The Kyoto Protocol has been and still is an ongoing process of consultation and joint efforts by its members in order to design and implement mechanisms to facilitate, encourage and enforce the Protocol’s goals and mechanisms. Yet the decision-making and implementation of Kyoto’s goals remain lengthy and cumbersome processes that strive to obtain consensus among the UN members. The protocol highlights the UN’s principle of consensus as one of its main weaknesses, as it undermines the necessary goals and strategies to reach effective reversal of the current climate change.
The European Union’s Commission has recently set its own goals in regards to climate change reversal, based on the goals set by the Environmental Council for a reduction scenario that clearly undermine the timid reduction pathway set by the Kyoto Protocol.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has managed to establish a number of decisions that could effectively implement measures against climate change, yet the controversial “common but differentiated responsibility” induced by the consensus constraint remains a major structural obstacle to efficient implementation, as differentiated responsibility allows for unregulated emissions on behalf of developing countries with problematic energy consumption trends.
As much as the “common but differentiated responsibility” does justice to developing countries by considering the current global situation, trends and strategic advantages for both developed and developing countries considerably affect efforts to establish a global-scale governance framework. To what extent can the UNFCCC effectively respond to this challenge?
The Kyoto’s Protocol Compliance Mechanism includes both a facilitative branch and an enforcement branch managed by members representative of both developed and developing continents distributed according to geographical areas. The enforcement branch has been granted course of action for non-compliant Parties of the Protocol, which mainly consists in withdrawing the non compliant Party’s right to participate in emission credits trading and forcing the non compliant to Party to make up for its unregulated emission excess. Considering that the emissions trading concept sets a price for carbon, which commodifies carbon in such a way that it affects in turn a country’s set of strategic advantages, the enforcement strategy might be effective.
But how can UNFCCC’s Compliance Mechanism effectively constrain into compliance non-compliant Parties that would hypothetically set up their own parallel emission trading?
In essence, the compliance mechanism rests on a regulated market for carbon emissions, but does not possess sufficient power to oversee any unregulated emission trading and production, which in turn represents a threat to an effective and global governance towards climate change reversal. This potential scenario is most likely to take place amongst countries that haven’t ratified the Protocol or developing countries with poorly managed emission containment such a countries with failing democratic systems.
The Kyoto Protocol is aiming to include as many countries as possible in reversing the effects of climate change whilst keeping in mind economic performances. Therefore requiring the same efforts and performances from every country participating would have a greater negative impact on developing countries.
Yet, is responsibility for past actions the most efficient criteria for setting carbon credit levels? Whilst most developed countries certainly have to assume an important part of the task, growth performances for the most promising developing countries are expected to trigger alarming increases in pollution rates. This scenario calls for revising the current criterias for emission limits, and consider rather emission limites based on absolute levels and the accumulative effect of emission levels, strategies that are unfortunately not envisaged by the Kyoto Protocol.
Furthermore, this trading system might act as an incentive for developing carbon abatment projects, but it rests on the logic of a regulated market affecting global governance, and the Kyoto Protocol does not affect implementation mechanisms at a national level. Incentives to reverse climate change should not be limited to the realm of international agreements. In fact, cooperation should also be part of the local political realm. This implies including environmental concerns in the conception citizens have of their social contract in such a way that emissions regulation and production are not only determined by international trading and political spheres.
The social contract upon which modern democracy was built is an essential foundation for communities and represents the most accessible regulation body to effectively compensate and reward energy consumption behavior.
Favoring carbon emission reduction through individual behavior, such as auditing taxpayers on their fuel consumption or granting tax reduction for consumers of renewable energy could reinforce the much needed global consensus and involvement currently being set up at the level of international relations and organisations.
But in instances where developing countries have not yet integrated democratic practices, or are faced with important officious economic activity and cannot resort to a social contract to claim their rights, implementation of environmentally friendly strategies are not an immediate priority or a feasible solution.
Thus, the shortage in democratic practices in certain countries indirectly contributes to the challenges faced by a much more wider scale of decision making that takes places in international bodies surch as the UNFCCC.
*Julia grew up in the Netherlands and in France and currently lives in Montreal, where she graduated in Political Science. She collaborates with Radio Centre Ville where she hosts a one hour segment on various issues of social importance.
She is part of the Vision staff and worked on the position paper. Thearticle sums up her concerns that came from both her research for our position paper and her previous working experiences involving local politics and accountability.
