It is widely accepted that
climate change is a global issue, with its impacts permeating across the entire
planet, paying no regard to boundary confinements or state territories.
Despite this overarching
acknowledgement that climate change poses a threat to the entire global realm,
international institutions along with the series of international summits and
protocols, have had great difficulty in yielding cooperative and plausible
solutions to this very complex transnational issue. Ultimately, the primary
concern for government’s is the survival of their own state, rather than some
sort of wider moral obligation to the international community.
To date, the mitigating actions undertaken
to address climate change have been characterized by an individualistic
state-focused approach. International protocols such as Kyoto, and
organizations like the Untied Nations, have failed to bring about
internationally adopted solutions, as a result of individual states being too
caught up in their own self-interests. States are very much focused on their
short-term interests, rather than the benefits that would be felt from
‘greening’ their societies and economies in the long run.
An example of this relates to the
huge costs involved with reducing carbon emissions, which can make particular
industries far less competitive. Because of this, states are far more concerned
with maintaining their economy and prosperity in the short term, rather than
considering the impacts that climate change could have on their economy in the
future. This was touched upon by European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, who specified that “no state, even the ambitious ones, wanted more than a 40% cut” in their total carbon emissions by 2030, partly due to the dampening effect it would have on their economies.
This particular framework of
thinking can be demonstrated by French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau’s famous 'Stag Hunt’ model, which describes a hunter who, driven by his short-term interests, strays
from his hunting partner in order to kill a hare for his own consumption. However, in doing
so, he sacrifices the success of the stag hunt, which could have reaped far
greater mutual reward for both parties. This metaphor certainly resides
throughout the various international debates regarding climate change, where long-term global prospects are often pushed to the periphery due to the lack of social cooperation.
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| Rousseau's Stag Hunt (Source: Google Images) |
Another core issue in the
international climate debate is the fact that developed countries have had the
opportunity to develop their industries and economies since the industrial era,
which has no doubt played a role in the progressive warming of the planet. The
question is whether developing countries, such as Brazil, India and China, with
their fast growing economies, should be granted the same right without facing
carbon restrictions or environmental obligations. And if not, how can
international institutions convince these nations to put aside their
self-interests for the sake of overarching international and environmental
interests? For more information, please visit http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/22/climate-change-reasons-failure.
The fact is that ‘state-centric’
thinking characterizes the nature of the current international system,
compelling states to act in a selfish manner and leaving little scope for
international cooperation. In this sense, it’s the system that must be re-configured, for cooperative mitigation and
adaptation to be made plausible.
In The Transformation of Political Community, critical
theorist Andrew Linklater touches on the idea of reconfiguring the political community, which
includes concepts of sovereignty, territory and citizenship, in order for a
progression “towards more cosmopolitan forms of governance”. This is
rooted in the idea that the state’s all-embodying characteristic can be
dismantled to allow for more open forms of community and governance.
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| (Source: Google Images) |
This notion of a transformed
political community has been adopted when addressing environmental issues such
as climate change. In his article Climate change: some reasons for our failures, Robert Manne states that a rapid adoption of clean energy worldwide would require “one of
the largest transformations in the history of humankind”. He
suggests a system that facilitates acts of “national altruism over national
interest”, whereby our commitment to being a good global citizen triumphs over our
current state-based notion of citizenship, which is restricted to a given
sovereign territory.
The system itself is what needs
to change if we are to progress beyond the current focus on state-based
solutions, influenced by the self-interest of states, towards internationally
cooperative efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. The
crucial point here is that this transformation must enhance the impact of international
obligations to the global community on domestic political choices.
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| Climate change protestors (Source: Google Images) |
The question is whether or not
the human race will be willing to part from an enduring tradition of state
sovereignty, territory and citizenship, in order to lay the foundations for a
more cooperative and integrated global community. This reconfiguration could be
the key to prioritizing the long-term interests of humanity with respect to
climate change.
Video: U.S Secretary of State, John Kerry, urges the international community to take steps to overcome climate change (Source: YouTube)
