The Case for Current Global Action on Climate Change
National environmental awareness has grown in an unprecedented manner in the last months. Never in history have environmental concerns been more central to national political claims in the Western World. Indeed, following Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s initiative, student-strikes are held regularly on school days to advocate for international climate action in a variety of European cities (from Stockholm, to Barcelona, Brussels or London). The protests even led to the development of international movements such as Youth for Climate. On the top of that, in the wake of campaigns conducted in the Netherlands, USA, Columbia and Pakistan, French celebrities such as Marion Cottillard, NGOs like Green Peace France, and more than 2 million people have associated in “l’affaire du siècle” (the deal of the century) with the aim of filing a lawsuit against the French state for inaction on climate change.
Allegations of passivity against the international society that arise from such local and national campaigns, appear, however, to differ drastically from the discourses adopted by public officials, who generally assert that Global Environmental Governance (GEG) is more effective today than it has ever been and that significant progress has in fact already been made in the past five decades.
Such viewpoint is not necessarily wrong. However, it seems that in reality, for every step forward taken in the GEG “journey”, we also take two steps back.
Analyzing said “progress” in detail we notice on the one hand, that our world has witnessed a massive buildup of environmental institutions, policies and knowledge since the 1960’s. Political ecology reached a turning point after the Earth Summit of 1992, held by the United Nations in Rio de Janeiro. The summit allowed interest in environmental matters such as biodiversity loss or ecosystems functioning dynamics to grow, thus gaining in visibility. From there, a multitude of similar events occurred on a regular basis with the explicit aim to reinforce and promote multilateralism, as it is seen as a key tool to address environmental issues. Indeed, international agreements, summits and discussions through intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the United Nations, have become the principal form of international environmental action. The Paris Agreement has for instance been at the heart of the environmental discourse. Being ratified by 184 parties out of 197 present at the Convention, it is considered a universal, very successful agreement on Climate Change.
The EU also does act to promote actions against climate change but its efforts remain very limited and superficial. For instance last June, the European Commission organized the “EU for Talanoa” Conference which aim was to evaluate the progress made since the 2015 COP21 of Paris and to prepare for last December’s COP24 of Katowice. Scientists such as the Swiss Bertrand Picard, policy-makers such as Patricia Espinoza (executive secretary of the UNFCCC), NGO representants such as Jennifer Morgan (Executive Director of Greenpeace International), and private sector stakeholders all joined the conference (a full report of the conference can be found here). Yet, the conclusion drawn from it on the necessity to implement of a multiple-level governance to effectively tackle Climate Change, seems quite trivial when put in relation with the history and realities climate change issues.
In parallel to those highly mediatized “successes” towards climate change, a number of treaties and regulations have been created by IGOs. To provide with a few examples, the Convention on Biological Diversity developed a strategic plan for diversity after realizing in 2010, that biodiversity loss was becoming a serious threat to humanity. The plan was entitled the “Aichi Targets” encouraging governments to negotiate on the matter and eventually establishing the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which is in fact a new biodiversity assessment body. On a similar note, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was adopted in 1972. The treaty seeks to control the black-marketing of both marine and terrestrial protected species as well as to monitor global commerce in a way that would not cause risks for exploitation to endangered species. It is considered by many legal experts to be the most effective of the conservation regimes.
There are many more examples like those two that could admittedly rule in favor of the view which states that governments are on a positive journey towards better management of environmental issues. Nevertheless, when we dig deeper on each of those examples we understand that the impacts of those treaties are minimal. Indeed, the Aichi Targets are to be met in 2020 and scientists still actively denounce the gap between them and policy, already anticipating a failure of the program. And CITES faces financial and enforcement issues suffering from a cruel lack of compliance by states. Surveys on the matter have shed light on the sad facts that less than 20% of parties involved have actually made legal reforms to enforce elements of the treaty and that in any case, only 45% of species trades are truly reported. Moreover, no sanctions are applied to counter non-compliance.
It is therefore undeniable that progress has been made in the sense that global Climate Change Regimes have been established. Nevertheless as demonstrated above, their substantial effects remain limited.
The effectiveness of environmental treaties and conventions like the CITES is highly dependent on the degree of state-compliance they possess, but here again, we are to face a paradox: States don’t bother to comply by GEG rules mainly because of their costs, level of uncertainty and ineffectiveness, but high-costs, uncertainty-levels and ineffectiveness are in part due to the non-compliance of states towards them. GEG suffers from a vicious circle which thus represents a significant hurdle towards attempts to successfully address climate change issues. It also explains why those issues are often relegated to the realms of “low politics”. They are not seen as a priority by governments who would rather invest in short term, well-defined cases than in long-term uncertain issues.
All those factors participate in making GEG one of the most challenging type of governance in terms of exertion. Implementing effective global governance in the environmental sector still constitutes a major impediment for governments to dealing with climate change matters.
In such context one could wonder whether the institutions or methods in place today truly are adequate and whether climate “action” as defined by activists is feasible at a global scale. Keeping in mind local and national initiatives like Thunberg’s climate strikes, we can also inquire whether the top-down approach adopted so far by stated in the name of multilateralism really is capable of answering environmental challenges. Challenges that surely remain abstract and distant in time from a Western perspective, but which are not less real or important.
Maybe instead, we should see it all as a Greek tragedy in which the rising sea levels are no more than Poseidon’s attempts to punish us for having overexploited the resources provided long ago by the Gods, and where our fate seems mapped out no matter what we undertake politically, economically, or socially to change it.