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
2.1.2 Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities
2.1.3 The Kyoto Protocol
2.1.4 The Global Stocktake
2.1.5 The GST's relevance in the context of international policy and addressing climate change
2.2 Equity and the GST
2.2.1 The grouping under the UNFCCC
2.2.2 The necessity of clustering countries
2.2.3 Generic grouping
2.2.4 The threshold for the Contributor Pays Principle
2.2.5 The threshold for the Beneficiary Pays Principle
2.2.6 The threshold for the Ability to Pay Principle
2.2.7 The different groups
3. The Global Stocktake
3.1 How could the ideal GST be designed?
3.1.1 Duties and relationships
3.1.2 An ideal Global Stocktake
3.2 Practical problems
3.2.1 Special problems
3.2.2 General problems
3.2.3 UNFCCC's reaction
3.3 Possible solutions
Conclusion
List of literature
Back Cover

Citation preview

Friederike Asche

Equity and the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement

Diese Arbeit wurde an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum als Masterarbeit eingereicht und mit der Höchstnote bewertet. Auf Empfehlung von Frau Prof. Dr. Corinna Mieth und Herrn Prof. Dr. Klaus Steigleder wurde die Arbeit in das Programm von wbg Young Academic aufgenommen.

„Friederike Asche beschreibt die schädigenden Auswirkungen des Klimawandels als hochkomplexes moralisches Problem. Der Beitrag von Frau Asche sollte anderen ForscherInnen schnellstmöglich zugänglich gemacht werden.“ Corinna Mieth

„Friederike Asches Arbeit zählt zu den besten Masterarbeiten, die ich jemals gelesen habe.“ Klaus Steigleder

Friederike Asche

Equity and the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnd.d-nb.de abrufbar

wbg Young Academic ist ein Imprint der wbg © 2019 by wbg (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), Darmstadt Die Herausgabe des Werkes wurde durch die Vereinsmitglieder der wbg ermöglicht. Satz und eBook: Satzweiss.com Print, Web, Software GmbH Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Papier Printed in Germany Besuchen Sie uns im Internet: www.wbg-wissenverbindet.de ISBN 978-3-534-40195-6 Elektronisch sind folgende Ausgaben erhältlich: eBook (PDF): 978-3-534-40197-0 eBook (epub): 978-3-534-40196-3

Acknowledgments This thesis was written in the context of the Wuppertal Institute’s Global Stocktake (GST) – Design project (No. 251398). Many thanks to the project partners from the Wuppertal Institute, the ÖkoInstitute e.V., and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and especially to Dr. Louise Jeffery and Lukas Hermwille, for their guidance and feedback. I also want to thank Prof. Dr. Klaus Steigleder for his outstanding support during this process.

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Content Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. 5  Content................................................................................................................. 6  List of figures ....................................................................................................... 8  Introduction ........................................................................................................ 9  1.  Climate change as a moral problem......................................................... 12  1.1   Why is climate change morally relevant? ....................................... 12  1.2   Who is the main addressee for solving the problem of climate change? .............................................................................. 16  1.3   Basic rights in the context of climate change ................................. 19  1.3.1   Subsistence rights .................................................................. 19  1.3.2   States as the main addressees for protecting subsistence rights ................................................................... 26  1.3.3   Are all states morally responsible to the same degree? .... 29  1.4   Relevant moral principles ................................................................. 32  1.4.1   The Contributor Pays Principle .......................................... 32  1.4.2   The Beneficiary Pays Principle ............................................ 33  1.4.3   The Ability to Pay Principle ................................................. 35  1.4.4   Historic responsibility........................................................... 35  1.4.5   Harm avoidance..................................................................... 37  1.4.6   Combining the principles..................................................... 46  1.4.7   Does historic responsibility matter? ................................... 49  1.4.8   Are the moral principles still relevant? ............................... 51  2.   Equity and the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement .............. 53  2.1   Description of the UN-process ........................................................ 53 

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2.1.1   United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ...................................................................... 53  2.1.2   Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities ....................................................................... 54  2.1.3   The Kyoto Protocol................................................................ 56  2.1.4   The Global Stocktake............................................................. 62  2.1.5   The GST’s relevance in the context of international policy and addressing climate change ................................. 65  2.2   Equity and the GST ............................................................................ 67  2.2.1   The grouping under the UNFCCC...................................... 67  2.2.2   The necessity of clustering countries .................................. 69  2.2.3   Generic grouping ................................................................... 73  2.2.4   The threshold for the Contributor Pays Principle ............ 74  2.2.5   The threshold for the Beneficiary Pays Principle .............. 80  2.2.6   The threshold for the Ability to Pay Principle ................... 85  2.2.7   The different groups .............................................................. 86  3.   The Global Stocktake .................................................................................. 97  3.1   How could the ideal GST be designed? ........................................... 97  3.1.1   Duties and relationships ....................................................... 97  3.1.2   An ideal Global Stocktake ................................................... 100  3.2   Practical problems ............................................................................ 102  3.2.1   Special problems .................................................................. 102  3.2.2   General problems ................................................................. 103  3.2.2.1  Non-compliance ...................................................... 103  3.2.2.2  Free-riding ................................................................ 105  3.2.3   UNFCCC’s reaction ............................................................. 106  3.3   Possible solutions ............................................................................. 110  3.3.1   The role of non-state actors ................................................ 111  Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 115  List of literature ............................................................................................... 119

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List of figures Figure 1: Global Kyoto GHG emissions per capita between 1980 and 2015 in tonnes per person (graphic made by the author)..................... 78 Figure 2: Kyoto GHG emissions per capita between 1980 and 2015 of the USA, China, and Kenya compared to the global emissions (graphic made by the author) ........................................................................... 79 Figure 3: Comparing causal responsibility to human development in the USA, China, and Kenya (graphic made by the author) ..................... 81 Figure 4: China’s causal responsibility in relation to its HDI in 2001, 2008, and 2015 (graphic made by the author) ............................................... 82 Figure 5: Causal responsibility in relation to the HDI for the whole selection of countries (graphic made by the author) .................................... 83 Figure 6: Bhutan’s causal responsibility (graphic made by the author) ......... 89 Figure 7: Fiji’s and Jamaica’s causal responsibility (graphic made by the author) ........................................................................... 91 Figure 8: The different groups of countries based on the Contributor Pays Principle, the Beneficiary Pays Principle, and the Ability to Pay Principle (graphic made by the author) .................................................. 93 Figure 9: Overview of the states’ different groups and their INDCs (graphic made by the author) ........................................................................... 96

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Introduction While writing this thesis Europe experienced one of the hottest summers since the beginning of weather prediction. Germany, for example, experienced temperatures up to 40 degrees Celsius. As a result, forest fires occurred, farmers were unable to feed their cattle due to crop failures, and lakes and other waters became too warm for there-living fish, that, consequently, died. This is not usual for a Western European country. Of course, weather is not equal to climate. But slowly but steady extreme weather events occur regularly also in our degree of latitude. Summers like the one in 2018 are a sign that the climate changes, and that these changes will have severe consequences for people if we do not find solutions.1 This is known not just since the summer of 2018. Scientists have warned of dangerous climate change since the 1970s, and in 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the first comprehensive international climate treaty to prevent dangerous consequences from climate change, was established. Nevertheless, efficient solutions are rare so far. Indeed, with upcoming populist movements in the EU, the US president Donald Trump, who focuses on protectionism and a strong economy, and potentially undemocratic political leaders, such as the Turkish president Recep Erdogan or the Russian president Wladimir Putin, climate change scepticism and the relativization of its severeness are on the rise.

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See for example: Alissa J. Rubin, ‘Scorching Summer in Europe Signals Long-Term Climate Changes’, The New York Times, 7 August 2018, sec. World, https://www.nytimes. com/2018/08/04/world/europe/europe-heat-wave.html; Stefan Schmitt, ‘Zukunft Im Schwitzkasten. Der Heiße Sommer Führt Uns Die Folgen Des Klimawandels Vor Augen’, ZEIT ONLINE, 1 August 2018, https://www.zeit.de/2018/32/klimawandel-globaleerwaermung-hochsommer-duerre-wetter/komplettansicht.

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Therefore, it is very important for the rest of the global community to prioritize the work on adequate and fast solutions for tackling anthropogenic climate change. One of the many challenges in this context is that climate change is not only an environmental problem that could simply be solved by finding respective scientific solutions. It is, first of all, also an ethical problem. With the begin of the Industrial Revolution around 1800 some countries started to produce more emissions than other countries. On the one hand, this excessive greenhouse gas production was and is directly linked to economic growth and prosperity. Therefore, it provides benefits for the respective countries. On the other hand, it also resulted in climate change and its harmful consequences for the whole global community. Furthermore, the first nations that will, and already do, suffer from a changing climate are those nations that have not developed into affluent states by emission productions. The claim that industrialised countries should, as a result, deal with the problem of climate change on their own, could be rejected by the fact that some emerging economies, such as China, are now or will become one of the largest greenhouse gas producers. This imbalance in causal responsibility for climate change and received benefits and damages from emitting greenhouse gases leads to challenging questions. Who should bear the burdens of tackling climate change, and how could an effective solution be implemented that is also morally adequate?2 With the ratification of the Paris Agreement in 2015 a promising attempt has been established to solve these challenges. Although the USA later declared 2

Note that there lately evolved some discussion around the appropriateness of the terms “developing” and “developed countries”. (see for example: Tariq Khokhar, ‘Should We Continue to Use the Term “Developing World”?’, The World Bank | The Data Blog, 16 November 2015, https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/should-we-continue-useterm-developing-world.) Those two categories could easily be understood in that sense that they entail judgements about the status of a country. Of course, I do not want to imply that some countries are subordinate to others because of the status of their economic development. I am using these terms because I am also referring to a right to development. Therefore, I want to differentiate between states that own such a right but have not exercised it (developing countries) and others that used this right in the past in a way that now leads to severe harm (developed or industrialised countries). Although I know that these terms are problematic I use them because I consider this classification as useful for following my argumentation.

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their intention to withdraw from this climate treaty, it attracted nearly universal participation and provides several innovative mechanisms in order to increase ambition and tackling the global challenge of climate change jointly. One of such mechanisms is the Global Stocktake (GST), defined in article 14 of the Paris Agreement. It provides the Parties to the agreement for giving account on their progress and efforts to reaching the overall goals of the Paris Agreement every five years. In this context, two demands complicate the negotiations on the design of the GST. Assessment in the context of the GST should be executed not only collectively but also with respect to equity. Finding a consensus on how the GST should be designed, consequently, constitutes a demanding task. At the same time, the GST offers a chance for the global community to develop a strong and effective mechanism that will increase the Parties’ ambitions and will contribute decisively to the necessary process of fulfilling the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. The main question of this thesis is, how the Global Stocktake could be designed in an equitable manner. Therefore, it is important to first consider the questions why climate change constitutes a moral problem and which moral responsibilities arise for different actors. I will deal with these topics in the first chapter by focussing on the theories of Henry Shue and Simon Caney. In the second chapter I will transfer these moral findings into the practical context of international climate policies and the Paris Agreement. I will suggest that groups of countries could be built based on moral parameters, and I will give a simplified example on how this could be realised. Finally, the third chapter will provide a proposal on how the Global Stocktake could be designed accordingly. Therefore, I will elaborate on how an, in terms of equity, ideal GST could be designed, which problems arise, and how they could be solved. My results will be summed up in the conclusion at the end of this thesis.

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1. Climate change as a moral problem 1.1

Why is climate change morally relevant?

On the one hand, climate change constitutes an obvious moral problem. Today there is near consensus among scientists that climate change exists, that it is human caused, and that it will lead to severe harm among human beings and biosystems. Some of this harm already occurs today. The changing climate and biosystems lead to species extinctions, the polar ice melts with the result of sea level risings, extreme weather events like hurricanes, droughts or extreme precipitations, become more likely.3 This has consequences not only for flora and fauna, but also for human beings, especially those who live near the sea, in already very hot areas or are dependent on agriculture. As a matter of principle, human suffering constitutes a moral problem. Moral agents are not only obligated to refrain from harmful actions, except from cases of self-defence for example. Also, when a moral agent notices that another person suffers, he or she is also morally obligated to help him or her, presupposed the respective moral agent is able to help at no comparable costs. 4 Consequently, since climate change makes people suffer, it 3

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Cf., ‘Die Folgen Des Klimawandels (Ökosystem Erde)’, accessed 11 August 2018, http://www.oekosystem-erde.de/html/klimawandel-02.html (11 August 2018). I will not discuss the viewpoint that human caused climate change does not exist. By now there is enough evidence for an anthropogenic climate change for presupposing this premise. Cf., Klaus Steigleder, ‘Deontologische Theorien Der Verantwortung’, in Handbuch Verantwortung, ed. L. Heidbrink, C. Langbehn, and J. Loh, Springer Reference Sozialwissenschaften (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2017), p. 6.

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seems obvious that those people must receive help for moral reasons. Furthermore, it seems very clear that those who caused climate change benefitted to a high degree from it by developing into wealthy nations and are at the same time least vulnerable to climate change. In other words, climate change harms those nations that did not contribute to it and that did not benefit from it, which makes the moral problem even more severe.5 On the other hand, climate change constitutes a very difficult and complex moral problem. Firstly, climate change is a tragedy of the commons.6 It is caused by aggregated actions, so that there are no clearly identifiable individuals who are responsible for the current situation, which makes it again difficult to identify which agents are obligated to take actions. To react adequately to climate change, collective action is needed. Separated individual actions make no difference for the climate. Whether one single person lives a sustainable life or not has no consequences on the process of climate change. Only aggregated actions will lead to noticeable effects. This raises the very challenging moral question of how to allocate responsibilities among individuals when the actual actions of each of these individuals have no effect. Secondly, climate change will most of all harm future generations. Rights of future generations are complicated to establish. Difficulties for example are that 5

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See for example: Achala Abeysinghe and Saleemul Huq, ‘Climate Jusitce for LDCs through Global Decisions’, in Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World, ed. Clare Heyward and Dominic Roser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 189–207; Darrel Moellendorf, ‘Climate Change and Global Justice’, WIREs Clim Change 3 (2012): 131–43; Eric Neumayer, ‘In Defense of Historical Accountability for Greenhouse Gas Emissions’, Ecological Economics 33, no. 2 (2000): 185–92; Jouni Paavola and W. Neil Adger, ‘Justice and Adaptation to Climate Change’, Technical Report (Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, October 2002), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 228813871/download; Charles Kolstad et al., ‘Social, Economic and Ethical Concepts and Methods’, in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. O. Edenhofer et al. (Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Cf., Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, New Series 162, no. 3859 (1968): 1243–48, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1724745.

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these persons do not exist yet, and non-existent persons have no rights. Further, our actions today will influence which persons will exist in the future. Continuing with business as usual will result in the future generation A, while introducing mitigation policies will lead to the future generation B. A and B consist of different individual persons. Therefore, A cannot demand that the current generations introduces mitigation policies because then B will come into existence. So, future people cannot have claims against current people to act in a different way because it would lead to the absurdity that if the demands by supposedly future people were fulfilled, they would not come into existence. This is called the Non-Identity problem.7 I will not discuss the Non-Identity problem in detail in this thesis. Today climate change already causes sufficient harm, most of all in developing countries. This is enough to establish effective moral responsibilities. Acting on these responsibilities will then also benefit people living in the future and will fulfil potential rights of these future generations. The third complexity is the argumentation that since climate change is the result of emitting greenhouse gases which again is connected to economic development, as most economic and energy systems are fossil fuel dependent, there seems to be a conflict between the right to development of people living in poor nations and the duty or necessity to act on climate change.8 This thesis focusses on possible solutions to the first and the third problem. Considering climate change as a tragedy of the commons has two deficiencies. Firstly, it takes the wrong perspective. Arguing that no one is responsible and able to act on a moral problem does not delete the moral problem as such. Furthermore, in a more and more globalising world it is simply not true that there are no moral agents who are responsible. For individuals it becomes easier to understand complex global processes and to take actions that influence these processes. By 7

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See for example: Derek Parfit, ‘Future People, the Non-Identity Problem, and PersonAffecting Principles’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 45, no. 2 (n.d.): 118–57, https://doi. org/10.1111/papa.12088. ‘UN General Assembly Declaration on the Right to Development (A/RES/128)’ (1986); For an approach distinguishing between development rights and mitigation duties, see: Eric A. Posner and David Weisbach, Climate Change Justice (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010).

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now there are entities, for example corporations, states, or Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), that act on a global level. Therefore, in theory it should be possible that there are entities that could and should act on climate change.9 The second problem, the conflict between a right to development and a duty to act on climate change, also has a deciding flaw. This conflict establishes a wrong dichotomy. The two global problems of extreme poverty, and by that a right to development, and climate change are interdependent. To decide between those moral concepts is not an option. Both are the result of unfair global structures, a deficient relationship between different nations, and inefficient global institutions. In order to ensure a liveable future for all human-beings, both problems need to be solved under one inclusive approach.10 In this chapter I will analyse these aspects in more detail. What has become clear so far is that climate change is caused by humans and leads to severe harms for other human beings. By that it constitutes a moral problem. Since there arise some challenges, it is nevertheless not a priory clear who is the bearer of the moral responsibility to solve this problem. I pointed out that there are agents acting on a global level that are possible candidates to solve global problems like climate change. In this chapter I will establish an account that offers solutions for the mentioned challenges, focussing on states as the main addressees for the moral responsibility for climate change.

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Cf., Simon Caney, ‘Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change’, Leiden Journal of International Law, December 2005, 747–75, https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0922156505002992, p. 754/755. See for example: Simon Caney, ‘Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing Burdens’, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 2014; Lukas Hermwille, ‘Climate Change as a Transformation Challenge. A New Climate Policy Paradigm?’, Ecological Perspectives For Science and Society 25, no. 1 (2016): 19–22, http://www.ingentaconnect. com/content/oekom/gaia/2016/00000025/00000001/art00007; Henry Shue, ‘Climate Hope: Implementing the Exit Strategy’, Chicago Journal of International Law 13, no. 2 (2013): 381–402.

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1.2

Who is the main addressee for solving the problem of climate change?

In the first section I summarised why climate change is a moral problem. The more interesting question indeed is, who is responsible for this moral problem. I have already explained that this question constitutes a challenge for moral theory. Therefore, I will discuss it in more detail in this section. I will base my analysis on Henry Shue’s approach of basic rights.11 Within this theory, Shue argues that extreme poverty is a moral problem that needs to be tackled by states. As I will show, this approach also explains why states should act on climate change. Basic rights form a special category of moral rights because they are necessary to be able to enjoy other rights and to have at least a chance to live a worth living life.12 A person that suffers from a lack of basic rights automatically also lacks other moral rights. Although it is imaginable that such a person in some cases could practice the content of non-basic rights, he or she will not have a guarantee to be able to exercise these rights if he or she lacks basic rights. The guarantee of a right is, according to Shue, an essential element of enjoying such a right.13 So, for example when a person is not safe, which means that it is probable that she is killed or attacked, then she is not able to take advantage of other rights like freedom of opinion or assembly.14 “Basic rights […] are everyone’s minimum reasonable demands upon the rest of humanity. They are the rational basis for justified demands the denial of which no self-respecting person can reasonably be expected to

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12 13

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Henry Shue, Basic Rights. Subsistence, Affluence, And U.S. Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (New Jersey, 1996). Cf., ibid., p. 30. Cf., ibid., p. 13, p. 19/20. See also: Steigleder, ‘Deontologische Theorien Der Verantwortung’, p. 6/7. Cf., ibid., p. 26.

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accept. […] [R]ights are basic in the sense used here only if enjoyment of them is essential to the enjoyment of all other rights.”15

Shue identifies three basic rights, security, subsistence, and liberty, although he notes that this list might not be complete.16 As I will show, subsistence rights are those basic rights that are most important for the purpose of this thesis. Therefore, I will focus on Shue’s analysis of these rights. Since it is relatively uncontroversial that a human being needs some kind of right to security in order to live a morally acceptable life, Shue uses the right to security in order to show why subsistence as well constitutes such a basic right.17 Shue defines subsistence as “minimal economic security”18. A lack of this kind of security will in the end also result in bodily harm. That is why it is as essential as physical security rights. “(…) [W]hen death and serious illness could be prevented by different social policies regarding the essentials of life, the protection of any human right involves avoidance of fatal or debilitating deficiencies in these essential commodities. And this means fulfilling subsistence rights as basic rights.”19

The existence of basic rights implies that they need to be socially guaranteed.20 This does not mean that every human being should be granted security, subsistence, and liberty in each thinkable situation. Nevertheless, a basic right implies that functioning and reliable institutions must be established21 that protect people against “(…) ordinary and serious but remediable threats (…)”22. Shue calls these

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Ibid., p. 19. Cf., ibid., p.65/91. Cf., ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 25. Cf., ibid., p. 13, p. 26. Cf., ibid., pp. 16/17, pp. 55/56, pp. 60-62. Ibid., p. 32.

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threats “standard threats”23. He argues that the question which threats are standard threats is an empirical question and is interdependent with changing outer circumstances. As an example, he explains that dying of malaria today is a standard threat since there exist sufficient means and medical knowledge to prevent it. In contrast, dying of cancer is no standard threat yet because humanity is not able to heal cancer reliably.24 Claiming social guarantees for standard threats and not for all threats prevents the danger of demanding too much and by that establishing an approach that cannot be exercised due to practical considerations.25 For this thesis, I will presuppose that human beings have security rights, which means that in general they have a right to not being murdered, tortured, or otherwise bodily attacked. The reason for this is that in absence of such a right people are not able to live a worth living life. They would live in constant fear and would need all their resources for self-protection. As Shue shows convincingly, this is also the case when people lack essential needs like basic foods or adequate shelter. Similar to the absence of security rights, people would in this case constantly fear the loss of their lives, serious bodily harms, or illnesses.26 Living such a life is not being deemed acceptable to human beings. I will base my argumentation on Shue’s account of basic rights. In the following I will answer the question, which implication Shue’s approach has to the problem of climate change.27

23 24 25 26 27

Cf., ibid., p. 27, p. 29, p. 33. Cf., ibid., p. 33. Cf., ibid., p. 30. Cf., ibid., p. 22-26. If Shue’s account was rejected, this argumentation will be valid, as long as the assumption that people have a right to be enabled to live a worth living life is accepted.

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1.3

Basic rights in the context of climate change

1.3.1 Subsistence rights I will show that climate change causes standard threats to subsistence rights. To prove this statement, it has to be shown that first the threats caused by climate change are standard threats, and second that the rights that are endangered are basic rights. I will start with the latter. Subsistence rights are the most relevant rights in the case of climate change. Nevertheless, at first sight it could also be argued that security rights are at stake, as well. According to Shue, security rights entail “(…) not to be subjected to murder, torture, mayhem, rape, or assault.”28 Accordingly, to argue that contributing to climate change harms security rights means to state that emitting greenhouse gases equals intentional heavy bodily attacks on human beings. Indeed, the consequences from climate change causes natural disasters that kill and injure people. Furthermore, some studies show that violent conflicts could be a result of climate change.29 Still, this is not the main intention behind

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Ibid., p. 20. See for example: Solomon M. Hsiang and Marshall Burke, ‘Climate, Conflict, and Social Stability: What Does the Evidence Say?’, Climatic Change, October 2013, https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-0868-3; Mark Maslin, ‘Climate Change Is Not a Key Cause of Conflict, Finds New Study’, The Conversation, accessed 20 September 2018, http:// theconversation.com/climate-change-is-not-a-key-cause-of-conflict-finds-new-study94331; Erin Llwayd Owain and Mark Andrew Maslin, ‘Assessing the Relative Contribution of Economic, Political and Environmental Factors on Past Conflict and the Displacement of People in East Africa’, Palgrave Communications, 2018, https://doi.org/ 10.1057/s41599-018-0096-6; Jürgen Scheffran et al., ‘Climate Change and Violent Conflict’, Science 336 (May 2012), http://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6083/869; Hsiang and Burke, ‘Climate, Conflict, and Social Stability: What Does the Evidence Say?’

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emitting greenhouse gases.30 So, I will not go that far in my argumentation. In this thesis I will concentrate on the fact that the consequences from climate change lead to losses of basic needs, existences and living spaces, which is subject to security rights. This does not weaken my argumentation because harming one category of basic rights is enough to derive strong moral responsibilities. Shue does not provide an exact definition of the substance of subsistence rights. Nevertheless, he explains: “By minimal economic security, or subsistence, I mean unpolluted air, unpolluted water, adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate shelter, and minimal preventive public health care. (…) [T]he basic idea is to have available for consumption what is needed for a decent chance at a reasonably healthy and active life of more or less normal length, barring tragic interventions.”31

As already explained above, climate change could cause, among others, extreme weather events, floods, droughts and other natural disasters, furthermore it increases the likelihood of developing illnesses. This has severe consequences for humanity. People who are dependent on agriculture for example suffer from crop failures and an unpredictable climate, people living on small island states or in countries near the oceans are endangered by rising sea levels and floods, for many people drinking water becomes rarer and extreme weather events causes death, injuries and the loss of livelihoods on a regular basis. The 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC reports that changes like the warming of the oceans and the atmosphere, melting of sea ice, the rising of sea levels, and an overall increase in surface temperatures are already observable. It is very likely that these events are caused by increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This affects natural and human systems, for example by impacts on water resources, marine species, crop yields, and extreme weather events, like warm temperature extremes and heavy precipitation. Furthermore, some evidence for 30

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It could be argued that since nowadays people are aware of these causal relations, these harms are in some sense indeed intentional. My impression is, that this is a too harsh conclusion, because it would focus too much on individual responsibilities and blame. Shue, Basic Rights. Subsistence, Affluence, And U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 23.

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diseases and deaths as well as a greater risk of floods and droughts caused by climate change is apparent.32 Studies show that people are actually dying as a result of climate change.33 This is undeniably a threat to the basic right of subsistence. The deciding question is whether those threats are standard threats, so whether it is realistic to establish mechanisms that would reliably prevent these threats. It could be argued that since these are natural disasters and human beings are not able to influence weather events and the like, it is not adequate to classify the consequences of climate change as standard threats. Furthermore, human beings are not yet able to mitigate or adapt to climate change sufficiently. Therefore, harms occurring from climate change do not constitute standard threats because at the current point of time it is not possible to systematically prevent them. The first objection would only be valid if the prevention of the weather events as such was the only possibility to prevent the violation of subsistence rights. Of course, it is not within human power to stop an occurring natural disaster and by that it cannot be demanded. Nevertheless, at least some people in the world have the knowledge and the capacities to react to such natural disasters in a way that would prevent a large amount of severe harm. For example, it is worked on predicting reliably where flooding events or droughts will occur.34 Furthermore, people living in areas where such natural disasters are likely to occur could be equipped with adequate means like stilts for houses that help in

32

33

34

Cf., ‘Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Group I, II, and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.’ (Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, 2014), http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/, p. 40-53. Cf., Jana Reiblein, ‘Umwelt- und Klimaschutz: 5,5 Millionen Tote jährlich durch Luftverschmutzung’, 15 February 2016, https://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/energie-umwelt/umwelt-und-klimaschutz-5-5-millionen-tote-jaehrlich-durch-luftverschmutzung/ 12963826.html; ‘Studie zum Klimawandel: Bis 2100 zehntausende Extremwetter-Tote in Europa’, FOCUS Online, 5 August 2017, https://www.focus.de/panorama/studie-bis2100-zehntausende-extremwetter-tote-in-europa_id_7439090.html; ‘Studie: Mehr als 300.000 Menschen sterben jährlich an den Folgen des Klimawandels’, ZEIT ONLINE, 29 May 2009, https://www.zeit.de/online/2009/23/klimawandel-tote-studie. EGSIEM, ‘European Gravity Service for Improved Emergency Management (EGSIEM)’, accessed 20 September 2018, http://egsiem.eu/project/introduction.

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cases of floods35, seeds that are more capable of extreme heat36, or insurances for crop failures37. So, there are possibilities to act in ways that would not prevent the consequences from climate change but that would prevent that these consequences lead to the infringement of basic rights. The second objection is too narrowly considered as well. It is true that there is no single best solution for mitigation and adaptation to climate change or even for stopping it. Nevertheless, it is also true that inhabitants of some countries have the means to at least contribute to a higher degree to the prevention of ongoing climate change and the adequate adaptation to already occurring consequences. Alternative energy sources and more sustainable lifestyles could be supported and focussed on to a larger degree than it is the case today. Also, the wealthier people in the world could use more financial resources to fund research on how to create sustainable and decarbonised societies and on how to adapt adequately to consequences from climate change that are not preventable anymore. Here I leave out the fact that some groups of people contributed to a higher degree to climate change than others. The point I want to raise is that threats occurring from the consequences of climate change are standard threats because it is imaginable that mechanisms are established that would prevent the resulting severe harm for some people. Also, some actors have the capacities to increase

35

36

37

See for example: S. Biswas, M. A. Hasan, and M. S. Islam, ‘Stilt Housing Technology for Flood Disaster Reduction in the Rural Areas of Bangladesh’, International Journal of Research in Civil Engineering, Architecture & Design 3 (2015): 1–62347; Louise Gray, ‘Houses Should Be Built on Stilts to Avoid Flooding, Scientists Recommend’, 12 October 2009, sec. News, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/6308141/Housesshould-be-built-on-stilts-to-avoid-flooding-scientists-recommend.html. Cf., Oliver Balch, ‘Are Drought-Resistant Crops in Africa the Tech Fix They’re Cracked up to Be?’, The Guardian, 2 September 2016, sec. Guardian Sustainable Business, https:// www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/sep/02/drought-resistant-crops-gmafrica-monsanto-syngenta-dupont Note that this possibility is very controversial. GIZ, ‘Risk Insurance against Climate-Related Crop Failures’, accessed 20 September 2018, https://www.giz.de/en/mediacenter/36562.html.

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efforts on slowing down and adapting to climate change as such.38 The moral consequences from the question who is to blame are irrelevant in this context. They will be discussed in the next section. What I have shown so far is that climate change causes harm because the consequences of climate change violate some peoples’ basic right of subsistence. This violation is not acceptable because the consequences from climate change constitute standard threats. What does this mean for us as moral agents? Shue’s approach of basic rights functions as a minimum requirement for being at least able to exercise all rights a person has and by that having a chance to live a worth living life. A person whose basic rights are not socially guaranteed must constantly fear to lose his or her life, bodily integrity, or basis of existence. “[O]ne of the chief purposes of morality in general, and certainly of conceptions of rights, and of basic rights above all, is indeed to provide some minimal protection against utter helplessness to those too weak to protect themselves. Basic rights are a shield for the defenseless against at least some of the more devastating and more common of life’s threats (…).”39

A constant violation of basic rights by standard threats is therefore a status that is under no circumstances morally acceptable. To secure basic rights has a higher priority than securing non-basic rights in the sense that when it comes to a conflict between a basic right and a non-basic right, it is morally required to not fulfil the non-basic right for the sake of the basic right. Also, other interests like preference satisfaction or cultural enrichment must be abandoned when the fulfilment of these interests leads to the violation of another person’s basic rights.40 This follows from Shue’s Priority Principle. “One is required

38

39 40

See for example: Thomas Jahn, Silke Kersting, and Frederic Spohr, ‘Klimawandel: Fluchtursache Klima – Warum die Industriestaaten jetzt handeln müssen’, Handelsblatt, 2 August 2018, https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/klimawandelfluchtursache-klima-warum-die-industriestaaten-jetzt-handeln-muessen/22868574.html. Shue, Basic Rights. Subsistence, Affluence, And U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 18. Cf., ibid, p. 115.

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to sacrifice, as necessary, anything but one’s basic rights in order to honor the basic rights of others.”41 The crucial point is, that we, as the global community, live in a world where basic rights are systematically harmed although we have capacities to work against this present state. The reason for this is that those people who have the means to cure this moral deficiency also have a strong interest to retain it. Emitting greenhouse gases is a result from economic development which leads to wealth. Here it also becomes clear why the global problems of climate change and extreme poverty are to such a great extend interdependent. The wealth of western countries is not only generated by emitting too much greenhouse gases, but also by systematically exploiting countries within the global south, by that exacerbating their poverty and by that again making them even more vulnerable to climate change. For example, the growing of animal feedstuff for the production of meat in industrialised countries leads to clearings of the rainforest. This has not only severe consequences for the environment. Since the cropland is used for the inefficient meat production and local farmers are not able to compete with big corporations, people in these areas suffer from poverty and hunger.42 Another example is fishery. Due to the warming of the seas certain fish species change their habitat, their reproductive behaviour or even become extinct. Furthermore, commercial fishery is practiced by industrialised countries and results in severe overfishing.43 This worsens climate change and has consequences for people depending on fishery as foodstuff or basis of existence, who are predominantly from poorer regions in the world.

41 42

43

Ibid., p. 114. See for example: ‘Die Verheerenden Folgen Des Soja-Anbaus in Südamerika’, klimawandel.eu, accessed 11 August 2018, http://klima-wandel.eu/sojaanbau.html. See for example: ‘Bald bleiben die Netze leer’, Greenpeace, accessed 11 August 2018, https://www.greenpeace.de/themen/meere/fischerei; ‘Klimawandel. Was er für die Fischereiwirtschaft bedeutet’, klimafakten.de, 6 October 2015, https://www.klimafakten.de/ branchenbericht/was-der-klimawandel-fuer-die-fischereiwirtschaft-bedeutet; ‘Handlungsfeld Fischerei’, Text, Umweltbundesamt, 4 September 2013, http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/klima-energie/klimafolgen-anpassung/handlungsfeld-fischerei.

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The prosperity of western countries depends and is based on the violation of other people’s basic rights. At the same time, this prosperity is the reason why action to solve the problem is rare. The interest of inhabitants of developed countries in keeping their comfortable lifestyles seems to be higher than their motivation to act in a morally acceptable way. To put it most simple, basic rights of inhabitants of developing countries are harmed for the sake of preference satisfaction of inhabitants of developed countries. Does this mean that every single inhabitant of a developed country acts morally wrong and should be blamed for harming basic rights of inhabitants of developing countries? This conclusion would be wrong for at least two reasons. Firstly, it would be too simple. The current status of the world does not result from morally bad persons in developed countries harming morally blameless persons in developing countries. The global systems leading to moral deficiency are much more complex. There are also many people living in developing countries contributing to the problem of the constant violation of some people’s basic rights. Dictators or sweat shop owners for example profit as well as people in the west of the established systems. Apart from this, the strict differentiation between developed versus developing countries is not accurate. Since poor nations of course also strive for economic development comparable to the western states, there by now exist emerging economies, such as China, that follow the same path as already fully industrialised countries and by that repeat their mistakes. The fact that a country was once a poor developing country does not make its current contribution to a morally deficient world acceptable. The second reason to refuse the above mentioned conclusion is that it is not target-aimed. As I have already noted, it is not adequate to try to solve the problem of climate change on an individual level. Of course, individuals need to contribute their share, but to focus the moral responsibilities on individuals would be wrong and impractical, because it would be too demanding. The needed approach must be addressed at an agent that acts on a global level. Shue suggests that the answer to the violation of basic rights is to establish functioning institutions that prevent this. In the case of climate change, therefore, global institutions, that are able to solve the problem adequately, are needed. To demand of individuals in developed countries to establish global institutions that cope with climate change is not useful, presupposing the principle that “should 25

implies could” and that individuals at first sight are not able to establish a global institution. Nevertheless, individuals are able to establish institutions that are then again able to establish global institutions.

1.3.2 States as the main addressees for protecting subsistence rights States are institutions that are able to establish global institutions. Of course, there are also other global actors that are able to influence global processes. I do not want to state that countries are the only global players that bear moral responsibility. Corporations and NGOs have duties to act morally right, but they differ in one deciding aspect from states. In ideal cases, states are legitimated by democratic elections. This is important because of the complexity of the problem of climate change. The violation of rights caused by the consequences of climate change happens on the individual level, which means that individual persons are harmed. These individuals are harmed because of aggregated actions by other individuals and collective entities.44 Therefore, needed solutions must also constitute a form of collective action, and in the case of climate change collective action on the global level is needed. States are institutions established by individuals. In contrast to other global actors they are not created by a relatively small number of individuals, but they represent all persons living in a political community. In theory, all individuals are represented by states.45 So, states are institutions that represent proximate all individuals on a global level. Therefore, they are the main addressees for solving the moral challenge that is established by the violation of individual basic rights by other individuals’ aggregated actions.

44 45

I will refer back to collective entities later. Note that this describes an ideal world. Of course, there are states that are not legitimated by democratic elections and by that also do not represent their population adequately. Nevertheless, I presuppose that an ideal state is a democratic state and that the idea of a democracy is to represent a community of individuals and to form institutions through which this community of individuals could act as a nation.

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Another aspect that is worth mentioning in this context is that focussing on states as those responsible to act on climate change is also most effective. To solve the problem of climate change, a relatively narrow timeframe remains. Due to practical considerations46 an approach is needed that is not too utopian or difficult to implement. Maybe an account that establishes a completely new world order would in theory be a morally better and more efficient solution for climate change, but it is not realistic that such an approach would be implemented fast enough. Therefore, it is useful to stick to the existing, probably imperfect, system and try to change it for the better. In this system states are the agents that should be the main addressees for tackling climate change because they have the power to do so and they represent those individuals who are either harmed by climate change or contributed with their actions to the problem. At this point it could be argued that global institutions that act against climate change already exist. Therefore, the requirement to build such institutions is already fulfilled. In 1972 the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) marked the beginning of international climate policy. This conference resulted in the establishment of the United Nation Environment Programme (UNEP) and milestones like the Montreal Protocol in 1987 and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992.47 In this process of international negotiations on climate change nearly all states participate, the Montreal Protocol as well as the UNFCCC were ratified by 197 states. 48 Indeed, the 46

47

48

Note that practicability is not a strong moral argument. Nevertheless, in the context of policy it is a strong argument because an unpractical political approach is useless and therefore irrelevant. Cf., ‘Lexikon der Nachhaltigkeit | Politik | UN Weltumweltkonferenz Stockholm, 1972’, Lexikon der Nachhaltigkeit, 2 November 2015, https://www.nachhaltigkeit.info/artikel/ uno_konferenz_stockholm_1972_688.htm; see also: Sebastian Oberthür, ‘Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung’, Internationale Umweltpolitik, 6 May 2008, http://www. bpb.de/izpb/9031/internationale-umweltpolitik?p=0. I will refer to the UNFCCC in more detail in the second chapter. Cf., ‘Country Data | Ozone Secretariat’, accessed 29 August 2018, http://ozone. unep.org/countries; ‘Status of Ratification of the Convention | UNFCCC’, accessed 29 August 2018, https://unfccc.int/process/the-convention/what-is-the-convention/ status-of-ratification-of-the-convention.

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achievements by the Montreal Protocol are considered to be very successful and effective.49 So, it would be false to argue that the global community of states misses its moral obligations because it does not create institutions that are addressed towards the problem of climate change. Nevertheless, the existence of these institutions does not imply that all moral requirements are fulfilled. It is not enough that any institutions exist but these institutions must also be effective for protecting basic rights. The fact that there are still whole nations in which basic rights are not ensured shows that the existing global institutions are not effective enough to solve this deficiency. The Montreal Protocol shows that states are able to create and collaborate effectively within global institutions. This needs to be intensified to secure subsistence rights. Here another critical questions could be raised. When the most promising approach is an approach that suggests changes within our current system and not to establish a completely new system, then why not consider already existent global institutions, instead of states, as the main addressees for solving the problem of climate change? The reason for this is that the demand, resulting from the basic rights violations, is to establish a functioning global institution. Indeed, global institutions are already existent but they are not functioning properly, so they need to be revised. The ideal agents to exercise this are not the institutions as such but the entities that have established and are able to improve them. It has to be differentiated between the concrete actions that must be taken to address climate change and the actions that result from the violation of basic rights due to climate change. The first will lay in the responsibility of the established global institutions. The latter means that these global institutions must be established by able agents, which are the states. All in all, within this current world order, states are the main addresses for the moral responsibility for climate change. This means that in general all states have 49

Cf., Guri Bang, Jon Hovi, and Tora Skodvin, ‘The Paris Agreement: Short-Term and Long-Term Effectiveness’, Politics and Governance 4, no. 3 (8 September 2016): 209, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v4i3.640, p. 211; Robert O. Keohane and Michael Oppenheimer, ‘Paris: Beyond the Climate Dead End through Pledge and Review?’, Politics and Governance 4, no. 3 (2016): 142, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v4i3.634, p. 143.

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a moral duty to act against climate change. Nevertheless, it would be counterintuitive to demand the same actions from, for example, the United States and Ghana. The reason for this intuition is that this seems highly unfair. In the next section I will explain why this intuition is right and why states have different degrees of moral responsibility.

1.3.3 Are all states morally responsible to the same degree? Simon Caney shows convincingly that, in the context of climate change, there are two, at the first sight, conflicting forms of argumentation. 50 The first is to focus on the practical necessity to jointly find a solution for climate change and the fact that, today, emitting greenhouse gases harms people, irrespective of who caused this situation. This is a forward-looking approach. I will call this the Efficiency Approach. The second focuses on the question, how burdens could be shared or allocated in a morally adequate way. From this strategy often follows that only some nations should act on climate change. This account combines forward-looking and backward-looking elements. In the following I will call this argumentation the Burden Sharing Approach. Both accounts contain advantages. The first is relatively easy to construct because it does not focus on the complex problem of deriving responsibilities from past actions. The question, which countries, today, have the capacities to act on climate change, is not as controversial as the questions, who caused climate change and whether benefits should matter. Therefore, it is most target-aimed and, if it could be implemented, will be most effective. The second provides a justification to the strong intuition that the allocation of responsibilities for acting on climate change should not only depend on questions of capabilities but, first of all, on ethical considerations. The move to consider actions that have led to this situation as secondary due to practical consideration 50

Cf., Caney, ‘Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing Burdens’, p. 1-4; For the different ways of argumentation compare also: Hermwille, ‘Climate Change as a Transformation Challenge. A New Climate Policy Paradigm?’; and Henry Shue, ‘Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change’, Moral Philosophy and Politics 2, no. 1 (2015): 7–31.

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seems morally problematic and unjust. The second approach captures the different roles of the countries more adequately. Some countries should solve the collective problem of climate change not only because they are able to help but especially because they are to blame for the problem. I will show that both approaches are important to find an adequate solution for climate change and should be combined. I will base this argumentation on the two theories of Henry Shue and Simon Caney. In the first section I have already defended aspects of the first viewpoint. Likewise, Shue argues: “(…) [A]voidable present and future emissions constitute clear and conscious choices by living agents, in the face of all the vast amount of information now readily available, to exacerbate harm.”51

This so-called No-Harm Principle is in Shue’s theory added by the duty to preserve the fundamental conditions of human life.52 Since climate change constitutes a risk to human existence and is related to uncertainties, the current generation should act accordingly by preventing climate change and by that the danger of severe harms for current and future generations. These two principles are indifferent of the question who is to blame, but focuses on the necessity to solve the problem and on the question, who has the capacity to do so.53 Focussing on the Efficiency Approach leads to a practical problem. Most states with the capacity to act on climate change argue that they will not act until the obligations of every capable nation are defined and it is guaranteed that every actor will comply with its duties. That a country makes its own contributions to act on climate change dependent on other nations’ contributions is comprehensible since mitigation policies nowadays often mean competitive disadvantages. Why this line of argumentation is even valid within the Efficiency Approach becomes clear from the following.

51

52 53

Shue, ‘Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change’, p. 10. Cf., ibid., pp. 27 ff. Cf., ibid., p. 9 and p. 27.

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Moral rights could evolve as positive or negative rights and entail respective positive or negative duties. Positive rights are rights to help while negative rights are rights to omission. For example, the right to life contains the negative right to not being killed and the positive right to help in cases where an agent’s life is endangered. Important is that positive rights evolve only when the respective rights bearer is not able to help him- or herself and if the potential duty bearer could help without sacrificing own comparable rights. So, person A must rescue person B from drowning only if person A is not in danger of drowning as well while rescuing person B. This makes positive rights dependent on the respective situation while negative rights are not bound to outer circumstances. Therefore, if A pushes B into the water, A violated its negative duty to not perform such an action. This results in duties irrespective of As or Bs swimming skills.54 To derive duties to act on climate change only from the Efficiency Approach would mean that these duties are primarily duties to help, because it does not focus on the circumstance that the duty bearers induce the moral harm. Therefore, this strategy is more equivalent to a situation where a passenger notices someone drowning and not to the situation where a person pushes another person. As long as states are compared on the basis of their competitiveness, economic losses constitute significant sacrifices,55 therefore they have a point in demanding the same initial criteria for all states with the capacity to act. If all able states introduced effective mitigation policies, they would ideally not constitute competitive disadvantages anymore and by that helping in the context of climate change would not constitute significant costs anymore. Nevertheless, this reasoning would only be acceptable if acting on climate change would only be based on duties to help. According to Shue, this is not the

54

55

For the difference between negative and positive rights, see for example: Steigleder, ‘Deontologische Theorien Der Verantwortung’, p. 5/6. In this context, see for example: ‘The Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017’ (World Economic Forum, 2016), https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-competitiveness-report-2016-2017-1; Anna Steiner, ‘Wettbewerbsfähigkeit: Warum es schwer wird für Deutschland’, FAZ.NET, 31 May 2016, sec. Wirtschaft, http://www. faz.net/1.4261553.

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case due to the third principle of Historical Responsibility.56 This principle is hybrid because it evolves out of the interaction between three separate principles: The Contributor Pays Principle, the Beneficiary Pays Principle and the Ability to Pay Principle. In the following I will refer to each of these principle in more detail.

1.4

Relevant moral principles

1.4.1 The Contributor Pays Principle Climate change cannot be seen as a mere practical problem. Only focussing on the necessity to prevent harm misses another very important normative dimension of the situation. The reason for this is that climate change was caused by certain countries. To make the clear definition of each Parties’ fair share a precondition for taking action, would only be appropriate if the nations that should act did not cause the problem. Otherwise, if an agent causes a damage he or she should stop it and has to atone for the costs. This, also intuitively obvious moral requirement, is called the internalization of externalities. Contrary, not coming up for produced costs means externalizing them, because then someone else will bear these costs.57 In the case of externalising costs two problems emerge. Firstly, it creates an incentive to produce more and more costs because the damaging agent receives benefits for which someone else comes up. Secondly, this constitutes unfair inequalities between the contributor and those who bear the costs.58 This exactly describes the situation of emitting greenhouse gases and the evolving change in our climate. The contributors, those who emit and have emitted a lot of greenhouse gases, internalize the benefits in form of economic growth and prosperity. The costs of this, the changing climate and all relating harms, are externalized, 56

57 58

Cf., Shue, ‘Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change’, p. 9-11. Cf., ibid., p. 12. Cf., ibid., p. 12.

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because climate change affects every nation in the world and especially those that did not contribute to the problem.59 As long as contributors do not have to bear the cost of the damage they cause, they will have a strong incentive to emit ever more greenhouse gases. The inequalities thus created are unfair. Therefore, it would not be adequate if all nations had the same moral responsibilities.60

1.4.2 The Beneficiary Pays Principle In the case of climate change two objections could be raised to the Contributor Pays Principle. The first is that inhabitants of nations that emitted greenhouse gases in the past would be obligated to compensate for something they did not cause. Those emissions that resulted in the development of today’s industrialised countries have been emitted in the past, so the people living today in these countries, in fact, have not been contributing to the problem. Consequently, they cannot be morally responsible for the damages.61 This objection can be rejected by the Beneficiary Pays Principle.62 “Simply because I was born in a rich industrialized nation, my life has been easier, healthier, and full of opportunities that I would not have enjoyed if I had been born in a non-industrialized nation. I did not request or consent to the carbon emissions of my ancestors, but I benefit by living amidst national affluence produced by means of those emissions. A nation contains continuing structures and institutions; past, present, and future

59

60

61 62

Cf., ibid., p. 12/13. Cf., ibid., p. 14. Note that inequalities are not in themselves unfair. If some nations had a higher status of development by emitting greenhouse gases and on the same time would also come up for the costs, this would not be an unfair inequality. (Cf., ibid., p. 20). Cf., ibid., p. 14. Note that the term “benefits from climate change”, in the context of my thesis, refers to benefits from emitting greenhouse gases, like economic growth, prosperity, stable and democratic political conditions, etc. In some parts of the world there arise also benefits directly from a changing climate, like better crop yields due to warmer weather. I will leave the consideration of these kinds of benefits aside.

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members are primary beneficiaries of these on-going national formations and practices.”63

Today’s inhabitants of industrialised countries actively preserve the unfair inequalities arising from the externalisation of the costs of emitting greenhouse gases. Most of them live in relative prosperity because the institutions they still keep up cause damage for which they do not compensate. The current inhabitants may not have caused the greenhouse gases that lead to the current situation, but the emitting of these greenhouse gases was a consequence from the creation a beneficiary situation for them that is still unfair. By not acting against this unfair state they continue to externalise the costs of greenhouse gas production. Furthermore, the inhabitants of industrialised countries still emit a lot of greenhouse gases, although it has become clear that every amount of emissions that is produced today will make the problem worse.64 The second objection is that the people who contributed in the past did not know that they were causing harm, which is a presupposition for being held morally responsible.65 Shue argues that causal responsibility is enough for being held accountable.66 Indeed, the objection as such is misleading. The question is not whether people in the past were morally responsible for climate change or not. Rather, moral responsibilities of current human beings must be defined. When persons get to know that their ancestors produced harm, knowingly or not, and they continue acting in the same harm producing way, these persons act morally wrong. Their ancestors’ amount of emissions, status of knowledge and the respective moral judgement have no influence on this. By now, people know about the bad consequences of climate change, they know the reasons for climate change and they know that their established and unrevised institutions are to a great extend part of the problem. Still, no effective solution has been implemented. This creates a 63

64 65

66

Shue, ‘Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change’, p. 14. Cf., Shue, ‘Climate Hope: Implementing the Exit Strategy’, p. 387-390. Shue, ‘Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change’, p. 15. Cf., ibid., p. 16.

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morally deficient situation, irrespective of the question if our ancestors could be held morally accountable.

1.4.3 The Ability to Pay Principle With the Contributor Pays Principle and the Beneficiary Pays Principle it is already possible to establish strong moral duties at least for industrialised countries. This is supplemented by the fact that those agents that contributed to and by that benefitted from climate change are at the same time also those nations that are affluent enough to pay for the costs of the consequences from climate change. The reason for their affluence is indeed the unfair conditions they created by internalising the benefits and externalising the costs of emitting greenhouse gases. So, it would be heavily unfair if these nations did not have to bear more responsibility than other nations.67 “[W]hat has happened between 1784 and today is very nearly the most unfair process imaginable and cries out for a robust response. One portion – the “Developed States” – has gathered in the vast majority of the benefits from the invention of the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution in general while allowing the costs, including rights-violating harms, to be spread universally.”68

1.4.4 Historic responsibility Shue argues that the combination of these principles captures the notion of Historical Responsibility. The solution to climate change must reflect the severe unfairness that is contained in this concept. States that are historical responsible are not in the position to demand for clear defined fair shares. Their duties evolve because they are perpetrators of the harm. So, the request is not to help at no

67 68

Cf., ibid., p. 16/17. Ibid., p. 17.

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comparable costs but to stop and compensate for self-caused harm.69 In such a case the moral duties could be much higher. As Shue argues, it is legitimate to impose high burdens on the causers of a harm.70 At this point, one important objection has to be made. The strict distinction between developed states with historic responsibility and developing states without historic responsibility is not accurate anymore. By now, there are states that did not contribute to the problem of climate change in the past but that are emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases today.71 So, they are contributing or will be contributing to climate change, by that they seem to fulfil only some of the above analysed principles. Those nations should have a different moral status than nations fulfilling none of the principles, as well. Nevertheless, there are states that clearly fall into Shue’s category of states with historic responsibility. The responsibilities of these states should not be comparable or similar to other states’ responsibilities. Although there is of course a strong practical need of considering climate change as a joint challenge and focussing on solutions rather than on the question who is to blame, this latter question cannot be left out for two main reasons. Firstly, if an approach should be developed that is morally adequate, and the Paris Agreement demands for establishing such an approach, it is necessary to capture all morally relevant aspects. Injustice that was established and retained over years by some nations is a morally relevant aspect. Secondly, an approach that ignores this situation will not be acceptable to those nations that suffered from this injustice.72

69 70 71

72

Cf., ibid., p. 18. Cf., ibid., p. 11. Cf., Abeysinghe and Huq, ‘Climate Jusitce for LDCs through Global Decisions’, p. 200; Pieter Pauw et al., ‘Different Perspectives on Diffentiated Responsibilities. A State-ofthe-Art Review of the Notion of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities in International Negotiations’, discussion paper (Bonn: German Development Institute, 2014), https://www.die-gdi.de/uploads/media/DP_6.2014..pdf p. 1/2, p. 17-20. For an analyse of the special needs and demands of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) see for example: Abeysinghe and Huq, ‘Climate Jusitce for LDCs through Global Decisions’.

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So, an approach that should function as a solution for climate change must be as morally adequate as possible also for practical reasons. Otherwise, some nations have good reasons to reject this approach.

1.4.5 Harm avoidance Like Shue Caney as well considers the questions how moral duties could be allocated in the context of climate change. In contrast to Shue, Caney defends an individualistic approach. Since this contradicts my conclusion that states are the main addressees for duties concerning climate change, I will show why Caney’s reasoning is not appropriate here. Two reasons for his statement can be identified in his text “Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Justice.” First, he argues that a collectivist approach is not convincing because it is not obvious “(…) when and why it is accurate to say that a collective caused an environmental bad and hence that that collective must pay.”73 He states that the burden of proof rests on the defenders of a collectivist approach. Further, making a collective responsible for climate change means, due to Caney, treating the individuals within this collective unfairly. Current members of the collective are different persons than those who caused the problem. Today’s member did not consent to the decisions of the previous members.74 Two points could be raised here. First, I argued above that climate change is not caused by single identifiable individuals but by aggregated individual contributions. Further, the excessive amount of greenhouse gases that were produced by certain groups of individuals resulted from the process of industrialisation. This process would not have been possible if individuals acted solely as individuals, but it needed a collective entity, in this case, a state that organised and implemented this process. This leads to the second point. There are collectives that are not just an aggregate of individuals, but form separate collective entities with own decision-making structures. These entities indeed consist of individuals, but they are able to come to conclusions that would not be drawn if each individual

73 74

Caney, ‘Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change’, p. 760. Cf., ibid., p. 760.

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member decided on its own.75 Therefore, it is plausible to speak of collectives that are responsible for climate change and I have argued above why states are those entities that should be focused on. No single individual caused climate change or contributed enough to it to being held responsible. Therefore, the burden of proof rests, in fact, on the other side. Caney’s second argument against a collectivist approach, especially against the viewpoint that states are the relevant moral agents, is that there are several different kinds of actors that contribute to the problem of climate change. Therefore, he argues, it cannot be assumed that only states are morally responsible. He identifies individuals, economic corporations, states, and international regimes and institutions.76 This argument misses the point that all these actors are interdependent. As I argued above, individuals create states and are represented by them on a global level. Likewise, states establish international regimes and institutions, which makes it possible to tackle global problems. Corporations are as well created by individuals and they should be supervised by states or, in case of globally acting corporations that cannot be controlled by a single state, by international institutions. Furthermore, as I argued before, it can be assumed that also corporations have moral responsibilities in the context of global problems. Nevertheless, because of the role of states as representatives of individuals on a global level, they are the main addresses and those that are most able to react to global problems. The special challenges and conditions in the context of climate change are best addressed by states and, by focusing on them as the relevant moral agents in the case of climate change, all other entities are captured due to their interdependence. I noted above that, in theory, there might be a constellation in which other agents could react to climate change more efficiently and in a morally more adequate way. Nevertheless, due to the narrow timeframe a solution has to be found within the current system. In our world, the best solution, in terms of morality and efficiency, is to focus on the responsibilities of states. Nevertheless, Caney discusses the Polluter Pays Principle on the basis of an individualistic approach. He argues that the principle is not valid as long as it is not 75

76

See for example: Philip Pettit, ‘Groups with Minds of Their Own’, in Social Epistemology: Essentail Readings, ed. Alvon I. Goldman and Dennis Whitcomb (Oxford, New York, 2011), 167–93. Cf., Caney, ‘Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change’, p. 754/755.

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embedded in a general theory of justice and supplemented with an Ability to Pay Principle.77 To prove this statement he mentions three reasons. Firstly, he refers to the argument that the emissions relevant for today’s and future climate change were mainly produced by individuals from past generations. He rejects the Beneficiary Pays Principle as an answer to this because he considers this principle as an abandonment of and not as a supplement to the Polluter Pays Principle. The reason for this is that it is imaginable that a person has obligations under the Polluter Pays Principle but not under the Beneficiary Pays Principle and vice versa, namely in cases where an agent benefitted from climate change without causing it or respectively causing it without benefitting from it.78 This is not an adequate representation of the role of the Beneficiary Pays Principle in Shue’s account. Within Shue’s account the principles cannot be considered independently. He explicitly argues that all three principles interact and by that create the Historical Responsibility Principle. In many cases, by benefitting from the structures that enabled the occurrence of the harms of climate change an agent does also contribute to the harm as such.79 Therefore, the Beneficiary Pay Principle is not necessarily an abandonment of the Polluter Pays Principle. Caney’s argument is, that the Beneficiary Pays Principle ascribes moral responsibilities to people who are not morally responsible under the Polluter Pays Principle. According to Caney, this constitutes a contradiction. Nevertheless, the Beneficiary Pays Principle simply enlarges the amount of people that are morally responsible under the Polluter Pays Principle and vice versa. This would only be a contradiction if the target was to identify the same set of responsible people with different principles. This is not the idea behind introducing these two principles. Indeed, the aim is to show different reasons for moral responsibility. The circumstance that certain persons only fulfil one set of these reasons is no contradiction to the existence of one of the sets of reasons. As Shue argues, the notion of historical accountability is best captured by the interdependence of these two principles plus the Ability to Pay Principle. 77 78 79

Cf., ibid., p. 765/766, p. 769. Cf., ibid., p. 757. Cf., Shue, ‘Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change’, p. 13.

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Another argument against the Beneficiary Pays Principle Caney raises is a modified version of the Non-Identity Problem. Caney argues that the persons who benefitted from emission productions would not exist without previous events in the context of the Industrial Revolution and the resulting climate change. Therefore, Caney argues, similar to future people who will not be better off in the case of the introduction of different policies today, but will not exist in such a case, today’s people are not better off because of the Industrial Revolution since they, as well, would not exist if this did not happen.80 Again, this argumentation is misleading. The crucial point about the Non-Identity Problem is that future people do not exist now. Therefore, they cannot make the claim now that current generations must act on climate change so that they, the future people, will be better off. This depends on the fact that these people do not exist yet and that their seemingly rights would lead to the fact they never will be existent, therefore it would be absurd if those people claimed such policies. In contrast to this, the beneficiaries of the Industrial Revolution are existent moral agents. The deciding argument in the context of the Beneficiary Pays Principle is not that they would have been worse off without the Industrial Revolution but that they still benefit and keep up the resulting unfair structures. It is not absurd to demand to change these structures because it became apparent that they are unfair, even if these structures caused the existence of the people who should change them. With this argumentation it could also be argued that in societies with sexist structures male persons are not better off because in a different society they would be different persons. Although it is true that the structures and conditions of a certain society influence which exact persons will come into existence, men in sexist societies have a duty to change these conditions because they benefit in an unjust manner from it. Caney continues by rejecting a further attempt to react to the problem that climate change was caused by past generations. This is the argumentation that current polluters not only should bear the costs of their pollution but also that of past polluters. Caney argues that this is unfair and contradicts the basic idea of the

80

Cf., Caney, ‘Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change’, p. 757/ 758.

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Polluter Pays Principle, which is that every person should compensate for its own caused damages.81 Although Caney is right that this line of argumentation, without further explanation why current polluters should also pay the costs for previous pollutions, is, at the first sight, not very convincing, it is nevertheless questionable who else then should pay for these previous costs. It is obvious that someone must pay these costs. If current polluters do not pay them then they will probably be paid by persons which are even less related to these costs than current polluters, which is even more unfair than the option that a person pays for the costs of his or her ancestors. Caney raises these arguments in the context of discussing the inter-generational challenge of climate change.82 This is his first reason for rejecting the Polluter Pays Principle. He states two further objections. Secondly, he argues that the Polluter Pays Principle is not able to deal adequately with agents that do not know that they cause or have caused damages.83 Thirdly, the Polluter Pays Principle asks too much of people that contributed to climate change but remained poor, and therefore are not able to pay the resulting costs.84 The second point is not valid in the context of climate change. Of course, people unintentionally causing harm should be treated differently as people who cause it consciously. Nevertheless, people know about the harms caused by climate change and they know it for a relatively long period of time. Once a person gets to know that her or she causes or caused harm, he or she is morally obligated to stop it and, if it is necessary, provide compensation for this harm.85 In the case of 81 82

83 84 85

Cf., ibid., p. 760/761. Note that there is a difference between the problem of future peoples’ rights and the objection that today’s climate change was caused by previous generation. The first can be skipped because current peoples’ rights are strong enough to constitute moral responsibilities. The latter needs to be discussed since it suggests that the actual duty bearers are already dead. Cf., ibid., p. 761. Cf., ibid., p. 763. Duties that evolve from previous morally relevant actions, like a duty of reparation, were for example developed by William David Ross in: William David Ross, The Right And The Good, ed. Stratton-Lake (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).

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climate change being unaware of causing harm is not acceptable due to the large amount of easily accessible information, which is, furthermore, even spread through the media to an ever-larger degree. The third argument is true, but it constitutes no contradiction to the Polluter Pays Principle. Supposed that there are such agents that contributed to climate change but are now not able to pay the costs. In such a case, the Polluter Pays Principle clashes with principle that should implies could. It is no contradiction to the Polluter Pays Principle if its consequences are in some cases not applicable because it is trumped by another principle.86 Nevertheless, Caney’s conclusion is not to abandon the Polluter Pays Principle but to supplement it, so that the above-mentioned challenges as well as the problem of non-compliance are addressed. Although he already in this text suggests to add an Ability to Pay Principle, the supplementation of the Polluter Pays Principle is discussed in more detail in his text “Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing Burdens”. These two kinds of climate justice, that Caney analyses, differ in their basic argumentative strategy. Ideally, they are consistent but in practice they could lead to different conclusions.87 The approach Caney labels as Burden Sharing Justice is based on the already discussed Contributor Pays Principle, the Beneficiary Pays Principle and the Ability to Pay Principle. The central question here is how burdens should be shared.88 It combines forward- and backward-looking elements. In the context of climate change, this approach is most common. Shue’s above analysed approach is part of a Burden Sharing Justice as well, although he argues for the general necessity to avoid harm as well. Concentrating the discussions on this kind of justice is in Caney’s view incomplete.89 An alternative or supplementing approach is called Harm Avoidance Justice, which is a solely forward-looking approach. Here, the focus and starting point rests on the interests of the potential victims and the aim to prevent climate

86 87 88 89

Cf., Steigleder, ‘Deontologische Theorien Der Verantwortung’, p. 5. Cf., Caney, ‘Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing Burdens’, p. 2. Cf., ibid., p. 1/2. Cf., ibid., p. 3.

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change and relating harms. Duties and burdens are deduced from this task. 90 These two kinds of climate justice are comparable to what I have called the Efficiency and the Burden Sharing Approach, although there are some differences as should become clear from the following analysis of Caney’s argumentation. Caney refuses the apparent premise that, within such an approach of focussing on harm avoidance, it must be accepted that countries will not act against their national self-interest. First, he argues that it is not a consequence from the principle that should implies could but from the invalid assumption that should implies the probability to act. Second, a political community as a whole should have an interest in acting on climate change. Therefore, political leaders should convince their electors to support respective policies and vice versa. The argument that politicians must represent the will of their electors and thereby are unable to implement mitigation policies for example is not appropriate either.91 Although this argument is located in a different context, it functions as well as a response to Shue’s argumentation in favour of a Burden Sharing Justice. Furthermore, it constitutes the first main difference to the Efficiency Approach. As mentioned above, the fact that ambitious mitigation policies will lead to economic disadvantages for countries acting independently from other nations is a strong reason to not introduce these policies. Considering the needed extreme changes and the relating insecurities for a nation that is dependent on a stable economy, it is not adequate to argue that inaction results solely from unwillingness. To introduce an adequate reaction to climate change could lead, without the concessions by other global actors, to sacrifices for a single state.92 These sacrifices could be so severe that they fulfil the principle “should implies could”. It is therefore necessary, as Shue argues, to explain why they should accept such sacrifices or respectively find ways to overcome these sacrifices. To refer to a state’s liability would offer such an explanation. Nevertheless, Caney argues that industrialised states that do not act towards preventing climate change and the resulting harm act morally wrong, also in the context of Harm Avoidance Justice. 90 91 92

Cf., ibid., p. 2. Cf., ibid., p. 7. For an overview of the needed sectoral transformations, see: Uwe Schneidewind, Die Große Transformation. Eine Einführung in Die Kunst Gesellschaftlichen Wandels (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2018).

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Sacrifices for some agents will definitely occur and should be accepted. Although acting solely based on self-interest is morally not permitted for some states it is, nevertheless, very likely to occur. Therefore, an answer to the question how to deal with non-compliance must be found.93 Caney’s solution to this challenge is to define first-order and second-order responsibilities. First-order responsibilities are those responsibilities that directly result from the actual problem. So, in the case of climate change these are responsibilities to mitigation, adaptation and compensation.94 Second-order responsibilities result from the circumstance that some agents will not comply with their first-order responsibilities. Further, they could broaden the set of first-order responsibilities of some agents by enable them to increase their possible efforts.95 Caney identifies six kinds of second-order responsibilities. First, compliance could be enforced by trade sanction or enforced transparency. Second, incentives like membership within the European Union (EU) or the World Trade Organisation (WTO) could also increase compliance. Third, the facilitation of scientific research and transfers of the respective findings could enable agents to comply. Fourth, norm creation, fifth undermining resistance to effective climate policies and sixth civil disobedience are other important and effective aspects.96 The question now arising is which agents should perform these acts? In this context it is important to note that second-order responsibilities would not evolve when all agents complied with their first-order responsibilities. Furthermore, in this case Harm Avoidance Justice and Burden Sharing Justice would be consistent. This means that the duties within a Burden Sharing Justice and the firstorder responsibilities within the Harm Avoidance Justice are similar. Only in the case of Non-Compliance Harm Avoidance Justice implements the second-order responsibilities, which will lead to different duty bearers than the principles within the Burden Sharing Justice. In this case, duties are not allocated based on morally relevant considerations, such as guilt or the ability to pay, but because of an agent’s special qualities. 93 94 95 96

Cf., ibid., p. 10. Cf., ibid., p. 10. Cf., ibid., p. 10/11, p. 13. Cf., ibid., p. 12-14.

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“Someone may be under a duty to mitigate climate change (a first-order responsibility) simply in virtue of their unjustly high emissions in the past. By contrast, to be under a duty to perform some second-order responsibilities […] may require certain virtues or character traits.” 97

This is another difference to my argumentation. The difference between the Efficiency Approach and the Burden Sharing Approach is not based on the compliance of the respective moral agents. The deciding difference is that the first approach focuses on political efficiency and the second on moral adequacy. It would be misleading to argue that in an ideal world they are consistent, as Caney does98, but in an ideal world they are both fulfilled parallelly. Caney’s way of deriving duties is based on the “Power/Responsibility Principle”. This principle is based on the assumption that “with power comes responsibility”99. It means that agents that have special abilities or positions within a society have, because of these special traits, second-order responsibilities to act on climate change. In contrast to the Ability to Pay Principle the Power / Responsibility Principle does not focus on financial means and does not allocate first-order responsibilities.100 Although Caney’s approach is individualistic, which is obviously another difference to my suggestion, it contains several aspects that are important also for this account focussing on the moral responsibility of states. Firstly, Caney emphasizes that there are two ways of thinking about the moral problem of climate change, one results in the idea of Harm Avoidance Justice and the other one in the idea of Burden Sharing Justice. At this point it is important to note that Shue would not reject Caney’s approach on Harm Avoidance Justice. He recognises the necessity to act on climate change and that harm avoidance is a factor that allocates moral duties on every able agent.

97

98 99 100

Ibid., p. 16/17. See also Simon Caney, ‘The Struggle for Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World’, Midwest Studies In Philosophy, 2016, p. 12. Cf., ibid., p. 2. Cf., ibid., p. 17. Cf., ibid., p. 17/18.

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“[E]very agent with any capacity to do so ought to take vigorous action to bring the earth’s climate back under control (…) continuing business-asusual constitutes continuing to inflict escalating damage on people, property, and other species.”101

Nevertheless, Caney’s clear differentiation between the two strategies is important. His analysis shows that there are two distinct ways how it could be argued for moral duties in relation to climate change. Indeed, they could lead to the same conclusions but in the context of international policy the argumentative path is very important as well. It matters whether developed countries accept their moral duties simply because of practical consideration or because they recognise their guilt in this context. The latter would be a strong sign and would eventually increase the motivation of developing countries. Secondly, Caney offers a solution for non-compliance which is as well very reasonable in the context of international politics. So, in the last part of this chapter I will suggest how the two approaches by Shue and Caney could be combined.

1.4.6 Combining the principles To sum up, I have discussed the moral relevance of climate change, states as the main addressee for it, and possibilities how to argue for different moral statuses among states by analysing the accounts of Henry Shue and Simon Caney. While Shue defends the idea of historical responsibility, Caney argues that focussing only on Burden Sharing Justice is too short-sighted. The consequences of climate change infringe, what Shue calls, subsistence rights. These rights are basic rights because they are necessary to enjoy other non-basic rights and to enable people to live a worthy life. This on its own constitutes a strong moral requirement to change the violation of basic rights by acting on climate change. I have also shown that states are suitable agents that could and should get active to solve this moral deficiency. The reasons for this are that they first represent the actual causers or 101

Shue, ‘Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change’ p., 9.

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respectively victims, namely groups of individuals, and second constitute agents that are able to act on a global level. This argumentative strand leads to the conclusion that all states are morally responsible to act on climate change, in form of mitigation or adaptation policies. Further, I have shown why this account on its own is unfair. It leaves aside the aspect of historic responsibility. To remedy this injustice the moral duties resulting from harm avoidance need to be modified through the above presented principles which make those pay who contributed to the problem, benefitted from it and are able to pay. At this point it could be argued that historic responsibility should be considered as secondary or should even be skipped because the request to prevent harm supplemented by an ability to pay principle will probably as well lead to the conclusion that industrialised countries should bear the strongest duties. This way of arguing should be rejected because of the following reason. As I have already argued, for accepting a conclusion it is not only important that it entails the right content but also the right way of argumentation. Admitting guilt and therefore arrive moral duties conveys another signal than declaring practical reasons for the main motive for acting on climate change. Caney makes the point that taking a passive and external view on politics and morality is in the context of climate change misleading because it could result in taking a state’s expectable behaviour pattern as a given and unchangeable fact. 102 Such an external view could also lead to a focus on a needed outcome and the necessary steps towards this goal without considering the sentiments of the affected agents. By this a certain course of actions could seem as most effective that is, in the end, unrealistic to implement. Climate politics and climate ethics affect acting agents. Being treated fairly is important for these agents, it will influence their decisions and their willingness to cooperate. If historical responsibility is ignored or treated as secondary, the establishment of a completely unjust world order will be regarded as a situation that must be accepted and dealt with. In theory, this might be an efficient step, because the past cannot be changed, and we have to concentrate on finding solutions for the current situation. Nevertheless, the affected agents are

102

Cf., Caney, ‘Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing Burdens’, p. 6/7.

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aware of the fact that the current situation was created by some of them, and some of the others are probably not willing or even not able to not consider this fact. Therefore, the account of historic responsibility presented by Shue should matter as well. To create a morally adequate, for all Parties acceptable, and by this also most effective account, all moral dimension need to be considered.103 My argument is not that one of these approaches is more important than the other. The contrary is the case, both should be considered as equally important. Focussing on the Efficiency Approach is incomplete as well as focussing only on the Burden Sharing Approach. An adequate solution for the problem of climate change must therefore, at all means, contain and respect both approaches to the same degree. Now, how should the fact that states could no longer be clearly divided into developing and industrialised countries be dealt with? Due to the development status of some economies in transition, the question about the responsibilities concerning climate change has become much more complex. Therefore, it seems reasonable to consider all three principles separately and find out which states are concerned by which principle. By this, there will evolve groups of countries with different degrees of moral responsibility. The more principles a state fulfils the higher are its moral responsibilities and respective duties. Nevertheless, there will be no state without moral responsibility since the No Harm Principle oblige every single agent to act on climate change. The question is not if an agent must act on climate change but what and how much it must contribute to solve the problem. Since Shue’s as well as Caney’s accounts are not perfectly convincing, some questions remain. First, how should the term “historic responsibility” be used? Shue describes it as an interaction between the Contributor Pays Principle, the Beneficiary Pays Principle, and the Ability to Pay Principle. I have argued that it is by now possible to fulfil only some of these principles, so what does “historic responsibility” nowadays mean? Second, why are these principles still relevant? Since the world is changing different or further principles could become applicable. Apart from this, as different 103

Cf., Lavanya Rajamani, ‘The Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility and the Balance of Commitments under the Climate Regime’, Reciel 9, no. 2 (2000), https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9388.00243, p. 123.

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countries have different degrees of moral responsibility I have to elaborate on a hierarchy between these principles. To conclude this chapter, I will start with answering the first question and then turn to the second.

1.4.7 Does historic responsibility matter? The definition of the term “historic responsibility” is unclear within the context of climate politics.104 Here, it should be used similar to Shue’s understanding. Historic responsibility is the kind of responsibility some agents receive in addition to responsibilities arising from the No Harm Principle. As the name implies, historic responsibility captures the moral challenge of the aspect of time in the context of climate change. A state has historic responsibility when it contributed over a longer period of time to the problem of climate change.105 Now, it is at least imaginable that all three principles could be fulfilled separately over a longer period of time. There could be states that either contribute, benefit, or are able to pay over years without fulfilling the respective other two principles. Nevertheless, it is more likely that fulfilling one of these principles over a longer period of time leads automatically to fulfilling also the other principles. A country that emits greenhouse gases for a longer period will probably benefit from this in terms of economic growth and will by that also be able to pay. Benefitting from greenhouse gas production without contributing to climate change is abstract but imaginable, it could be possible, for example, that a country benefits from the greenhouse gas production of other nations or emits enough greenhouse gases to profit from it but too less greenhouse gases to contribute to the problem. Nevertheless, such a nation would probably try to expand its benefits by increasing its own greenhouse gas production and by that fulfil in the end also the Contributor Pays and the 104

105

Cf., Mathias Friman and Mattias Hjerpe, ‘Agreement, Significance, and Understandings of Historical Responsibility in Climate Change Negotiations’, Climate Policy 15, no. 3 (4 May 2015): 302–20, https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2014.916598. Of course, it has to be defined where the starting point for measuring historic responsibility lies. I will make a suggestion for a suitable starting point in the second chapter of this thesis.

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Ability to Pay Principle. A country that is able to pay over a long period of time is an affluent country that does not emit greenhouse gases, also an abstract but in theory imaginable scenario. It is very unlikely in our current world that such a country would not invest in economic strands that depend on greenhouse gas production and by this again fulfil also the other two principles. So, in theory it is possible to have historic responsibility while fulfilling only one of the three principles, what is important is that this principle is fulfilled over a certain longer period of time. Nevertheless, in reality, countries that fulfil one of these principles over a long period of time, fulfil also the other two principles. So, indeed, as Shue argues, historic responsibility is a combination of fulfilling the Contributor Pays Principle, the Beneficiary Pays Principle, and the Ability to Pay Principle. The reason for this is, that in our world contributing to climate change, benefitting from greenhouse gas production, or being affluent depends on each other and after some time all three levels are reached. Nevertheless, as I argued, some nations fulfil one or two of the principles. This is the case because they fulfil their respective principle only recently. Those are mostly countries that start their development path by increasing their emission production, so called economies in transition. China is a good example here. Although China did not start its development process with the start of the Industrial Revolution it is now one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters, therefore it is likely that China fulfils the Contributor Pays Principle and/ or the Beneficiary Pays Principle but it might not fulfil all three principles together yet. So, there seems to be a continuum of moral responsibility between the two extremes of fulfilling none of the three principles and by that only have moral responsibility due to the No Harm Principle and fulfilling all three principles and by that having additional historic responsibility. In between are those nations that fulfil only some of the principles. By that they have more moral responsibility than other nations that fulfil none of the principles but less responsibility than those nations with historic responsibility.106 106

Note that in theory there are a lot of other scenarios imaginable. For example, there could be a nation that fulfils all three principles only recently. By that it would fulfil these principles without having historic responsibility. Although it might be interesting examining all these theoretical cases, my aim is to analyse the current situation. I assume that this is best mirrored by my above given description.

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Before examining what this does imply for the actual climate negotiations, I will now turn to the second set of questions dealing with the moral principles as such.

1.4.8 Are the moral principles still relevant? By now, we have a relatively good understanding of the two extremes fulfilling only the No Harm Principle or the Historic Responsibility Principle. Between these extremes it is possible that states fulfil only some of the principles. Therefore, it is important to turn again to the separate principles, defend their importance and think about a hierarchy. The lasting relevance of the three principles becomes clear when the current unfair situation is focused on. As should have become clear, the narrative of the problem is mostly that western nations benefitted from emitting greenhouse gases because it is directly causally connected to their development and prosperity, and by that caused climate change. The main problems seem to be the disproportionate distribution of benefits, especially wealth, resulting from immoral activities of only some. People have a strong intuition that such a constellation is not morally adequate. The three presented principles explain why this intuition is valid. Even if some outer circumstances have changed and not all nations fall in the category of either historic responsible or victims, the general structure of the moral problem have remained the same. Therefore, also the principles are still adequate. They still capture the moral dimensions of the problem. Indeed, it is not a question of fulfilling either all or none of the principles, nevertheless, there did not evolve a completely new dimension to the problem. That is why it is still adequate to work with the Contributor Pays, the Beneficiary Pays, and the Ability to Pay Principle. A second question now evolving is, whether there exists a hierarchy among these principles. Although this is a controversial question that I cannot discuss in detail, I want to make the following suggestion. First, the Contributor Pays Principle is the principle that creates the strongest moral responsibilities. I presuppose that it is a valid moral concept that someone who causes damage is the first to address when it comes to stopping or compensating for the damage. 51

Second, the Beneficiary Pays Principle provides medium moral responsibilities. Profiting from a morally wrong situation is not as morally blameworthy as directly causing this situation but it is still a moral deficiency. Third, the Ability to Pay Principle implies the weakest moral responsibilities. Being affluent and capable to solve a problem is not morally problematic, like causing or benefitting from a problem. Nevertheless, it creates special moral obligations. In the case of climate change, an additional challenge is that there will evolve overlaps between the different principles, which makes a final hierarchy even more difficult and controversial. Nevertheless, bearing in mind that moral responsibilities are gradually distributed among states, ranging between responsibilities from the No Harm Principle and Historic Responsibility, and the suggested hierarchy between the separate principles already provides a robust moral basis for discussing equity in the context of the Paris Agreement and the Global Stocktake (GST). This will be the task of the following chapter.

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2. Equity and the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement Article 14 of the Paris Agreement defines the Global Stocktake (GST). The GST is a mechanism with which the Parties’ progress and ambition gaps towards the overall goal of the Paris Agreement should be reported. This should be done every five years, starting in 2023. Two important elements of this process are that article 14 demands to “(…) assess the collective progress (…) in the light of equity (…)”.107 In this chapter I will examine how the GST could be designed in order to fulfil the moral equity criteria that I have developed above. To do so, I will shortly refer to the (historical) context of the GST, its mandate, main ideas and goals, and to its relevance in the context of international climate policy.

2.1

Description of the UN-process

2.1.1 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change In 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed by 192 Parties. It should encourage its members to address human-caused climate change and prevent relating harms. Negotiations under

107

Art. 14, Para. 1, ‘Paris Agreement’ (2016) (emphasis added).

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the UNFCCC resulted in the adoption of the first climate treaty in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol, which became effective in 2005.108 Under the UNFCCC countries are clustered into Annex I and Non-Annex I countries. Annex I countries are industrialised countries and emerging economies. Non-Annex I countries are developing countries. 109 The Kyoto Protocol picks up on this division and defines obligations for Annex I countries.110 They must fulfil binding emission reduction targets. Their efforts are reviewed and supervised. Non-Annex I countries do not have respective obligations. Additionally, industrialised countries (Annex II countries111) have to provide financial means for Non-annex I Parties. This division should mirror the responsibilities of some nations for today’s large amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is an attempt to fulfil the UNFCCC’s principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR).112

2.1.2 Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities The Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) is recorded in Art. 7 of the Rio Declaration and should ensure that climate policies remain

108

109

110

111

112

Cf., ‘History of the Convention | UNFCCC’, accessed 24 August 2018, https://unfccc.int/process/the-convention/history-of-the-convention#eq-1; Art. 2, ‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’ (1994). Cf., ‘Parties & Observers | UNFCCC’, accessed 4 July 2018, https://unfccc.int/partiesobservers; For the exact allocation of Parties, see: ‘Parties | UNFCCC’, accessed 19 September 2018, https://unfccc.int/process/parties-non-party-stakeholders/parties-convention-and-observer-states. Art. 2, ‘Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’ (2005). Annex II countries are industrialised countries, so they are a subgroup of Annex I countries. Nevertheless, the most important and most referred to differentiation consists between Annex I and Non-Annex I countries. Art. 3, Para. 1, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

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fair and compatible with development policies. 113 By this principle the global community of states acknowledges climate change as a problem that needs to be solved collectively, but since responsibilities and national circumstances differ, obligations should do as well.114 It is, therefore, based on the Contributor or Polluter Pays Principle115 and the Ability to Pay Principle, that will be also relevant in this thesis, and provides a justification for an unequal distribution of obligations.116 Under the UNFCCC the principle is referred to in article 3.1. The Parties to the Agreement should act to achieve the objections of the Agreement “(…) in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”117 Nevertheless, although it provides a strong guidance mechanism, CBDR is no legally binding principle under the UNFCCC since all formulations, that would indicate so, were exchanged during the negotiations.118 The UNFCCC’s utilisation of the CBDR could be interpreted in the way that Annex I countries have responsibilities for mitigating climate change and assistance while Non-Annex I countries are responsible for adaptation as well as cooperation. 119 Under the Kyoto Protocol the Annex I countries’ obligations were strengthened through the establishment of mandatory quantified emissions targets. Non-Annex I countries did not receive new obligations. This resulted in a conflict about the role of developing countries in the context of tackling climate change. To what extend should they be covered by binding obligations and how sharp should the difference between developed and developing countries be constructed?120

113 114

115 116 117 118

119 120

Principle 7, ‘The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development’ (1992). Cf., Rajamani, ‘The Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility and the Balance of Commitments under the Climate Regime’, p. 121. Cf., ibid., p. 122. Cf., ibid., p. 123. Art. 3, Para. 1, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Cf., Rajamani, ‘The Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility and the Balance of Commitments under the Climate Regime’, p. 124. Cf., ibid., p. 125/126. Cf., ibid., p. 126/127. The Kyoto Protocol is presented in more detail also in the next section.

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2.1.3 The Kyoto Protocol Under the Kyoto Protocol an overall emission reduction of 5% by 2012 compared to 1990 levels was envisioned.121 This should be achieved by national actions supplemented by three market mechanisms. All activities and transactions are monitored and supervised by the UNFCCC secretariat. Since, by that, a superior international institution dedicates legally binding obligations to the states in order to achieve an overall goal, the Kyoto Protocol constitutes a top-down approach. The determination and attribution of required actions happens from the multinational to the national level. Processes to determine actions would follow the opposite direction in a bottom-up approach.122 Most critics argue that the achievements under the Kyoto Protocol mainly resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and consequent decrease in energy consumption in the region rather than from improved climate policies. Another problem was that on the one hand, the greenhouse gas emissions of Annex I countries did not decrease very much, and on the other hand, emissions by NonAnnex I countries increased to the extent that overall global GHG emissions increased.123 In numbers this means that the total energy use124 emissions of Annex I countries peaked in 1990 at an amount of 15.50 Gt. After this it declined to 13.80 Gt in 2015. Total emissions of Annex I countries, including emissions from the sectors waste, agriculture, solvent and other process use, industrial processes,

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Art. 3, Para. 1, Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Cf., ‘International Climate Policy Architectures – Top-Down and Bottom-Up | Climate Policy Info Hub’, accessed 14 September 2018, https://climatepolicyinfohub.eu/ international-climate-policy-architectures-%E2%80%93-top-down-and-bottom. Craig Jones, ‘The Kyoto Protocol: Climate Change Success or Global Warming Failure?’, Circular Ecology, accessed 18 September 2018, http://www.circularecology.com/1/post/ 2015/02/the-kyoto-protocol-climate-change-success-or-global-warming-failure.html; Duncan Clark, ‘Has the Kyoto Protocol Made Any Difference to Carbon Emissions? | Environment | The Guardian’, The Guardian, 26 November 2012, https://www. theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/nov/26/kyoto-protocol-carbon-emissions. Energy use is specifically important for development. Therefore, it is especially interesting to compare the changes that occurred within this sector.

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land-use and land-use change, and others, peaked in 1989 at an amount of 19.75 Gt. Between 1990 and 2015 they decreased from 19.36 Gt. to 16.16 Gt. In contrast to this, emissions from Non-Annex I countries continued to increase. In 1990 emissions from energy use accounted for 7.26 Gt and in 2015 already for 20.10 Gt. Total emissions increased from 17.62 Gt in 1990 to 31.98 Gt in 2015. This means that between 1990 and 2015 global emissions within the sector of energy use increased from 22.90 Gt to 24.50 Gt and total emissions from 34.50 Gt to 48.85 Gt.125 In contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, its successor the Paris Agreement, has a pledge-and-review structure, which includes elements of a bottom-up approach, no binding emission reduction targets, and it also addresses developing countries. It was adopted in 2015 and came into effect in 2016. The goals of the Paris Agreement can be divided into long term goals and operational goals. The long-term goals are “(…) [h]olding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels (…).”126 While the operational goals are defined as the “(…) aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible (…) so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century (…).”127 Since the negotiators tried to draw lessons from the Kyoto Protocol’s flaws, the character of this climate treaty is different. The idea that only developed countries had obligations to reduce emissions was heavily criticised as ineffective.128 The reason for this is that nations like China or India, Non-Annex I countries under the Convention, are nowadays one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters worldwide.129 Another important aspect is that the USA did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol due to its obligatory character, which made it impossible to pass

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126 127 128

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Cf., PIK, ‘The PRIMAP-Hist National Historical Emissions Time Series’, PIK Paris Reality Check: PRIMAP-hist, n.d., https://www.pik-potsdam.de/paris-reality-check/ primap-hist/#id=nonannexi&entity=kyotoghg. Art. 2, Para. 1a, Paris Agreement. Art. 4, Para. 1, Paris Agreement. See for example: Bang, Hovi, and Skodvin, ‘The Paris Agreement’, p. 210; Keohane and Oppenheimer, ‘Paris’, p. 146. Global Carbon Atlas, ‘CO2 Emissions | Global Carbon Atlas’, 2017, https://www.osti. gov/servlets/purl/1389331/, accessed 18 September 2018.

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it through the US senate.130 Also, the market mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol did not work out as anticipated and should be improved under the Paris Agreement.131 All these aspects influenced the emergence of the Paris Agreement and are worth analysing. The two most important aspects for this thesis are the shift from a top-down to a pledge-and-review structure and the fact that all nations, also developing countries and emerging economies, have to submit so-called nationally determined contributions (NDCs). NDCs are agendas on national climate policy that are defined by the respective state itself. They include aspects of mitigation, adaptation and finance. Every five years the states have to submit new or revised NDCs that are more ambitious than the previous ones. As Christian Holz and Xolisa Ngwadla132 explain, the concept of NDCs mirrors the voluntary character of the Paris Agreement, whereas its transparency and accountability provisions and its long-term goals are the remaining top down elements. The idea is that states are obligated to submit NDCs and to take national mitigation efforts to contribute to the overall goal of the agreement. However, the content is up to the respective party. Even to fulfil the NDC is not mandatory in the sense that the Parties that do not comply with their

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See for example: Jon Hovi, Detlef F. Sprinz, and Guri Bang, ‘Why the United States Did Not Become a Party to the Kyoto Protocol: German, Norwegian, and US Perspectives’, European Journal of International Relations 18, no. 1 (March 2012): 129–50, https:// doi.org/10.1177/1354066110380964; Paul Reynolds, ‘Kyoto: Why Did the US Pull Out?’, BBC, 30 March 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1248757.stm; Helen Dewar and Kevin Sullivan, ‘Senate Republicans Call Kyoto Pact Dead’, WashingtonPost.Com, 11 December 1997, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/climate/ stories/clim121197b.htm??noredirect=on. Cf., Lambert Schneider, ‘Is the CDM Fulfilling Its Environmental and Sustainable Development Objectives? An Evaluation of the CDM and Options for Improvement’ (Berlin: WWF, November 2007); Igor Shishlov, Romain Morel, and Valentin Bellassen, ‘Compliance of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in the First Commitment Period’, Climate Policy 16, no. 6 (2016): 768–82, https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2016.1164658. Cf., Christian Holz and Xolisa Ngwadla, ‘The Global Stocktake Under the Paris Agreement. Opportunities and Challenges’ (European Capacity Building Initiative, October 2016), http://www.ecbi.org/news/global-stocktake-under-paris-agreement-opportunitiesand-challenges.

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targets do not have to fear strict sanctions.133 Still, they are obligated to at least implement some measures in order to attempt to reach their targets.134 The change in character of the latest climate treaty also indicates a change of the atmosphere within the whole UNFCCC process. The Paris Agreement does not externally impose a burden on certain nations. Instead, each nation is free to decide on its own how much it is willing to contribute without the dangers of unfulfillable duties and respective sanctions. By this, each party keeps its autonomy, which also makes it easier for states to sign the agreement. Former US president Obama, for example, could sign the treaty without needing the approval of the US senate.135 Lukas Hermwille states that the Paris Agreement could be the starting point of a complete paradigm shift when it comes to climate change. The Kyoto Protocol handled climate change as a solely environmental problem which should be solved by “(…) policies (…) from the well-established toolbox of environmental policy-making (…)”136 focussing on emission reduction mechanisms. In recent years this notion shifted towards considering climate change as also interdependent with development challenges. Limiting the emission of greenhouse gases was considered as too heavy a burden for developing countries since it contradicts their right to development.137 On this basis it could be argued that industrialised

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Note that there are some guidelines in the Paris Agreement and current negotiations are working towards some streamlining. But they refer in principle to the type of information and how it is presented not to the actual target. Cf., Daniel Bodansky, ‘The Legal Character of the Paris Agreement’, Review of European Community & International Environmental Law (RECIEL) 25, no. 2 (2016), https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1111/reel.12154. Cf., Wolfgang Obergassel et al., ‘Phoenix from the Ashes : An Analysis of the Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ; Part 1’, Environmental Law and Management 27, no. 6 (2015): 243 – 262, http://nbn-resolving. de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:wup4-opus-63730, p. 246. Lukas Hermwille, ‘Climate Change as a Transformation Challenge. A New Climate Policy Paradigm?’, Ecological Perspectives For Science and Society 25, no. 1 (2016): 19–22, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oekom/gaia/2016/00000025/00000001/art00007, p.19. Cf., ibid, p. 19.

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countries, therefore, should bear the costs for acting on climate change and compensate developing countries for the occurring harms. The differences between Annex I and Non-Annex I countries especially under the Kyoto Protocol reflect this understanding.138 In contrast, according to Hermwille the Paris Agreement marks the beginning of a paradigm shift towards considering climate change as a transformation challenge. “Climate change will unquestionably transform global societies. The question is whether this transformation is the result of a moderated, cooperative, and reflexive endeavour from the global community, or whether this change occurs through chaos and catastrophe as a result of unmitigated climate change.”139

Climate change will and does occur and it will change our societies. It cannot be seen as a separate environmental problem that will be solved or not. The Paris Agreement with its changed character acknowledges this by setting a focus on the necessity to jointly finding solutions for dealing with the unpreventable fact that some kind of transformation will happen. That is also why development must happen in the context and consistent with acting on climate change. Considering both aspects as contradicting is not adequate anymore. It could be argued that the idea of the Paris Agreement is to not enforce a change in behaviour by strict, obligatory emission reduction targets but to start a process of voluntary, self-imposed action, including every nation in the world.140

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Cf., Edward A. Page, ‘Distributing the Burdens of Climate Change’, Environmental Politics 17, no. 4 (2008), https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1080/09644010802193419, p. 557. Lukas Hermwille, ‘Climate Change as a Transformation Challenge. A New Climate Policy Paradigm?’, Ecological Perspectives For Science and Society 25, no. 1 (2016): 19–22, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oekom/gaia/2016/00000025/00000001/ art00007, p.20. Cf., Daniel Bodansky, ‘The Paris Climate Change Agreement: A New Hope?’, The Paris Climate Change Agreement: A New Hope?, January 2017, https://doi.org/10.5305/ amerjintelaw.110.2.0288.

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Regarding the ineffectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol, this completely different attempt has the potential to transform international climate policy, to reach a consensus among the nations that acting on climate change is non-negotiable, and that it is a chance, not a burden, for the international community to take action that will make global societies more liveable for current and future generations.141 Nicholas Chan notes that within these two climate treaties the notion of fairness differs as well.142 Under the Kyoto Protocol an overall emissions reduction target was defined (Art. 3.1). Based on this, the countries’ individual emission limits were determined in that way that the Parties were obligated to calculate their limits by multiplying a defined percentage of their overall emissions with the factor five (Art. 3.7).143 So, the extent of each contribution depends on the fact that only a certain limited amount of greenhouse gases could be emitted by the global community. This external parameter for defining fair emission targets bears the danger of imposing too heavy burdens on single states. Under the Paris Agreement the fair shares do not depend on an external parameter but on the national circumstances. Each nation can decide on its own how much it is willing and able to contribute to the overall goal of the Paris Agreement. A problem with this approach of course is that the actual needed emission reduction will not be reached. Indeed, the aggregated NDCs do not yet result in limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, so there is a gap between the declared goal of the Parties to the Paris Agreement and their actual contributions to this goal.144 Holz and Ngwadla consider the GST as the main mechanism to bridge this gap. In their view, the GST is the “(…) most comprehensive collective review exercise within the Paris outcome, and is explicitly intended to connect the level of effort

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Cf., Charlotte Streck, Paul Keenlyside, and Moritz von Unger, ‘The Paris Agreement: A New Beginning’, Journal for European Environmental & Planning Law 13 (2016): 3–29, https://doi.org/doi 10.1163/18760104-01301002. Cf., Nicholas Chan, ‘Climate Contributions and the Paris Agreement: Fairness and Equity in a Bottom-Up Architecture’, Ethics & International Affairs 30 (2016): 291–301, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0892679416000228, p. 293/294. See in this context also: Sebastian Oberthür and Hermann E. Ott, Das Kyoto-Protokoll. Internationale Klimapolitik Für Das 21. Jahrhundert (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2000), p. 166-174. Cf., ‘The Emission Gap Report 2017’ (Nairobi: UN Environment (UNEP), 2017).

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in Parties’ undertakings to the global goals and objectives across the pillars [mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology transfer, capacity building, loss and damage,…] of the climate regime”.145

2.1.4 The Global Stocktake As mentioned above, the GST is defined in Art. 14 of the Paris Agreement. “1. The Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Agreement shall periodically take stock of the implementation of this Agreement to assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this Agreement and its long-term goals (referred to as the "global stocktake"). It shall do so in a comprehensive and facilitative manner, considering mitigation, adaptation and the means of implementation and support, and in the light of equity and the best available science. 2. The Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Agreement shall undertake its first global stocktake in 2023 and every five years thereafter unless otherwise decided by the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Agreement. 3. The outcome of the global stocktake shall inform Parties in updating and enhancing, in a nationally determined manner, their actions and support in accordance with the relevant provisions of this Agreement, as well as in enhancing international cooperation for climate action.”146

The process of steadily reviewing Parties’ efforts is expected to raise ambitions within the NDCs so that the gap between the Parties’ declared contributions and 145

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Christian Holz and Xolisa Ngwadla, ‘The Global Stocktake Under the Paris Agreement. Opportunities and Challenges’ (European Capacity Building Initiative, October 2016), http://www.ecbi.org/news/global-stocktake-under-paris-agreement-opportunities-andchallenges, p. 4. ‘Paris Agreement’, Art. 14.

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the overall goal of the Paris Agreement could eventually be closed. Another important point here is that the Parties have to revise their NDCs every five years. Both processes are conceptualised in a way that the revision of the NDCs takes place two years after each GST. This has the effect that the Parties are constantly dealing with their climate policies, since preparing NDCs and the GST needs lead time on the national level. Furthermore, results from the GST could by that be more easily translated into the NDCs and vice versa.147 There are several challenging aspects that need further international negotiations. Since this thesis deals with the question, how to implement a concept of equity into the design of the GST, I will list some points that are important to clarify in this context. Firstly, in general, the explicit mandate to consider aspects of equity gives rise to the question of how to deal with different responsibilities and abilities of different nations. The realisation of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities under the Kyoto Protocol was not entirely successful. Thus, the global community had to find an alternative solution for the Paris Agreement.148 This is also the main question of this work and in the following I will deal with this challenge in more detail. Secondly, the instruction to “assess the collective” progress of the Parties to the agreement bears - among others - the danger of free-riding. 149 Evaluating the achievements of the whole group of Parties to the Paris Agreement could cause that some nations that did not contribute enough hide behind the overall achievements of the global community. Indeed, the transparency framework defined in Article 13 of the Paris Agreement establishes an independent review process for

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Cf., Lukas Hermwille and Anne Siemons, ‘What Makes an Ideal Global Stocktake? A Functional Analysis’, Discussion Paper (German Environment Agency, 2018), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327581899_What_Makes_an_Ideal_Global_ Stocktake_A_Functional_Analysis?_sg=pWPNh-BMFtV17QiK1EcB3LWBYbFsJoE WE4axsxZ3MOE1vCnqJfsrtm4sL5CWR6H52RPmDEvAIg, p. 3/4. Cf., Obergassel et al., ‘Phoenix from the Ashes : An Analysis of the Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ; Part 1’, p. 249/250. Cf., William A. Pize Joseph E. Aldy and Keigo Akimoto, ‘Comparing Emissions Mitigation Efforts across Countries’, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2015. 1119098, pp. 1ff..

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each individual country but this review only evaluates the implementation of the NDC and not the NDC as such, for example whether it is ambitious enough. So, if a country defines and fulfils an unambitious NDC and another country defines an ambitious NDC and does not fulfil it completely, the transparency framework will not reflect this situation adequately. In a scenario where the overall collective progress is measured by the GST, the lack of ambition of the first country would not stand out either. Apart from this, a practical problem is that it is not clear how to fulfil this requirement. It is questionable how to evaluate collective progress that is the aggregate of individual contributions without considering these individual contributions. Jürgen Friedrich suggests interpreting this as referring only to a collective output of the GST while the input has to, as a matter of fact, remain individual.150 Also the wording of the Article 13 “(…) the purpose of the (transparency framework) (…) is to inform the Global Stocktake” suggests that the GST should work up individual information and that in this way, the demand of assessing “collective progress” has to be fulfilled by its outcomes. Still, the problems of free-riding and how to model this collective output in general would remain. I will consider this challenge again in the following chapter. Thirdly, Art. 14 contains aspects of both, ex ante and ex post evaluations. As Friedrich explains, examining individual processes and unfulfilled collective requirements is an ex post evaluation while pointing out further options, and by that raising ambitions, is an ex ante evaluation.151 This has to be kept in mind when designing the GST because it requires different forms of assessment. The first option focuses on past actions, therefore the assessment would have the character of praising or shaming. The second focuses on possible future activities which requires assessments in form of recommendations. Especially the latter assessment type could support countries without criticising them and fulfil the facilitative role of the GST.152

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Cf., Jürgen Friedrich, ‘Global Stocktake (Article 14)’, in The Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Analysis and Commentary, ed. Daniel Klein et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 319–37, pp. 324/325. Cf., ibid., p. 321. Cf., ibid., pp. 324 ff.

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In this context, Hermwille and Siemons discuss four different functions of the GST that, ideally, should all be fulfilled.153 Due to the authors the GST functions as a pacemaker by coordinating national and global policy activities. Its second function is ensuring accountability by ensuring that the Parties comply with their NDCs. Third, it should enhance ambition for future NDCs and fourth, the guidance and signal function reflects the facilitating role the GST should play. Fourthly, the GST should be applicable to mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation. In the following I will focus on mitigation, although adaption and means of implementation are also important inter-linked aspects, especially in the context of equity. Nevertheless, since the scope of this thesis is limited they have to be discussed elsewhere. This list is probably not a complete summary of challenges and ambiguities in the context of the GST. Still, for the purpose of this thesis they are the most relevant ones.

2.1.5 The GST’s relevance in the context of international policy and addressing climate change The Paris Agreement is considered to be an outstanding success in international diplomacy.154 It is the first climate treaty that was signed by virtually all nations worldwide.155 As I have explained above, its changed character could contribute to address climate change in an efficient and constructive way. It offers a chance to include all nations into this process, depending on their national circumstances. The Global Stocktake plays an important role in this context. It supplements a constant process of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) with collective stocktaking every five years. In addition, the Parties have to revise their 153 154

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Hermwille and Siemons, ‘What Makes an Ideal Global Stocktake? A Functional Analysis’. Cf., Wolfgang Obergassel et al., ‘Phoenix from the Ashes: An Analysis of the Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; Part 2’, Environmental Law and Management 28, no. 1 (2016): 3 – 12, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn: de:bsz:wup4-opus-63745, p. 5; Bang, Hovi, and Skodvin, ‘The Paris Agreement’, p. 209. For the status of ratification of each country see: ‘United Nations Treaty Collection’, accessed 26 August 2018, https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY &mtdsg_no=XXVII-7-d&chapter=27&clang=_en.

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NDCs every five years, two years after each GST. This leads to the fact that climate policy will constantly remain on national policy agendas. As Hermwille points out, with its mechanisms such as the GST, the Paris Agreement functions as a pacemaker for global climate policy.156 Of course, the voluntary character of the Paris Agreement and the construction of the GST could also be assessed critically. Letting the states decide which actions they will take to react to climate change bears the danger of unambitious commitments, especially in combination with the absence of sanctions or an otherwise effective compliance mechanism. Nevertheless, a very important aim in the context of climate negotiations is to achieve high participation.157 The described characteristics of the Paris Agreement were the reason why so many states ratified the treaty in a relatively short period of time. It is the design of the GST that will influence to a large degree whether this will result in an overall success or not. So, the GST has a highly relevant function for achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Still, the global community has not yet decided on details concerning the design of this mechanism. It remains to be discussed, among others, how to take stock in an equitable manner. Clarifying this point is crucial not only to fulfil the explicit demand within the legal text but also for keeping the global community motivated to stick to its commitments. Parties that have the feeling of being treated unfairly will probably not cooperate or will not contribute to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement as much as possible. In the following I will examine which implications for the GST result from my findings in the first chapter.

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Lukas Hermwille, ‘Linking Non-State Actors and Transnational Climate Initiatives to the Paris Agreement’, Policy Brief (Wuppertal: Wuppertal Institute, June 2016), p. 2; See also, the GST as the ‘engine of the Agreement’, Friedrich, ‘Global Stocktake (Article 14)’, p. 320. Cf., Bang, Hovi, and Skodvin, ‘The Paris Agreement’, p. 212.

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2.2

Equity and the GST

In the first chapter I have discussed the moral relevance of climate change. It became apparent that states are the main bearers of moral responsibility for preventing harm from climate change. This moral responsibility comes in different degrees depending on which and how many of the three principles, Contributor Pays, Beneficiary Pays, and Ability to Pay, is suitable for a respective state. In this chapter I will show that the groups formed in the previous chapter could be adopted for the design of the Global Stocktake. Therefore, I will first explain and evaluate the already existing classification of countries under the UNFCCC. I will show that the grouping under the UNFCCC is not useful. Nevertheless, the general idea of classifying countries is still promising. Therefore, I will suggest alternative parameters and thresholds along which countries could be grouped in a reasonable manner. At the end of this chapter I will suggest how this could be put into practice.

2.2.1 The grouping under the UNFCCC As mentioned above, under the UNFCCC countries are divided into Annex I and Non-Annex I countries. Annex I countries are industrialised countries, which means that this group consists of all OECD member states, except Mexico and South Korea158, and of countries with economies in transition, including the Russian Federation, the Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European States, except Yugoslavia and Albania159. Industrialised countries are characterised by indicators like economic dependence on industry, high per capita income, high technology standards, capital intensive production of goods, high productivity, 158

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‘Annex-I-Staaten’, klimaretter.info, accessed 4 July 2018, https://www.klimaretter. info/tipps-klima-lexikon/4282-annex-i-staaten. ‘Parties & Observers | UNFCCC’; ‘Annex-Länder’, Wissen.de, accessed 4 July 2018, https://www.wissen.de/lexikon/annex-laender.

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high level of education, active foreign economic relationships, and convertible and stable currencies.160 While economies in transition possess a high rate of growth, especially in the industrial sector, their social circumstances, like the level of literacy and life expectations, and political structures do not match the level of development.161 Non-Annex I countries are developing countries that are especially vulnerable to climate change. Developing countries have a low Gross National Income (GNI), a minor labour productivity, a low literacy rate, and a high share of inhabitants dependent on agriculture.162 This classification is the result of trying to fulfil the Principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and the Contributor Pays Principle. The main factor that seems decisive is the degree of development of each country. There are three main problems with this kind of classification. Firstly, this classification implies that there are some countries that have duties to act on climate change and others that have no duties to act, which again implies that there are only some nations that bear moral responsibility for solving problems related to climate change. As I have shown, this kind of argumentation is not appropriate. At first sight, all states have moral responsibility to act on climate change due to the moral requirement of ensuring basic rights. The crucial point is that there are different degrees of moral responsibility. This means that, although the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities seems to acknowledge that climate change is a joint challenge, the realization of this principle under the UNFCCC misses this point. This is exactly the point Caney tries to make. It is not sufficient to establish an equity framework based on Burden-Sharing Justice. Although it contains important and morally worthy elements it needs to be supplemented with Caney’s idea of Harm Avoidance Justice to capture the whole moral relevance of climate change.

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‘Industrieländer | bpb’, accessed 4 July 2018, http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/lexika/ lexikon-der-wirtschaft/19720/industrielaender. ‘Schwellenländer | bpb’, accessed 4 July 2018, http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/lexika/ lexikon-der-wirtschaft/20580/schwellenlaender. Cf., ‘Entwicklungsländer | bpb’, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, accessed 15 August 2018, http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/lexika/lexikon-der-wirtschaft/19220/entwicklungslaender.

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Secondly, the differentiation between Annex I and Non-Annex I countries is based on the economic power of the respective states. The underlying argument is that on the one hand there are those countries that contributed a lot to climate change and are, thus, also in a position to solve this problem and, on the other hand, there are countries that did not contribute to climate change and that suffer from a lack of development. This line of argumentation again misses several important points. Of course there are some states that are highly developed with the effect of emitting too much greenhouse gases and of course there are also some states that lack this kind of development as a result of not having emitted relevant amounts of greenhouse gases but also of being extremely poor and vulnerable to the harms of climate change. Nevertheless, those two kinds of states are two extremes of a spectrum and as time passes, those nations at the not-contributing extreme will develop towards the opposite extreme. This results in the fact that there by now are countries that have not contributed to climate change in the past but are contributing to a large degree now, for example China and the Gulf States. Those states are not covered accurately by the binary classification under the UNFCCC. This directly leads to third problem, the classification under the UNFCCC turned out to be ineffective. Inefficiency might not be a morally strong counterargument for a process that is morally accurate. Nevertheless, as became clear from the first two points, this is not the case for the grouping of countries under the UNFCCC. What is more, the fact that even if Annex I countries would drastically change their emission productions, this effort would be partially offset by the emission productions of countries like China, India or the Gulf States. This is an additional argument for revising how countries are clustered. Before I argue for an alternative approach of clustering countries, I will now show why it is reasonable at all to divide countries into different groups under the UNFCCC and for fulfilling the purposes of the Paris Agreement and the Global Stocktake.

2.2.2 The necessity of clustering countries Since it became apparent that the current way of dividing different countries into two major groups is a morally deficient and ineffective way of tackling climate 69

change, the question arises why countries should be clustered at all instead of determining and judging each country’s individual duties and responsibilities. I have already argued that states differ in their national circumstances, their level of development, their capacities and their moral responsibility for climate change. Consequently, the most effective and equitable way of finding solutions for climate change would be to determine different targets for each state. If each nation’s individual national circumstances determined its fair share, it could be guaranteed that every nation would pursue targets that are as ambitious as possible without placing an unfair burden on the respective country. In this way, it could be prevented that high emitting countries like the Gulf States are sorted under a group of countries without any strict obligations while poor European countries like Bulgaria have to fulfil emission targets similar to those of other EU members. Although such an approach seems compelling in theory, it is not realizable within the current landscape of the global community. This is the case because of two reasons. Firstly, to guarantee that this approach is as effective and fair as possible, it must in the first instance be possible to determine a perfectly accurate equity framework. Because of the complexity of the moral problem of climate change and its causes this seems nearly impossible. Secondly, even if such an equity framework had been developed, at the present day it would be impossible to enforce it at a global level. Such an approach would probably not be in the interest of the most powerful global actors, such as the USA, the EU, or lobby groups, such as the oil industry or the automotive lobby. Since there is no global institution that can enforce international law above the states, it is very unlikely that such an approach is realised. As a consequence, determining and judging contributions for each state separately is only possible under ideal conditions. Since these ideal conditions are not given, it is more rewarding to examine which substantial options are available. Another reason why it is not possible to judge individual contributions by the states under the GST is that the legal text of the Paris Agreement explicitly demands to assess collective progress. So, if assessing individual countries is not possible and the attempt to sort countries into two groups was not successful, is it more promising to judge the progress of the whole community of states jointly? In such an approach every single country would still have to reveal their individual efforts, otherwise there would not be any available data for measuring the 70

collective progress. In this respect, measuring the aggregated progress of the global community seems too challenging because the states do not wish to unveil needed sensible information. At the same time, it would not be strict enough to prevent free-riding. Since it would not be envisaged to directly judge individual countries, there is no possibility to adequately react to countries that act counterproductively while hiding behind the overall efforts of the global community. Also, there would be no possibilities to raise overall ambition and to fulfil the facilitative character of the Global Stocktake. The measures that have to be taken by single states are too diverse that general advices could lead to needed changes. So, assessing collective progress by assessing the whole community of states as one single group is not reasonable either.163 As Holz and Ngwada argue, a promising compromise between the two above presented options would be to assess countries’ efforts in the context of smaller groups.164 Assessing groups of countries determined by moral parameters would fulfil the demand of assessing collective progress and the requirement to take equity into consideration. Countries would be judged only by and against nations with a comparable amount of moral responsibility, which is probably more attractive to them than being judged by all states. Even to disclose sensitive information and data within a smaller group is preferable to revealing it for the whole global community, although these groups partially will consist of direct competitors. However, there cannot be found an effective assessing process that will be totally attractive for all countries. The advantages of this suggestion are first, that smaller groups are for most of the countries generally preferable than larger groups, because they must not disclose information to the whole group of states, and second, that it is more comfortable to being judged only within a group of countries with similar amounts of responsibility. Within the global setting, only

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Note that it is nevertheless an imaginable outcome of the negotiations on the GST design. In such a case, it would be necessary to relocate a better assessment process on the level of for example research institutes or NGOs. I will refer to this aspect in the third chapter in more detail. Cf., Christian Holz and Xolisa Ngwadla, ‘The Global Stocktake Under the Paris Agreement. Opportunities and Challenges’ (European Capacity Building Initiative, October 2016), http://www.ecbi.org/news/global-stocktake-under-paris-agreement-opportunitiesand-challenges, pp. 18ff.

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the actions and progresses of whole groups would be negotiated. Furthermore, since responsibilities of different groups would be determined beforehand, it would not be possible to pass liabilities around within the groups to such an extent as it is currently the case.165 The problem of free-riding would probably not be solved completely but it would be easier to identify nations that do not cooperate and react respectively in smaller groups. Still, this is a very ambitious scenario. Finding an agreement on how to build these groups and deciding which moral parameters should be taken into consideration is at least very complicated. Moreover, it is not clear how moral parameters could be translated into practical thresholds. For example, how much greenhouse gases must a state emit in order to fulfil the Contributor Pays Principle? How can the benefits of emitting greenhouse gases be determined and measured? Which datasets and timeframes should be used? All these questions are highly controversial and their answers could influence to which group a country belongs. The exclusion of land-use, for example, from the data on greenhouse gas emission production influences the notion of causal responsibility of Brazil to a considerable degree.166 In the following I will give an example of how such thresholds could be built and what impact that would have on the design of the Global Stocktake. I will use the findings of the first chapter as a basis for this and will define thresholds for the Contributor Pays Principle, the Beneficiary Pays Principle and the Ability to Pay Principle. Although there are good reasons to use my chosen framework conditions, there are strong reasons to use others as well. That is why I do not want to state that my suggestion is the only possible solution for designing the Global Stocktake and the UNFCCC process in a more equitable way. Instead, I want to

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See for example: Pauw et al., ‘Different Perspectives on Diffentiated Responsibilities. A State-of-the-Art Review of the Notion of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities in International Negotiations’, pp. 21-29. For land use activities in Brazil, see: Gilberto Câmara et al., ‘Modelling Land Use Changes in Brazil 2000-2050’ (INPE, IPEA, IIASA, UNEP-WCMC, November 2015), http://www.redd-pac.org/reports/lucbrazil.pdf; For general challenges concerning land use data, see: Tobias Kuemmerle et al., ‘Challenges and Opportunities in Mapping Land Use Intensity Globally’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 5, no. 5 (2013): 484–93, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2013.06.002.

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show that there are possibilities to translate findings from moral theory into practice and that it is a worthy attempt to conduct these negotiations.

2.2.3 Generic grouping The aim of this section is to define a threshold as indicator for moral responsibility for each of the above described principles. For each state it could then be examined which principles are fulfilled and which are not and whether there are overlaps. Countries that cross the same thresholds, which means that they fulfil the same principle or set of principles, will then be sorted into one group. I used datasets from the PRIMAP-hist time series, which is a composite dataset of Kyoto greenhouse gas emissions. It covers all nations and the whole period between 1850-1900.167 Further, I used population data of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which gives account on total national population sizes between 1950 and 2015168, the Human Development Index169, and the World Bank Income groups170. I acknowledge that there are good reasons for choosing different datasets, which also will lead to different results. My attempt in this section is to show that there is a way of modelling groups and not to suggest a perfectly accurate outcome. Therefore, I will work with datasets from reliable and well-established institutions.

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Dataset: J. Gütschow et al., ‘The PRIMAP-Hist National Historical Emissions Time Series (1850-2015). V.1.2.’ (GFZ Data Service, 2018), https://doi.org/10.5880/PIK. 2018.003; Data description: J. Gütschow et al., ‘The PRIMAP-Hist National Historical Emissions Time Series, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 8’, 2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-8571-2016. ‘World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, DVD Edition’ (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017), 2017). ‘Human Development Data (1990-2017) | Human Development Reports’, accessed 19 September 2018, http://hdr.undp.org/en/data. World Bank, ‘Data for High Income, Upper Middle Income, Lower Middle Income, Low Income | Data’, accessed 22 September 2018, https://data.worldbank.org/?locations=XD-XT-XN-XM.

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2.2.4 The threshold for the Contributor Pays Principle The Contributor Pays Principle should mirror the moral responsibility of states with causal responsibility. Those who contributed and currently contribute more than others to the problem of climate change should also bear a higher amount of moral responsibilities for reasons I have presented in the first chapter. How could this be translated into a practical threshold? For the Contributor Pays Principle two aspects are important. First, there is a component of time. To determine causal responsibility for climate change, emissions that have been produced in the past have to be taken into consideration because those cause today’s climate change. Nevertheless, since climate change is a result of cumulative emissions and due to the fact that any produced amount of emissions should be prevented, it is also important to identify countries that have developed into large emitters only in recent years. I have chosen a timeframe from 1980 until 2015. The latter mainly because of practical reasons since at the current point of writing reliable data is available only until then. Choosing the former date as a starting year is more controversial. Industrialised countries started to emit greenhouse gases with the start of the Industrial Revolution around 1800. Consequently, this qualifies as a starting year as well. Nevertheless, since under the Contributor Pays Principle causal responsibility is connected to moral responsibility it is important to consider whether the emitting actors knew that they caused harm. As shown above, otherwise it could be argued that it is not adequate to place moral responsibilities on them. Following this line of argumentation, the 1970s would be a reasonable starting point, because in 1972 the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) took place. Alternatively, 1990 could be chosen because at this point in time the UNFCCC process started, which is a strong indicator for the arising awareness of climate change as human caused and harming. Nevertheless, international policy is a process. With the first conference on the topic of climate change the overall atmosphere and attitudes cannot be changed immediately. Considering that every relevant agent needs time to become aware of the problem of climate change, the moral dimensions, and necessary reactions to this, 1970 seems a too early starting point. In contrast, since, this process started somewhere around 1972, 1990 seems too late. Therefore, 1980 seems to be a useful compromise. It marks a period in which there was definitely enough awareness of the negative consequences of climate change. 74

Eight years after the first UNCHE policy makers should have known about it and should have acted accordingly.171 Secondly, a way of measuring emissions must be identified. Basically, there are two possibilities. Either the aggregated emissions of a country or emissions per capita are considered. My choice to examine per capita emissions again mirrors the moral aspect of the Contributor Pays Principle. Of course, in the end the determining factor is how much a country emits overall but to solely concentrating on a country’s cumulative emissions could lead to unfair results. For example, small countries would have an advantage over larger countries since they emit less due to their population size and not due to functioning environmental policies. On the other hand, it could be argued that with a per capita approach it could be more promising to increase a country’s population size instead of decreasing overall emissions. There are two points to be considered here. First, that a government tries to increase the population size of its country in order to reach a better result under an approach that evaluates per capita emissions seems not very likely because implementing policies to increase birth rates seems even more complicated than implementing environmental policies and second, this argument would only be valid if in such a scenario of an increasing population the overall emissions would stay stable, which is not the case. Every additional human being results in additional emissions.172 All in all, focussing on per capita emissions is not that prone to external factors like population size and by that constitutes a fairer approach than taking overall emissions into consideration. Along these two parameters - the period between 1980 and 2015 and the per capita emissions - a threshold for the Contributor Pays Principle could be developed by

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See for example: Daniel Bodansky, ‘The History of the Global Climate Change Regime’, in International Relations and Global Climate Change, ed. Urs Luterbacher and Detlef F. Sprinz, vol. Global environmental accords : strategies for sustainability and institutional innovation (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001), http://graduateinstitute.ch/ files/live/sites/iheid/files/sites/admininst/shared/doc-professors/luterbacher%20chap ter%202%20102.pdf. Cf., Paul Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax, ‘Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals’, Gloabl Environmental Change 19 (2009), https://www.biologicaldiversity. org/programs/population_and_sustainability/pdfs/OSUCarbonStudy.pdf.

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dividing the world’s cumulative emissions by the world’s population size in each year of the given period. Figure 1 shows the resulting graph. Note that this graph shows a decrease of emissions per capita through time. The reason for this is an increase in population size, and not a decrease in overall emissions. This means, that population sizes increased faster than emission rates. Note also that increases in population sizes happened mostly within countries with low per capita emissions while countries with high per capita emissions witnessed population decreases or stagnations. This is important because on the one hand, an increase in population size leads also to an increase in overall emissions. Therefore, a country with an increase in population size has a better justification for an increase in overall emissions than a country where birth rates do not increase. On the other hand, a fast increase in population size could have a positive effect on per capita emissions if the overall emission rates do not increase as fast as the population size. Therefore, an increase in population size could lead to the impression that emissions in a country decrease although in reality this is not the case. These effects have to be kept in mind when calculating per capita emissions. In case of doubt, it has to be checked whether one of these phenomena distort the results.173 As I mentioned before, this way of defining a threshold for causal responsibility is vulnerable to criticism. It could be argued that taking the global average of per capita emission production is not suitable because this is already too much emission production since it resulted in today’s situation of already experiencing bad consequence from climate change. This line of argumentation would result in having to determine a far more complex approach than I did. A complex but still

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For the relationship between population growth and climate change see for example: Gregory Casey and Oded Galor, ‘Population Growth and Carbon Emissions’ (the National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2016), DOI: 10.3386/w22885; ‘Human Population Growth and Climate Change’, accessed 19 September 2018, https://www. biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/climate/; ‘Human Population Growth and Greenhouse Gas Emissions’ (Population-Health-Environment Policy and Practice Group, January 2008), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/ files/Human%20Population%20Growth%20and%20Greenhouse%20Gas%20Emissions. pdf; Murtaugh and Schlax, ‘Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals’. Note that I do not want to state that reproductive rights of individuals should be restricted to address climate change.

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functioning, understandable, and acceptable threshold of causal responsibility is of course desirable but its development would exceed the limits of this thesis. For my purposes it is sufficient that emitting above this simple threshold is obviously too much. It shows that there are ways of identifying nations that have produced too much emissions without stating that this is the most accurate way or that there are no further nations with causal and, by that, moral responsibility.174 On the basis of this, per capita emissions could be calculated for individual countries as well in order to compare them to the global average. Figure 2 shows this comparison for the USA, China, and Kenya and illustrates that there are countries like the USA that have, over the whole period of time, emitted greenhouse gases above this threshold. Emissions of other nations, such as Kenya, are far below this threshold and then there are special countries, such as China, that have crossed the threshold at a certain point. In cases like the latter it is more challenging to determine whether the respective country has already contributed to climate change to a critical degree or not.175 On the basis of this evaluation of causal responsibility, average per capita emissions over the given time period could be calculated by summing the per capita emissions between 1980 and 2015 and dividing the sum by 35. By that a global Causal Responsibility Index (CRI) of seven could be determined as a threshold (see next section). If a country scores above this Index it already or still fulfils the Contributor Pays Principle. Nevertheless, it has to be kept in mind that this is a status that will change over a longer period of time.

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I admit that binding some nations to more moral obligations while missing others that should be bound to the same moral obligations is again unfair. To develop a perfectly fair moral framework is beyond my skills and the scope of this thesis. Nevertheless, I consider my approach as a good beginning and as a proof that there are possibilities to translate different degrees of moral responsibilities into practical thresholds. Note that it became apparent that any emission production is a contribution to climate change that need to stop. Nevertheless, if all nations had produced emissions on such a low level like some developing countries, we would have not been in the situation of dealing with the problem of climate change today.

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Kyoto GHG emissions in tonnes per person

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2.2.5 The threshold for the Beneficiary Pays Principle The Beneficiary Pays Principle captures the connection between emitting greenhouse gases and benefitting from these emissions by their connection to development. Therefore, both aspects need to be combined when determining a threshold for benefitting from climate change. For this reason, I have compared the Causal Responsibility Index (CRI) to the Human Development Index, which is an index by the UN to measure a country’s human development along the parameters of its Gross National Product, the population’s education, and life expectancy. 176 The HDI indicates how well countries perform on these parameters, that is why countries with a high and very high human development are countries that are at least able to offer its population the possibility to live a worth living life. That is why I have chosen high human development as a threshold for indicating which nations are in general better off than others. Note that having a high Human Development Index (HDI) does not automatically mean that this results from contributing to climate change. It is also possible that nations managed to have a high human development without benefitting from high emissions. In order to examine an interdependence they have to be compared. Figure 3 shows such a comparison and the resulting positions for the abovementioned countries USA, China, and Kenya. As becomes clear from this table, the USA are situated in the upper right corner of this graph, indicating that their CRI is above the threshold of seven while having a very high human development. Kenya is situated in the lower left corner representing the opposite case, a Causal Responsibility Index below seven and a low human development. China is situated in the upper left corner, which means its CRI scores below seven but it has a high human development. Table 2 shows that China’s causal responsibility started to rise in 2001 and crossed the threshold for causal responsibility in 2008, so it is interesting to have a look at its positions in 2001 and 2008 as well.

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Cf., ‘About Human Development | Human Development Reports’, accessed 19 September 2018, http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev.

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As figure 4 shows, during the years 2001 and 2008, the years of China’s increasing emission production, its HDI increased from 0.602 to 0.685 which means that during this period China developed from a position in the lower middle category, where they had been situated since 1990, to nearly high human development in only seven years.177

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Figure 4: China’s causal responsibility in relation to its HDI in 2001, 2008, and 2015 (graphic made by the author).

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Cf., ‘Human Development Data (1990-2017) | Human Development Reports’.

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Figure 5: Causal responsibility in relation to the HDI for a selection of countries (graphic made by the author). Comparing the CRI and the HDI gives strong reason to conclude that with increasing emissions a country’s HDI increases as well (see figure 5). Nations with a CRI above seven usually have a high or very high human development, nations below a CRI of seven have in most of the cases a low or medium HDI. Again, this way of examination can be criticised. First of all, correlation of course does not mean causation. It might be possible that a country’s increased emission production did not cause its high human development and by that it could not be argued that they benefitted from emitting greenhouse gases – but from something else. Nevertheless, the mere fact that nearly all high emitting countries are also developed to a high degree is a strong indicator that this is not just a coincidence. There is nearly consensus that emitting greenhouse gases has a positive effect on a country’s development in that sense that its economy grows and all relating consequences for the population arise. Generally, high emissions are related to increased energy supply, which is a requirement for

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development.178 So, at this point I will not argue in detail for the interdependence between emitting greenhouse gases and a beneficial development but will presuppose that if a country has high causal responsibility and high human development, the latter is caused by the former. Using the HDI as a measure for how well-off a country is, is another critical point. The HDI itself is criticised for not reflecting development adequately. That China with a large amount of very poor inhabitants and an authoritarian government has a high HDI is at least questionable. Here again I want to make clear that I agree to this criticism and that there probably are ways to determine better thresholds. Again, I chose these parameters also for reasons of simplicity to demonstrate that determining practical thresholds is at least possible. Making them more complex and accurate is a task that must be fulfilled somewhere else. In the context of climate change and international policy, being unable to develop a perfect ethical framework should not result in inaction. The community of states need to start somewhere. It is not likely that in the near future an approach will be developed that will be without flaws and will be accepted by all Parties. It is one of the big challenges of the UNFCCC to find workable solutions here. My aim is to show that there exist simplified methods that are supported by good reasons to determine responsibilities. Under the UNFCCC these methods could be concretised and improved. In the current situation it is better to implement an approach that is imperfect but leads to the right path instead of sticking to business as usual and by that cause a catastrophe for sure.

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See for example: Usenobong Akpan and Godwin E. Akpan, ‘The Contribution of Energy Consumption to Climate Change: A Feasible Policy Direction’, International Journal of Energy Economic and Policy 2, no. 1 (2012): 21–33; IEA, ‘Energy and Climate Change’, World Energy Outlook Special Report (International Energy Agency (IEA), 2015), https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/WEO2015Special ReportonEnergyandClimateChange.pdf; Kyle W. Knight and Juliet B. Schor, ‘Economic Growth and Climate Change: A Cross-National Analysis of Territorial and Consumption-Based Carbon Emissions in High-Income Countries’, Sustainability, 2014, 3723–31, https://doi.org/doi:10.3390/su6063722; Wen-Cheng Lu, ‘Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Energy Consumption and Economic Growth: A Panel Cointegration Analysis for 16 Asian Countries’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2017, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14111436.

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2.2.6 The threshold for the Ability to Pay Principle The Ability to Pay Principle indicates that affluent countries are able to act on climate change and should therefore do so, aside from the fact that those nations are in most of the cases the causers and beneficiaries of climate change anyway. The Ability to Pay Principle is rather easy to translate into a practical threshold, since countries that fall under this principle are wealthy countries which can easily be defined. Note that I will concentrate on financial capacity to pay and not on, for example, institutional capacity179 for two main reasons. First, there is a large overlap between nations with financial capacity and nations with institutional capacity so that it is sufficient to discuss only one of them. Second, our current world is structured in that way that being equipped with money is the most promising way of implementing significant changes. The World Bank sorts nations into four categories: low income, lower-middle income, upper-middle income, and high income.180 The latter are states with a high Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a high Gross National Income (GNI) per capita.181 This means that not only the government has enough financial means at its disposal to fund mitigation projects but also the majority of the population has a sufficiently high income to be able to afford for example higher taxes for environmental projects. So, this could function as a threshold for the Ability to Pay Principle. Also, it could be discussed whether upper-middle income class countries should provide funding as well but to a lesser extent than high income countries.

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Institutional capacity describes “the capability of an institution to set and achieve social and economic goals, through knowledge, skills, systems, and institutions” ‘The Secret Ingredient: Institutional Capacity’, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, 1 April 2016, https://www.itdp.org/2016/04/01/the-secret-ingredient-institutional-capacity/. ‘How Are the Income Group Thresholds Determined? – World Bank Data Help Desk’, accessed 25 July 2018, https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/ 378833-how-are-the-income-group-thresholds-determined. ‘Data for High Income, Upper Middle Income | Data’, accessed 25 July 2018, https:// data.worldbank.org/?locations=XD-XT.

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Since the World Bank itself is a highly criticisable institution the usage of its classification of countries is as well.182 That is why it might be a worthy attempt to develop a new classification of countries based on their financial means. Since this would probably not differ very much from the World Bank’s clustering and is a very complex task, in the following argumentation I will use the already established groups by the World Bank, for practical reasons. Of course, they could and should be replaced by a more suitable cluster.

2.2.7 The different groups Since discussing every nation in the world would exceed the scope of this thesis I will concentrate on the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bhutan, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Congo, Estonia, Fiji, Ghana, Germany, India, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Oman, Paraguay, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA, Venezuela, and Vietnam. This selection mirrors the community of states by representing every continent and status of development. When the above discussed thresholds are applied to these countries five groups emerge. The first group consist of countries that are contributors, beneficiaries, as well as able to pay, so they have historic responsibility. Those are: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Kuwait, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UK, United Arab Emirates, and the USA. In the above established model, this group of countries would have the largest amount of moral responsibility and therefore also more and stricter obligations than the other groups. Compared to the current division of countries into Annex I and Non-Annex I countries, Argentina, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, 182

See for example: ‘Bretton Woods Project - Critical Voices on the World Bank and IMF’, Bretton Woods Project, accessed 19 September 2018, https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/; especially: ‘What Are the Main Concerns and Criticism about the World Bank and IMF?’, Bretton Woods Project, 23 August 2005, https://www.brettonwoods project.org/2005/08/art-320869/.

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and the United Arab Emirates would have greater obligations than before. Whereas Russia, an Annex I country, does not belong to this group with the highest moral responsibilities and duties. The second group are countries that fulfil the Contributor Pays and the Beneficiary Pays Principle but that are not able to pay. Since benefitting from climate change without being able to pay is remarkable at the first sight, it has to be noted that all countries within this group belong to the upper middle-income group, which means that they may have duties to pay but not to the same extent as countries from the high-income group. Countries belonging to the second group are Brazil, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia, and Venezuela. Depending on how the threshold of the Contributor Pays Principle is interpreted, China could belong into this group as well, because China crossed the threshold in 2008. Each emitted greenhouse gas makes the problem of climate change worse, so since 2008 China is contributing to the problem. Nevertheless, with a CRI of about five (see figure 5) it does not score above the threshold of seven yet, so by now it does not fulfil the above stated conditions for falling under the Contributor Pays Principle. Bhutan, the Central African Republic, and Paraguay belong to the third group of countries. They only fall into the category of fulfilling the Contributor Pay Principle. The emergence of this group of countries is in need of further discussion because their national circumstances are so different that it is at least surprising that they form one separate group. First of all, it is very surprising that the Central African Republic scores above the Causal Responsibility threshold. However, there are several aspects that relativize this finding. Most emission production in the Central African Republic (CAR) happens in the agriculture sector.183 Like in other African countries, a majority of people in CAR run farms for self-supply. What is, however, special about the CAR is that it has a relatively small population size, which of course has a strong impact on

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Cf., Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), ‘The PRIMAP-Hist National Historic Time Series’, Paris Reality Check: PRIMAP-hist, 2018, https://www.pikpotsdam.de/paris-reality-check/primap-hist/#id=btn&entity=kyotoghg.

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calculating per capita emissions.184 It has to be noted that, all in all, CAR still has a small amount of total emission rates. Between 1980 and 2015 the world’s total GHG emissions amounted for 48,85 Gt. while CAR emitted only 0,05 Gt. in total.185 It still is a very poor and very vulnerable country that is not comparable to other contributors. This finding shows, how complex the task of finding adequate metrics is. An approach that should be implementable must find ways to deal with these challenges, so that, in the end, the groups represent the Parties’ realities. For this thesis, I will accept this outcome bearing in mind that it results from special circumstances that need to be considered in an approach that is meant to be implemented. Bhutan is the only carbon negative country in the world.186 72% of the land is forest covered which results in the absorbance of over 6 million tonnes of carbon per year. 187 Emission production by land use decreased below zero in 2006 188 which is also the point of time, as is shown in figure 6, when their per capita emissions sank below zero. As indicated before, using data from land-use activities is rather problematic and challenging. First, the data is not very reliable as different datasets report different land-use emissions. Second, land-use emissions and sinks are very prone to sudden changes, for example when a forest is clearcut.189 It would therefore be 184

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World Bank, ‘Population, Total | Data’, accessed 17 September 2018, https://data. worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=CF-TD-CD-GH-KE. Cf., Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), ‘The PRIMAP-Hist National Historic Time Series’. Cf., ‘Bhutan Is the World’s Only Carbon Negative Country, so How Did They Do It?’, Climate Council, 2 April 2017, https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/2017/04/02/bhutanis-the-world-s-only-carbon-negative-country-so-how-did-they-do-it/. ‘This Country Isn’t Just Carbon Neutral ... It’s Carbon Negative’, EcoWatch, 19 March 2016, https://www.ecowatch.com/this-country-isnt-just-carbon-neutral-its-carbonnegative-1882195367.html; Climate Action, ‘Bhutan: The World’s First Carbon-Negative Country’, ClimateAction, 18 January 2017, http://climateactionprogramme.org/ news/bhutan_the_worlds_only_carbon_negative_country. Cf., https://www.pik-potsdam.de/paris-reality-check/primap-hist/#id=btn&entity=kyotoghg See for example: the explanation of climate action tracker on why they exclude landuse data: ‘(I)NDC Ratings and LULUCF | Climate Action Tracker’, accessed 26 September 2018, https://climateactiontracker.org/methodology/indc-ratings-and-lulucf/.

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a promising attempt to repeat the grouping process excluding the land-use sector in order to compare the outcomes. Although land-land use data could distort the impression of a state’s environmental performance, the government of Bhutan implemented also useful policies. It measures the country’s progress not in terms of its GDP but they developed the National Happiness Index which takes also into account non-economic parameters like environmental aspects.190 This entails the introduction of policies to ensure carbon neutrality: At least 60% of the territory must stay forested, there is free hydroelectric power, and export logging is forbidden. Further Bhutan has ambitious aims to produce 100% organic food by 2020, zero waste by 2030, zero net greenhouse gas emissions and increase their share of renewables.191

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Figure 6: Bhutan’s causal responsibility (graphic made by the author). 190 191

‘This Country Isn’t Just Carbon Neutral ... It’s Carbon Negative’. Climate Action, ‘Bhutan: The World’s First Carbon-Negative Country’.

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Paraguay belongs to the upper middle-income class. So, they are not completely unable to pay. Similar to other South American countries most of Paraguay’s emission production and development results from deforestation due to agriculture – Paraguay is one of the largest soy and cattle exporters.192 Because of these different circumstances it appears unreasonable to establish a group consisting of Paraguay and other South American states with similar national circumstances and Bhutan. It has to be noted that first, the fact that Bhutan scored above the Causal Responsibility Threshold before 2006 also results from land use activities in combination with its small population size193 and second, if Bhutan continues its process towards carbon neutrality than it soon will score below the average Causal Responsibility Index of seven. Therefore, it is probably only a question of time when Bhutan will belong to the fifth group of countries, that do not fulfil any of the three principles and will be discussed later. The fourth group of countries are beneficiaries, because they have a high HDI, but do not score above the CRI. To this group count China, Jamaica, and Fiji. It is questionable if these countries really fulfil the Beneficiary Pays Principle. Since they do not bear causal responsibility they seem to have not benefitted from emitting greenhouse gases. In contrast to the other two China already crossed the causal responsibility threshold from below to above. In cumulative emissions China today produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the USA and the EU together.194 Therefore, it is very likely that China will also score above the causal responsibility threshold of seven in the near future, which would mean that they by then belong definitely

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Cf., ‘Paraguay’s Path to Responsible Land Use’, Global Forest Watch Blog (blog), 5 August 2016, https://blog.globalforestwatch.org/supplychain/agriculture/paraguays-pathto-responsible-land-use; see also: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), ‘The PRIMAP-Hist National Historic Time Series’. Cf., World Bank, ‘Population, Total | Data’, accessed 19 September 2018, https://data. worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2017&locations=BT-1W&start=1980; Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), ‘The PRIMAP-Hist National Historic Time Series’. Cf., Keith Bradsher and Lisa Friedman, ‘China’s Emissions: More Than U.S. Plus Europe, and Still Rising’, The New York Times, 7 August 2018, sec. Business Day, https:// www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/business/china-davos-climate-change.html.

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to the second group of countries. So, China belongs to this group because it is processing from a lower group towards a higher group. average per capita emissions Fiji Jamaica

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Figure 7: Fiji’s and Jamaica’s causal responsibility (graphic made by the author). Fiji and Jamaica constitute different cases. Their economies are not as dependent on fossil fuels as it is the case in other prospering states. In the case of Fiji and Jamaica tourism constitutes a large industry branch. 195 Furthermore, their per

195

Cf., ‘Fiji - Economy’, Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed 18 September 2018, https:// www.britannica.com/place/Fiji-republic-Pacific-Ocean; ‘Jamaica - Economy’, Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed 18 September 2018, https://www.britannica.com/place/ Jamaica.

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capita emissions decrease. (see figure 7) So, it has to be kept in mind that their moral responsibilities do not primary evolve from contributing to the problem of climate change. Nevertheless, both belong to the upper middle-income class of the World Bank. This fact and their high HDI show that they managed to develop into quite affluent and prospering nations, which suggests that they have some capacities to act against climate change. For simplicity I will, therefore, maintain this fourth group but it has to be kept in mind that some members of this group receive moral responsibilities because of the interdependence of economic benefits and contributing to the problem, and others because of the interdependence of economic benefits and the ability to act against climate change. The fifth group of countries are countries that do not score above any threshold. Those are the Chad, Congo, Ghana, India, Kenya, and Vietnam. In this group India is a special participant because India is already one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in terms of absolute emissions.196 This has to be kept in mind when thinking about obligations of this group of countries. In figure 8 the different groups based on the three principles are visualised, and in figure 9 they are compared also to the states’ Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). The INDCs can be divided into Base year targets, Business As Usual (BAU) targets, Intensity targets, and Others. The first two define emission reductions relative to a base year or respectively a BAU projection. Emission reductions defined as an emission intensity reduction are for example defined in terms of emission per GDP or per capita, relative to either a base year or a BAU projection. Further INDCs are defined for example as certain policies and measures or sectoral emission level targets.197 I will not analysis these different kinds of INDCs in detail. Nevertheless, it would at least be useful when all states within one group had the same kind of INDC in order to improve their comparability. Whether these forms of INDCs are suitable and which would be most appropriate for which group must be discussed somewhere else.

196 197

Cf., Global Carbon Atlas, ‘CO2 Emissions | Global Carbon Atlas’. Cf., Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), ‘Paris Reality Check: INDCs’, 2016, https://www.pik-potsdam.de/paris-reality-check/indcs/.

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So, what I have shown so far is, that it is possible to establish thresholds and by that form groups based on the moral principles developed in the first chapter. Countries like China, India, and also Bhutan represent special cases. To sort them into groups is difficult and will always be based on compromises. Nevertheless, it is worth analysing these cases in detail. It is especially important to draw conclusions for the fifth group of countries from China’s development into the largest greenhouse gas emitter in terms of cumulative emissions keeping in mind that India is likely to develop similarly. Also, within this group Bhutan could function as a role model. It implemented innovative and useful mitigation policies by that showing that changes are possible and that action could be taken also by developing countries. Nevertheless, the role of the land-use sector has to be discussed critically in this context. Having suggested these five groups in the following chapter I will discuss which concrete implications would follow for the design of the Global Stocktake.

Figure 8: The different groups of countries based on the Contributor Pays Principle, the Beneficiary Pays Principle, and the Ability to Pay Principle (graphic made by the author). 93

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Figure 9: Overview of the states’ different groups and their INDCs (graphic made by the author).

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3. The Global Stocktake 3.1

How could the ideal GST be designed?

Following the argumentation from the previous chapters, the first group receives historic responsibility and therefore consists of countries with the highest degree of moral responsibility in the context of climate change. The following groups bear decreasing amounts of moral responsibility with the fifth group as that group of which members solely have to respect the No Harm Principle, which is no easy task but, in the context of climate change, is the smallest degree of moral responsibility. The questions relevant in this chapter are, which duties arise for which groups and which relationships have the different groups towards each other? What is each groups’ role within the GST? And how could an ideal GST, based on these findings, be designed?

3.1.1 Duties and relationships The group of countries with historic responsibility should consequently also be the group with the most demanding duties. Following from the Contributor Pays Principle, these countries must first, change and improve their climate politics, they have to introduce ambitious mitigation policies. Sectors like agriculture, transport, or buildings must undergo transitions, in the end they must be carbonneutral. Second, since it is not completely clear yet how carbon-neutral societies will function, the first group of countries must increase their research and development activities and, because of the Ability to Pay Principle, they must provide the respective funding in this area. In addition, the governments must urge for implementing already known solutions, such as increasing the share of renewable

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energy supply and the number of electric vehicles. Furthermore, the first group of countries must support all other groups with financial means and capacity building, especially the fifth group. By this, historical responsible countries could compensate other countries for the caused harm and could to some extent share their benefits with underprivileged countries, which are necessary steps due to the Beneficiary Pays Principle. Furthermore, it could be helpful if they accept their wrongdoing, apologise and signal willingness to change their behaviour and come up for the damage they caused. This would be a strong sign towards the lower groups and will probably raise their motivation to act themselves. The second group falls under the Contributor Pays and the Beneficiary Pays Principle. Therefore, their duties should consist of the introduction of ambitious mitigation policies as well. Contributors first of all have to stop and find alternatives to their harm-producing activities. Also, they should support other disadvantaged nations as a consequence from the Beneficiary Pays Principle. Nevertheless, since the nations within the second group are not as affluent as the first group of nations, the focus of support should rest on capacity building rather than financial support. The limited financial means of these countries are better invested into domestic research projects. The results of these projects could then also benefit other nations. The third group consists of countries solely fulfilling the Contributor Pays Principle. Adequate duties are, as mentioned before, the introduction and the improvement of climate policies, especially mitigation policies. These countries should work with, orientate on and learn from the first and the second group, if their financial means are not sufficient to invest in own research programmes. Paraguay as a representative of this group belongs to the upper-middle income class of the World Bank. Therefore, countries in this group might be as affluent as countries within the second group and might also be able to spend own money on research projects. Either way, it is most efficient if all groups that have to revise mitigation policies worked together and shared experiences and best practices. The group of countries fulfilling only the Beneficiary Pays Principle is a special group. As I have argued above some of its members are within this group because they are developing into states with causal responsibility. Others have managed to reach a relatively high HDI but are not as dependent on fossil fuels as other nations. For this reason, the national circumstances of states belonging to this group have to be checked carefully. In the first case, it will be useful if their 98

obligations are similar to those of members from the second group of countries. In the second case, states should share with other groups the reasons for their relative fossil fuel independence and should, as long as they are able to do it, use some of their resources to support national and international mitigation projects. The fifth and last group is the group of countries that do not fulfil any of the principles. Their duties could be derived only from the No-Harm Principle, which demands to take necessary steps to prevent the progressing climate change because of the arising sufferings for human beings. The nations within the fifth group are those that are harmed most by the consequences from climate change, so they should also have a high self-interest in fulfilling this principle. To prevent climate change or the worst consequences thereof effectively developing countries must develop in a sustainable way. Of course, this task cannot be fulfilled only by the respective nations. As already mentioned, the countries from the first and the second group must offer support in form of financial flows and capacity building. The duty of the members of the fifth group of countries is to accept this help and to cooperate with the other countries, in order to be able to implement mitigation policies and a sustainable development path themselves. This is for many of the affected states nearly utopian. Most African states, for example, are undemocratic and the inhabitants lack basic human rights. The people in power, who are dictators, terrorist groups, or warlords, have no interest in changing the current structures.200 To change this is the first and most important step for most countries within the fifth group. Again, especially the first group of countries must support these countries, so that they establish more democratic structures and implement human rights. One important aspect here is, that this support must take place in close cooperation with the respective nations. The aim is not that western states simply enforce their idea of adequate political structures onto developing states. So, the first group of countries must play a leading role when it comes to the introduction of mitigation policies and financial assistance. They are not in the position to base their efforts on the activities of other nations. The second and the third group as well have to focus on policy changes but are not obligated to the financial support of other countries. Members of the fourth group have either 200

See for example: Jo-Ansie van Wyk, ‘Political Leaders in Africa: Presidents, Patrons or Profiteers?’ (The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), 2007).

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comparable obligations to the second group or receive their obligations because they have some capacities to act. Note that they still are not affluent enough to fulfil the Ability to Pay Principle, therefore it has to be decided case by case how much a respective country is able to contribute. The fifth group should be willing to cooperate and change, when it is necessary, undemocratic policy structures. Nevertheless, the groups should be treated equally, in the sense that there should be no group with more political influence than another group. No group should play the role of the supervisor of the other groups. Since this group building will lead to some groups consisting of industrialised and very powerful nations and others consisting of developing countries with minor influence, the question could be raised, how this could be accomplished?

3.1.2 An ideal Global Stocktake In order to have a body that is directly responsible for the process of the GST and that functions as a mediator between the groups of countries and the UNFCCC secretariat an ethics committee could be established.201 The members of this committee should consist of representatives of each group, it could also be a promising attempt to include actors from civil society, researchers, and climate activists. In the year of a GST, so from 2023 onwards every five years, each group, the groups of countries as well as other involved groups, could appoint their representatives. The ethics committee could recommend concrete issues for each group that should be assessed in the context of the GST. It could then supervise and organise the process of the GST. Further, during the five years until a new GST takes place, the committee could monitor the groups’ activities. Before the next GST it could re-evaluate the constellations of the groups and could decide, together with the UNFCCC secretariat, about changes in the membership of the groups. The process within the groups would then be oriented on the issues determined by the ethics committee. So, for example, for the first group of countries relevant 201

Jürgen Friedrich suggests to separate technical and political assessment by creating a group of technical experts that should contribute to the GST. Analogously a group of ethical experts could be created. Cf., Friedrich, ‘Global Stocktake (Article 14)’, p. 334.

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aspects that should be assessed are the amount of money spent on research within the country and on the support of other nations, and which mitigation policies are introduced and which effects they have on addressing climate change. The members of a group have to reveal data on the issues that were allocated as relevant for their group. Then, an aggregated result could be communicated outside on how the whole group performed on these issues. So, countries from other groups and the public would only get to know how a whole group of countries performed on certain aspects and not how separate nations did. With the help of the group’s result recommendations and further obligations for the group could be developed which are then again translated into concrete recommendations for individual countries within the group. The activities within the groups could be supervised by the respective representatives of the ethics committee, who could communicate an additional and independent evaluation of the group’s performance to the outside. Of course, they would not be allowed to give account on individual performances, assessments of individual countries are only possible within the group and in the context of the transparency framework. At this point, it is helpful to refer back to the different functions, that were mentioned in the second chapter, that should be fulfilled by the GST. Its function as a pacemaker is fulfilled by the fact that the GST is repeated every five years and that the process of revising NDCs is designed accordingly. Activities by the suggested ethics committee could support this function by ensuring that the groups stay active also in the periods between the GST. The fulfilment of the accountability function is concentrated on the processes within the groups. The ethics committee could play a deciding role here as well, because its members could accompany the group-intern processes. The function of raising ambition first materialises within the groups since the individual countries could cooperate and motivate each other and second also as the interaction between the groups. As I argued, especially in the context of research and development and mitigation policy implementation the countries will benefit from interaction, sharing of best practices and capacity building. Also the recommendations and evaluations of the ethics committee will influence the ambitions of the groups and individual members. The signal function will be fulfilled in the years where the actual GST will take place. Then, groups could show their efforts, the groups could also think about emphasize certain members that performed very well, if the respective nation agrees. Again, the ethics committee could send important signals by emphasizing 101

successes, hinting at remaining gaps and giving a prospect on challenges and possible solutions. As the committee takes an independent role, its estimates will send strong signals to the Parties but also to civil society.

3.2

Practical problems

These suggestions on the design of the GST of course are not realistic at the current point of time. There first arise concrete practical problems for the precise implementation of this account. Second, every thinkable GST design has to deal with general problems, like free-riding and non-compliance. These problems will be the topic of this sub-chapter.

3.2.1 Special problems Since the above presented GST process is an ideal version, in practice there arise several challenges. Firstly, some countries will probably not accept their group category. Especially those countries that belong to the group of Non-Annex I countries under the UNFCCC, but that are sorted into the group of countries with historic responsibility in this account, will probably reject this kind of clustering. Therefore, they will not accept their respective duties either. Second, even if the countries will agree on a cluster, the duty to drastically change mitigation policies is hard to fulfil, or rather most states are not willing to fulfil this task. The problem of noncompliance will be discussed at the end of this section. Secondly, the changes in political structures in developing countries are not very probable in the near future, either. Some of these countries are dominated by wars, dictatorships, or even are failed states.202 Useful cooperation with the global 202

For a ranking of states based on their fragility and the respective decade trends, see: The Fund for Peace (FFP), ‘Fund for Peace 2018 Fragile States Index’ (The Fund for Peace (FFP), 2018), http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/951181805Fragile-States-Index-Annual-Report-2018.pdf.

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community in order to implement sustainable development and mitigation policies is therefore difficult or even impossible. Thirdly, the revealing of sensitive data even within a group of countries with comparable moral responsibility will be unacceptable for most countries. The states are in most of the cases also direct economic competitors, therefore the revealing of certain information is problematic. Furthermore, the Parties would have to rely on their fellow group members that they would not pass on this information to other Parties. The non-disclosure of data and information cannot be ensured sufficiently, so that some countries are probably not willing to consent to such an arrangement. Lastly, the suggestion of an ethics committee constitutes further challenges. The authority of such a committee will not be acknowledged by all states. Also, if the groups could choose their own representatives, it would be possible that some groups, especially groups consisting of industrialised countries, chose representatives who act in the states’ interest and not in favour of effective solutions for climate change. In this context non-state actors as participants of the ethics committee could play a crucial role. Nevertheless, it is again very difficult to find an agreement which non-state actors should be included into the committee.203

3.2.2 General problems Apart from specific criticism on the above presented suggestions on the GST design, there are two interrelated problems that emerge generally in the context of international climate politics and especially in the context of the GST design. Those are the problems of non-compliance and free-riding. In the following I will briefly present these problems and relate them to the suggested GST design.

3.2.2.1 Non-compliance The first describes that necessary actions for mitigating climate change in an effective and morally adequate way result in strict and demanding duties for most 203

This list of challenges might not be complete, but they are the most obvious and most pressing. Especially the establishment of an ethics committee might also lead to legal problems, that cannot be discussed in this thesis.

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of the world’s countries. Therefore, it is very likely that some of these countries will not comply with their duties. How should the global community react to noncompliance? In international politics this is a very challenging question because there exists no institution above the states that could enforce prevailing law. Indeed, there are already examples of industrialised countries that introduced policies that are opposed to effective climate politics. The current US president Donald Trump ended his predecessor Obama’s attempt to introduce effective climate policies by decree, he declared to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and announced that America’s economic interests have a higher priority than acting on climate change.204 Poland regularly emphasises the importance of coal as an energy source and rejects EU policies that would result in disadvantages for the Polish coal industry.205 Also, Germany admitted that it will miss its 2020 goals of climate protection.206 204

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Cf., Julian Borger, ‘Trump Drops Climate Change from US National Security Strategy’, The Guardian, 19 December 2017, sec. US news, https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/2017/dec/18/trump-drop-climate-change-national-security-strategy, (accesed on 05.09.2018); Jennifer Hansler, ‘5 Major Changes to US Environmental Policy in 2017’, CNN Politics, 30 December 2017, https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/30/politics/environmental-policy-moments-2017/index.html, (accessed on 05.09.2018); Tim Schulze, ‘Wie Donald Trump Krieg Gegen Die Umwelt Führt’, Stern, 4 April 2018, https:// www.stern.de/politik/ausland/wie-donald-trump-krieg-gegen-die-umwelt-fuehrt--ein-ueberblick-7926732.html, (accessed on 05.09.2018); Thorsten Schröder, ‘Ein Zurück Ohne Zukunft’, ZEIT ONLINE, 29 March 2017, https://www.zeit.de/politik/ ausland/2017-03/usa-donald-trump-umwelt-kohle-klima, (accessed on 05.09.2018). Cf., Arthur Neslen, ‘Poland to Put “common Sense” over Climate Ambition as Host of Critical UN Talks’, Climate Home News, 2 February 2018, http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/02/02/poland-put-common-sense-climate-ambition-host-critical-untalks/; Michał Olszewski, ‘Walk Away from Coal? Poland and European Climate Policy’, Energy Transition (blog), 12 April 2017, https://energytransition.org/2017/04/walkaway-from-coal-or-not-poland-and-eu-climate-policy/; Jeffrey Rissman and Robbie Orvis, ‘Poland’s Path To Tackling Climate Change: 40% Fewer Emissions, $26 Billion Annual Savings by 2050’, Forbes, accessed 5 September 2018, https://www.forbes.com/ sites/energyinnovation/2018/03/20/polands-path-to-tackling-climate-change-40fewer-emissions-26-billion-annual-savings-by-2050/. Cf., ‘Deutschland verpasst Klimaziel’, ZEIT ONLINE, 13 June 2018, https://www.zeit.de/ wissen/umwelt/2018-06/klimaschutzziel-senkung-co2-ausstoss-verzug-deutschland;

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In the special case of the above presented structure of the GST non-compliance could exist at the global level in cases, where a whole group does not act according to its duties, and on the group level, if individual countries to not comply.

3.2.2.2 Free-riding The second phenomena describes that in a scenario where countries are not judged as individual Parties but within a collective it is possible for some countries to hide behind the efforts of the other countries. For a single country the most advantageous scenario would be to continue emitting greenhouse gases while all other countries introduced mitigation policies. This would lead to benefits for that country due to the economic benefits that arise from emitting greenhouse gases as well as environmental benefits from mitigation policies of others. The reduction in emissions and the prevention of climate change is a common good that cannot be restricted only to those Parties that introduce respective policies. 207 Therefore, the problem of free-riding is central in the context of climate politics. The difference between non-compliance and free-riding is first that non-compliance is only possible for participating countries while also non-participating countries could free-ride in the context of a climate treaty. Second, the term noncompliance relates to the actual infringement of a rule. Free-riding then describes the thereof evolving problem that not only a party failed to comply but it also profited by the infringement of the treaty.208 In my proposed GST design, free-riding could occur because some group members could profit from the efforts of other group members. Since only the group result is communicated to the outside, it will not be apparent which nation contributed deciding activities and which nation did not. In the case of a positive

207

208

‘Deutschland verfehlt Klimaziele für 2020 deutlich’, FAZ.NET, 9 June 2018, sec. Wissen, http://www.faz.net/1.5631595; ‘Klimaziele rücken in weite Ferne’, tagesschau.de, accessed 5 September 2018, https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/klimaziele-schulze-101.html. Cf., Joseph E. Aldy and Keigo Akimoto, ‘Comparing Emissions Mitigation Efforts across Countries’, p. 1/2. See for example: Scott Barrett, ‘International Cooperation and the International Commons’ 10 (1999): 15.

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group result, members who acted counterproductively would nevertheless profit from being member of a well-performing group by, for example, reputational benefits.209 Before suggesting possible solutions, I will refer to the question, how the UNFCCC does react to these general problems.

3.2.3 UNFCCC’s reaction Non-compliance and free-riding are not only problems for the design of the GST but for the whole climate negotiations and the implementation for climate treaties. International treaties, like climate treaties, cannot be enforced by a superior institution than the Parties to the agreement, and within the current situation the Parties have no strong self-interest in complying with their mitigation duties.210 Due to this non-hierarchical governance structure international treaties must be self-enforcing.211 Due to Keohane and Oppenheimer self-enforcement could be achieved by standard setting, like the practical norm to drive on the right side in many countries, putting certain actions under a taboo, like human rights violations, or enforcement reciprocity, which means that the Parties to the agreement regularly exchange information on their achievements and aims. In cases of noncompliance they have to expect non-beneficial reactions of the other members, like trade sanctions.212 Bang et al. identify four compliance mechanisms generally available for international climate treaties. They include pressure from domestic stakeholders, informal enforcement by other countries, facilitation and enforcement by international institutions.213

209

210

211 212 213

Note that the contrary situation could also arise. A group with a negative result could consist of one or a few members that performed very well. Here, the danger of demotivating such candidates exists. Cf., Bang, Hovi, and Skodvin, ‘The Paris Agreement’, p. 211; Keohane and Oppenheimer, ‘Paris’, p. 143. Cf., Keohane and Oppenheimer, ‘Paris’, p. 144. Cf., ibid., p. 144. Cf., Xueman Wang and Glenn Wiser, ‘Compliance Regimes under the Climate Change Convention and Its Kyoto Protocol’, Reciel 11, no. 2 (2002): 18, p. 211.

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In general, compliance mechanisms of environmental treaties focus on remedying the Parties’ inability to comply by introducing possibilities for capacity building.214 Indeed, there exists climate treaties, such as the Montreal Protocol, that provide functioning mechanisms to address non-compliance and free-riding which lead to notable successes in reaching the goals of these treaties.215 The compliance mechanism of the Montreal Protocol is twofold. First, if noncompliance arises due to the inability of countries these countries receive support, for example by financial means, as long as they are Parties to the protocol. Second, Non-Parties must fear trade sanctions. This in combination with a clear definition of the Protocol’s targets, a stable framework providing planning security, and the fact that the aimed at phase out of certain chemicals provides also benefits for the industry results in a successful and efficient environmental treaty.216 The UNFCCC has not reached such successes. One reason for this is that the Montreal Protocol addresses the depletion of the ozone layer. This is easier in the sense that the costs are lower and the self-interest of the involved actors is higher. In contrast to this, achieving the goals of the UNFCCC process is related with outstanding costs for the Parties to the agreements. This makes compliance unattractive and leads, in theory, to the need of strong and strict compliance mechanisms. This again would make participation at the first sight unattractive.217

214 215

216

217

Cf., ibid., p. 182. Cf., ibid., p. 188. In the context of general compliance mechanisms in climate treaties see also: Oberthür and Ott, Das Kyoto-Protokoll. Internationale Klimapolitik Für Das 21. Jahrhundert, pp. 179 ff. Cf., Scott Barrett, ‘A Portfolio System of Climate Treaties’, Discussion Paper 2008-13 (Cambridge: The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, October 2008), https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/BarrettWeb3.pdf p. 9-11; Ian Rae, ‘Saving the Ozone Layer: Why the Montreal Protocol Worked’, The Conversation, 9 September 2012, http://theconversation.com/saving-the-ozone-layer-whythe-montreal-protocol-worked-9249. Cf., Bang, Hovi, and Skodvin, ‘The Paris Agreement’, p. 211; Oberthür and Ott, Das Kyoto-Protokoll. Internationale Klimapolitik Für Das 21. Jahrhundert, p. 283.

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The UNFCCC as such requires only soft commitments. Like other environmental treaties its compliance mechanism focusses on financial and technological capacity building as well as providing support for reporting.218 The Parties to the UNFCCC are obliged to report their greenhouse gas inventories annually and overall implementation efforts every 4 years. This phase is followed by a technical as well as in-depth review process and the assessment of implementation. This last step is conducted by the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Technological Advice (SBSTA). Although they should provide a forum for discussion for Parties, their processes are politicized to a great extent, which makes constructive debates difficult. Concrete action to react to implementation problems are missing.219 In contrast to the UNFCCC commitments, the Kyoto Protocol includes also legally binding emissions targets. Nevertheless, its compliance and assessment mechanisms are comparable to those under the UNFCCC. Compliance should be induced by capacity-building, including for example the market instruments.220 As argued above, it became apparent that they did not work out effectively. As well as under the UNFCCC the Kyoto Protocol requires its Parties to report on their efforts. These reports are then reviewed and assessed.221 In order to implement a workable information input for this process, with the Kyoto Protocol comparable metrics were introduced, in form of quantitative emission limits relative to 1990. According to Aldy et al., this have turned out to be too simplistic and misleading.222

218

219 220 221

222

Cf., Wang and Wiser, ‘Compliance Regimes under the Climate Change Convention and Its Kyoto Protocol’, p. 184/185. Cf., ibid., p. 185/186. Cf., ibid., p. 186/187. Cf., Oberthür and Ott, Das Kyoto-Protokoll. Internationale Klimapolitik Für Das 21. Jahrhundert, p. 266-271. Cf., Joseph E. Aldy, William A. Pizer, and Keigo Akimoto, ‘Comparing Emissions Mitigation Efforts across Countries’, Climate Policy 17, no. 4 (2017): 501–15, https://doi. org/10.1080/14693062.2015.1119098, p. 3.

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In the context of the Marrakesh Accords in 2001 a Compliance Committee for the Kyoto Protocol was created. It included a facilitative branch as well as a judicial-like enforcement branch. 223 Nevertheless, legally binding consequences for non-compliance were not decided on,224 although such strict rules are necessary with regard to the demanding overall goals of the Kyoto Protocol.225 So, one of the flaws of the Kyoto Protocol was that the focus rested on negotiating defined targets instead of finding adequate compliance mechanisms.226 Furthermore, the rules and compliance mechanisms were only required for Annex-I countries,227 which means that Non-Annex I countries had the possibility to freeride anyway. The Paris Agreement marks a new approach of tackling non-compliance and free-riding. First, due to the voluntary character of the NDCs, it enables broad participation. Although, the content of the NDCs is more or less up to the individual states, the members to the Paris Agreement must report their progress to other members and the public. The transparency framework, the regular revising of NDCs and stocktaking provide potentially effective compliance mechanisms and enable the possibility of naming-and shaming. Nevertheless, it explicitly includes no enforcement mechanism.228 The Global Stocktake therefore is a major instrument in tackling non-compliance and free-riding. How could this process make an impact without the option to punish non-complying states?

223

224 225

226

227

228

Cf., Wang and Wiser, ‘Compliance Regimes under the Climate Change Convention and Its Kyoto Protocol’, p. 189. Cf., ibid., p. 198. Cf., Oberthür and Ott, Das Kyoto-Protokoll. Internationale Klimapolitik Für Das 21. Jahrhundert, p. 279-283. Cf., Aldy, Pizer, and Akimoto, ‘Comparing Emissions Mitigation Efforts across Countries’, p. 3; Barrett, ‘International Cooperation and the International Commons’, p. 137. Cf., Oberthür and Ott, Das Kyoto-Protokoll. Internationale Klimapolitik Für Das 21. Jahrhundert, p. 186; Wang and Wiser, ‘Compliance Regimes under the Climate Change Convention and Its Kyoto Protocol’, p. 190. Cf., Bang, Hovi, and Skodvin, ‘The Paris Agreement’, p. 211-213.

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3.3

Possible solutions

The problems of non-compliance and free-riding are especially likely in the context of the Paris Agreement due to the voluntary character of the NDCs and the demand to assess the collective progress within the GST. Furthermore, since a reduction in emissions constitutes a common good and the benefits can, by that, not be restricted to complying nations, climate politics are especially vulnerable to free-riding. This apparent weakness of the Paris Agreement could, nevertheless, also turn out to be its strength.229 As I have argued in the second chapter, these provisions could raise ambition by changing the atmosphere in the context of international climate politics. The focus could be shifted from a strict international treaty with the states’ fear of sanctions to a joint transformation challenge and the advantages of climate protection and international collaboration. This basic idea of the Paris Agreement should also be reflected within the Global Stocktake. The aim should be to establish a common understanding of climate change as necessary and a global priority. This could and should materialise on the individual level, in form of sustainable lifestyles as main stream-behaviour and the need to act on climate change as common sense, which would also end the fear of political leaders to not being reelected if they introduced mitigation policies, as well as at the state level, in the sense that policies not introducing mitigation policies or policies that are opposed to mitigation should be no political option, comparable to human rights violations as no political option for democratic states.230 Such an atmosphere would also facilitate the process of the GST. Non-compliance and free-riding would be attended with ever higher reputational damages. The states could then consider the GST as an option to present their ambition and commitment, instead of perceiving it as a burden to being judged. Backed by the populations’ understanding it would be politically easier for states to fulfil their 229 230

Cf., ibid., p. 213/214. Cf., Keohane and Oppenheimer, ‘Paris’, p. 144; See also: Bang, Hovi, and Skodvin, ‘The Paris Agreement’, p. 216.

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moral duties, even if they belonged to the groups with a higher degree of moral responsibility. The activities of the separate groups would not be based on partition but on cooperation and a joint aim to find a satisfying and effective way of reaching the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. How could the establishment of such an atmosphere be accomplished? In this context, non-state actors could play a deciding role.231

3.3.1 The role of non-state actors First of all, I want to stress, that I do not want to make an opposing argument to my conclusion, that states are the agents mainly responsible for acting on climate change, here. Instead, I want to show possibilities and mechanism how the civil society could influence the state in the way that it fulfils its moral responsibilities. It is important to not consider the state and its population as two distinct and unrelated entities. The idea of democracy is that those two instances interact. Therefore, the moral failure of a state is in some way also related to the moral failure of its population, in the sense that there arise certain duties for individuals as citizens or for domestic institutions, as long as the population is able to participate in political processes. In this section, I will focus on non-state actors that are collective entities, like research institutes, NGOs, or citizens’ groups. The first reason why these non-state actors are important for climate negotiations and especially the process of the GST is that they are independent from political pressure or diplomatic constraints. They are furthermore not bound to the rules of the Paris Agreement. Therefore, they have more possibilities to name non-complying countries and by that execute the function of naming and shaming. In relation to a changing atmosphere and changing norms concerning the

231

See for example: Chan, ‘Climate Contributions and the Paris Agreement: Fairness and Equity in a Bottom-Up Architecture’, p. 298; Keohane and Oppenheimer, ‘Paris’, p. 150; Harro van Asselt, ‘The Role of Non-State Actors in Reviewing Ambition, Implementation, and Compliance Under the Paris Agreement’, Climate Law 6, no. 1 (2016), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2729225.

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need for climate protection, this is a strong mechanism and provides a strong incentive to comply. The second reason is that they are able to influence the public opinion. As I have argued, the establishment of an institution like an ethics committee, that could supervise the processes of the GST is, at the current point in time, unlikely. Nevertheless, this role could partly be adopted by non-state actors.232 Within the time of preparation of a GST, experts could pronounce their recommendations on issues worth to assessing, for example which financial flows are necessary, or which mitigation policies need to be introduced to close the ambition gap. In the follow-up of the GST they could assess these issues, even if the Parties did not design the GST due to the experts’ recommendations. Furthermore, they could cluster the countries into appropriate groups for their judgements, which is also not yet likely to happen among the states. By that, non-state actors could imitate the GST process to demonstrate how the ideal or more adequate design could look like. Parallelly, they could communicate why this ideal design is necessary, how it could be implemented among the states, and other relevant information on a meta-level. By this, the awareness among some populations could change, especially within countries with a higher degree of moral responsibility. Most of them are industrialised democracies, because they provide good conditions for non-state actors, citizens are able to influence political processes and freedom of press and opinion is guaranteed. Since these states are also the states with a lot of power on the global level, here lies a great potential to effectively change something. If non-state actors coordinate their efforts, they could use this potential to implement an understanding among the population on the severeness of climate change and which actions need to be taken in order to prevent harm. Furthermore, they could explain the UNFCCC processes, the gap between the ideal and the actual design of the GST, and which states need to increase their efforts to the population. Another benefit for these attempts is that the process of the GST will be practised regularly. Every five years non-state actors could use the event of the 232

Cf., Aldy, Pizer, and Akimoto, ‘Comparing Emissions Mitigation Efforts across Countries’, p. 12; Chan, ‘Climate Contributions and the Paris Agreement: Fairness and Equity in a Bottom-Up Architecture’, p. 298.

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GST as an occasion to recall the necessity, options and challenges, and urgency of climate protection. Note that actors from the media could influence this process as well. This could in the long run lead to a common sense among the population that their government has to act and which concrete actions it has to perform. Also, the understanding of UNFCCC process will increase and the population will have concrete visions how mechanisms like the GST should be designed. This will increase the pressure especially on powerful governments to strive for an ideal GST design according to the experts’ judgements and also to fulfil their respective duties under the GST. From 2023 onwards, each GST could function as a window of opportunity to put climate change, international climate policies, and the Paris Agreement on the domestic agendas and could encourage a public discourse about these topics.233 Nevertheless, this should not release the governments from their moral responsibilities. States could influence and trigger such a process of a change in atmosphere and norms as well. For example, they could support environmental associations, NGOs and research institutes by improving their access to political participation and by that improving their influence on these processes. Instead of allowing lobby groups like the automotive or oil industry or big businesses strong political influence governments could focus on representatives from the environmental lobby. Of course, this is a controversial topic. To fulfil the ideals of democracy, in theory, all interest groups should have comparable ability to influence political processes. In practice, there are mechanisms that influence which interest groups get access and by that the possibility to promote their aims. Today, this question still depends on how much financial capacities a lobby group has and how important the respective industry is for the economy of a country.234 This is a mechanism that could and should be changed by states.

233 234

Cf., Friedrich, ‘Global Stocktake (Article 14)’, p. 336. See for example: Lobby Control, ‘Reichtum und Einfluss | LobbyControl’, accessed 21 September 2018, https://www.lobbycontrol.de/schwerpunkt/reichtum-und-einfluss/; Center for Responsive Policies, ‘Influence & Lobbying | OpenSecrets’, accessed 21 September 2018, https://www.opensecrets.org/influence/; Michael Bauchmüller and Alexander Mühlauer, ‘So wollen Lobbyisten strengere Klimaziele verhindern’, sueddeutsche.de, 19 September 2018, sec. wirtschaft, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/ wirtschaft/klimawandel-lobby-klimaziele-1.4134469.

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Apart from supporting non-state actors, the main duty of states remains to fulfil their moral responsibilities on the global level. The reason why states do not introduce effective mitigation policies, today, is not that they do not want to act against the will of their population but that there exists a common notion that the population’s interest equals economic interests of a state. As I have shown, this notion could be changed by cooperating with non-state actors with environmental interests. Furthermore, as long as states do not violate their inhabitants’ basic rights, it is morally required to set aside eventual interests of the state itself or of its population.235 It is a state’s task and moral responsibility to enforce decisions that are morally demanded in order to prevent severe harm, for their own and foreign people, and to compensate for damages that were created in the past. Like the civil society is able and has a duty to influence their states decisions, states could also explain and justify certain policies to their population.236 All in all, the practical problems arising in the context of international climate policies, the implementation of the Paris Agreement, and the design of the Global Stocktake, are best addressed by striving for a change in the common perception of climate protection. Here, the interrelations between states and their populations must be used in order to achieve an understanding among the population and by that ideal conditions for governments to fulfil their duties under the GST. The idea of the Paris Agreement to abandon the top-down structure and replace it with a pledge-and-review system provides good opportunities. This idea should be captured by the GST design as well. The circumstance that a morally adequate GST design provides heavy burdens for most of the Parties and is not realistic at the moment, should not lead to an attempt of introducing strict compliance mechanisms. Instead the GST could be used, also in a non-ideal form, as an opportunity to change norms and atmospheres among the states and its populations, which has the potential of being, in the long run, more effective than restrictive mechanisms.

235 236

Cf., Shue, Basic Rights. Subsistence, Affluence, And U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 114/115. Cf., Caney, ‘Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing Burdens’, p. 7.

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Conclusion The aim of this thesis was to answer the question, how the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement could be designed in an equitable manner. To answer this question, it was important to first answer several basic moral questions. Therefore, I dealt with the topic of climate change as a moral problem in the first chapter. I argued that the consequences of climate change cause severe harm, like the loss of livelihood or death due to extreme weather events, and that this alone is already enough to consider climate change from an ethical perspective. It became apparent that this harm caused by climate change even constitutes an infringement to, what Shue calls, basic rights of subsistence. This situation is worsened by the unequal and inappropriate distribution of benefits, damages, and causal responsibilities among the global community. In simplified terms, there are some nations that caused and benefitted in the context of climate change by emitting a large amount of greenhouse gases and others that are vulnerable to the damages of temperature increases. I referred to two issues that complicate the moral considerations on climate change. Firstly, it constitutes a Tragedy of the Commons. This means that it is a problem that was caused and needs to be solved collectively, which makes it difficult to identify moral agents and allocate moral responsibilities. Secondly, emission production, which leads to climate change, is correlated with economic growth. Therefore, most states have an interest in emitting greenhouse gases while mitigation policies put a burden on countries. It could, therefore, be argued that the duty to act on climate change clashes with the right to development. The approach I suggested in this thesis could solve these two problems. I argued that states are the most relevant actors for solving the moral problem of climate change, because of the following reasons. Due to Shue, the violation of basic rights leads to the task of individuals to build institutions that are able to adequately secure these rights. Since climate change is a global problem, globally acting institutions are needed. Individuals are not able to create globally acting 115

institutions, but they are able to create institutions that then again could act on a global level. Those institutions are states. Ideally, states represent all affected individuals, and they are able to act globally. By that they indirectly enable individuals to act globally. Based on this argumentation, I concluded that all states are morally responsible for acting on climate change. At this point, a further moral aspect became relevant. It would be unfair if all states were morally responsible to the same degree. To defend this line of argumentation I analysed the Contributor Pays Principle, the Beneficiary Pays and the Ability to Pay Principle. I found that respecting these principles is necessary not only to constitute a morally adequate account, but also to constitute it in the most efficient way. States need to feel being treated fairly in order to cooperate and fulfil their duties. As a consequence, I stated that concentrating on efficiency and harm avoidance is as important as taking into account aspects of historic responsibility for creating the best possible approach on tackling climate change. Based on the findings from the first chapter, I argued in the second chapter for building groups of countries along moral parameters. Further, I suggested a generic group building process and thresholds for the different moral principles. I applied this on a selection of countries, so that five groups evolved. I argued that the first group, that fulfils all three moral principles, bears historic responsibility. Its members should be obliged to the strongest moral duties. The fifth group, fulfilling none of the principles, bears moral responsibility only because of the requirement of harm prevention. The members of this groups have moral duties to cooperate and accept useful foreign aid. The other groups range between these two extremes and have a respective amount of moral duties. Although my suggestion on the group building process might be in need of improvement, it could, nevertheless, be concluded from this chapter, that there exist possibilities to translate moral findings into political reality. This should be a reason to work on it in more detail. The division into Annex I and Non-Annex I countries under the UNFCCC is not appropriate anymore and should be revised. This finally leads to answering my main research question in the third chapter. In moral terms, an ideal GST would orientate the assessment and group-building process along the countries’ amounts of moral responsibility. This would fulfil the demand to assess the collective progress as well as to proceed in a just way. Each group would have to fulfil special duties and by that also special reporting requirements. Most important for groups with higher degrees of moral responsibility is 116

the implementation of mitigation policies that will lead to the fulfilment of the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. Furthermore, financial flows and capacity building between, especially, the first and the last group are essential. The fifth group should introduce democratic political structures and strive for global cooperation. I further suggested that the process of the GST could be supervised and organised by an ethics committee. Both, the composition of the committee as well as that of the groups, should be reassessed with every new GST. I further argued that this GST design is not realistic, at the current point of time. I elaborated on several general and special problems. Nevertheless, these problems could be solved by strong efforts of non-state actors. The role of non-state actors is important because of two reasons. Firstly, they could assess the members to the Paris Agreement along an ideal version of the GST. Furthermore, they could, explain why this is necessary and why such a process is not possible within the UNFCCC. Furthermore, they are not bound to the rules of the Paris Agreement. Thereby, they could show which countries do not comply with their commitments. Secondly, they have the ability to influence the public opinion and by that increase the pressure on governments to implement an improved GST design. A supporting aspect in this context is that non-state actors are relatively strong within developed democratic countries, and these countries are those that are also powerful on the global level. This bears the potential of achieving an ideal GST design in accordance with the non-coercive character of the Paris Agreement. Nevertheless, the fact that non-state actors have the ability to bring about necessary global processes does not diminish the responsibilities of the states as such. One important aspect in this context is that a state and its civil society are interacting entities. Individuals or collective national actors, at least within democratic states, cannot argue that they are not responsible for global processes, because the state should get active first. Inhabitants influence the state’s character and vice versa. States as well as its inhabitants should stop passing responsibilities around. Developed states, as states, are able and obligated to increase its environmental efforts immensely. We, as the inhabitants of developed states, are obligated to change our lifestyles and our priorities concerning national policy agendas. People need to create states that again create functioning global institutions that end the suffering of human beings from the consequence from climate change. Developed states must decide on policies that lead to carbon-neutral societies and behavioural changes among its populations. 117

The topic of equity and climate change is complex. It is even more complex when considering it in the context of international policy and relating diplomatic constraints. Therefore, there remain several topics that are in need of further analysis. First of all, a more detailed and adequate way of the group building process must be developed. Also, the concrete duties for these groups should be discussed in-depth. This process must include a range of experts from different disciplines, such as political, juridical, ethical, and scientific experts, and especially representatives from developing countries. Furthermore, in this thesis, I concentrated on mitigation policies. Nevertheless, some harms of climate change cannot be prevented anymore. Therefore, it is crucial to define duties also in the context of adaptation and compensation. Finally, I tried to base my argumentation on the already established design of the Paris Agreement and its Global Stocktake. Another promising attempt might be to first define an adequate equity framework, irrespective of existing treaties, and use this framework for identifying flaws within the Paris Agreement. This would be useful for developing eventual future climate treaties or for revising the existing agreement.

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