Agenda 1: Resource Sharing in Disputed/Unclaimed Territories.
What is a Territorial Dispute?
A territorial dispute is a disagreement over the possession/control of land between two or more states, or over the possession/control of land by one state after it has conquered it from a former state no longer currently recognized by the occupying power.
These disputes are often related to the possession of natural resources such as rivers, fertile farmland, mineral or oil resources, although the disputes can also be driven by culture, religion and ethnic nationalism.
Major territorial disputes in the world:
Arunachal Pradesh: Eastern Indian state, controlled in full by India, but China disputes a portion of it, saying it is part of its Tibet Autonomous Region.
Aksai Chin: Aksayqin, Akesaiqin or Akesai Qin): China administers this region as part of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, but India claims it as part of its Jammu and Kashmir state.
Xingjian: East Turkestan / Uyghurstan / is an autonomous region of China, but there have been several movements by the Turkic locals (mostly Uyghurs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and persophone Tadjiks), over the past century, to gain independence. Calls for the independence of East Turkestan from Chinese control have grown louder since independence was gained for the republics in West Turkestan (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
Kosovo (Republic of Kosovo): Claims independence, but Serbia also claims sovereignty. The Republic of Kosovo also claims sovereignty over the United Nations administered region of Kosovo - some small enclaves with a majority of Serbian inhabitants - which UN peacekeepers currently control. 65 nations currently recognise Kosovo, including all of its neighbours apart from Serbia (Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia). In 2008, Serbia requested a United Nations resolution declaring Kosovo's independence, and the UN General Assembly subsequently adopted a resolution asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the matter.
Ireland: When the Republic of Ireland gained its full independence from Britain in 1921, after many wars of independence; Northern Ireland was created within the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland. The island was partitioned, and one-sixth of it - Northern Ireland - remains controlled by the United Kingdom, but with its own parliament, constitution, police force and culture. There is a ceasefire currently in place within Northern Ireland, with many of the leading paramilitary groups (including the IRA, INLA and UDA) disarming to concentrate on political solutions
Cyprus Claims independence, but the Republic of Cyprus also claims sovereignty. Only Turkey recognises Northern Cyprus, while the rest of the World currently recognises the de jure sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus over the entire island of Cyprus. In 1974, a Greek Cypriot coup annexed the island to Greece, and this was followed by an invasion by Turkey in 1983, which has ultimately left the island divided in every sense. Northern Cyprus has become isolated from the rest of the World, and relies on Turkey completely for financial, political and military support.
Palestine: Claims independence, and two separate Palestinian governments currently control large parts of the West Bank (the Palestinian National Authority) and the entire Gaza Strip (Hamas) as separate entities, but most of Palestine is also claimed and controlled by Israel. Over 100 states recognise Palestine, but with varying territorial borders, or in some cases, with no borders specified. Many Palestine groups claim sovereignty over all of Israel. Most of the world’s governments recognise Israel’s full sovereignty over most of Palestine.
Taiwan + associated islands; Kinmen, Matsu, the Pratas and Itu Aba : The 'Republic of China' used to govern most of mainland China, and Mongolia too, but after the Communist Party won the civil war in 1949, the government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Many of Taiwan's leaders have referred to it as being the true ruler of China, and they still claim sovereignty over China and Mongolia, but the People's Republic of China still harbours wishes to reunite Taiwan with the mainland, by force if necessary. 23 nations currently recognise Taiwan.
Major Unclaimed /Occupied areas:
Antarctica : Many nations claim sovereignty over large parts of the Antarctica continent, including Australia (Australian Antarctic Territory), New Zealand (Ross Dependency), France (Adélie Land), the United Kingdom (British Antarctic Territory), Argentina (Argentine Antarctica), Norway (Peter I Island, Queen Maud Land) and Chile (Antártica). While many of these claims overlap, particularly those claimed by the UK, Chile and Argentina, various claimants do not recognise many others' territorial claims. Australia and New Zealand's claimed lands were part of the original British claim, until those countries gained independence. Brazil, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Spain and the United States have all signed the Antarctic Treaty, and are all interested in grabbing their own slice of the coldest continent, but have yet to officially stake their claims, in accordance with the Treaty. Nearby Antarctic islands are also claimed by various nations, including Australia (Heard Island & McDonald Islands) and Norway (Bouvet Island).
Tibet : The Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), led by the Dalai Lama, considers itself a government in exile, but has recently declared that they are now aiming only for greater autonomy for Tibet within China, not full independence, which the Dalai Lama described as currently being "out of the question". Tibet is governed by China, with the majority of it geographically included in China's Tibet Autonomous Region. Local support for the 'Free Tibet Movement' is hard to gauge, possibly due to the tight Chinese controls, which sees surprisingly little information come directly from within Tibet itself.
Golan Heights: (Syrian Heights) : Israel claims sovereignty over about two-thirds of the Golan Heights, which it annexed from Syria in 1967, and which it reasserted it's sovereignty over within the 1981 Golan Heights Law. This was condemned by the United Nations, which continues to see this part of Israel as being occupied, and actually belonging to Syria. Syria continues to assert it's sovereignty over the entire Golan region, but only currently administers about one-third of it. The Syrian-administered area has a population of about 80,000, and about 40,000 live in the Israeli-controlled area, many of whom are in illegal settlements. Along with the UN, the EU, US, UK, Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Arab League all consider Israel to be an illegal occupying force in the region.
Pakistan Occupied Kashmir: after Indian Independence when the ruler of Kashmir & Jammu decided to remain independent, a war broke out between India and Pakistan, dividing the population of Jammu & Kashmir between the two sides. The Indian government then said it had made a formal agreement with Hari Singh, the Maharajah of Jammu & Kashmir, called The Instrument of Accession, which handed over the entire lands of Jammu & Kashmir to Indian control. Pakistan disputed this, due to the population being mostly Muslim, and to this day, Pakistan denies such a document exists. After some horrendous wars in the area, Jammu & Kashmir is now split into Indian Territory (the northern state of Jammu & Kashmir, which is actually just a large slice of Kashmir), Pakistani territory (the Northern Areas) and Chinese territory (Aksai Chin). India claims sovereignty over all of these areas, as does Pakistan.
Gaza strip: The Gaza Strip is a narrow piece of land along the Mediterranean coast between Israel and Egypt. Just 40km (25 miles) long and 10km wide, it is home to more than 1.5 million Palestinians. The shape of the territory was defined by the Armistice Line following the creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent war between the Israeli and Arab armies. Egypt administered the Strip for the next 19 years, but Israel captured it during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and Gaza has been under Israeli control since then.
Exclusive Economic Zones:
There have been numerous disagreements about the sharing of the resources available from the oceans and seas. The major disputed areas ones being the Exclusive Economic Zones; EEZ have been defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as an area beyond adjacent to the territorial sea, subject to the specific legal regime established in this part, under which the rights and jurisdiction of the coastal state and the rights and freedoms of other states and are governed by the relevant provisions of this convention. The exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured. Generally, the rules regarding the High Seas, set forth in Articles 88 to 115, apply to the EEZ. Within its EEZ, a nation may explore at exploit the natural resources (both living and inanimate) found both in the water and on the seabed, may utilize the natural resources of the area for the production of energy (including wind and wave/current), may establish artificial islands, conduct marine scientific research, pass laws for the preservation and protection of the marine environment, and regulate fishing. One of the primary purposes behind establishing the EEZ was to clarify the rights of individual nations to control the fish harvests off their shores. The 200-mile limit established by UNCLOS is not an arbitrary number. It is derived from the fact that the most lucrative fishing grounds lie within 200 nautical miles from the coast as this is where the richest phytoplankton (the basic food of fish) pastures lie.The creation of the EEZ gave coastal nations jurisdiction of approximately 38 million square nautical miles of ocean space. The world's EEZs are estimated to contain about 87% of all of the known and estimated hydrocarbon reserves as well as almost all offshore mineral resources. In addition, the EEZs contain almost 99% of the world's fisheries, which allows nations to work to conserve the oceans vital and limited living resources.
Important Disputes involving EEZ`s are:
• The Cod Wars between the United Kingdom and Iceland.
• Norway and Russia dispute both territorial sea and EEZ with regard to the Spitsbergen archipelago (the conflictendured from 1970 till 2010)
• The dispute over Rockall.
• The South China Sea and the Spratly Islands is the site of an ongoing dispute between several neighboring nations
• There is an ongoing dispute between Turkey and Greece over the extent of the continental shelf and the EEZ.
• Croatia’s Protection Zone in the Adriatic Sea caused friction with Italy and Slovenia.
• A section of the Beaufort Sea is disputed between Canada and the United States
• France claims a portion of Canada's EEZ for Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, even though it is surrounded by Canadian EEZ.
UNCLOS:
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is the most comprehensive attempt at creating a unified regime for governance of the rights of nations with respect to the world's oceans. The treaty addresses a number of topics including navigational rights, economic rights, pollution of the seas, conservation of marine life, scientific exploration, piracy, and more. The treaty, one of the longest in history, is comprised of 320 articles and 9 annexes, representing the codification of customary international law and its progressive development.
UNCLOS I: the General Assembly adopted resolution 1105 (XI), which called for the convening of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in Geneva in 1858. Eighty-six nations participated (now commonly referred to as UNCLOS I).
The meeting produced four separate conventions:
1) The Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone (established sovereignty rights and rights of passage through the territorial sea, established the Contiguous Zone to extend 12 nautical miles from the baselines, but failed to set standards of limits on the territorial sea)
2)The Convention on the High Seas (established access for landlocked nations, expounded on the concept of "flag state," outlawed the transport of slaves, covered piracy, established safety and rescue protocols, established a national duty to prevent pollution, and established rights to laying of undersea cables and pipelines)
3) The Convention on Fishing and Conservation of the Living Resources of the High Seas (established the right of coastal nations to protect living ocean resources, required nations whose fleets leave their territorial sea to establish conservation measures, and established measures for dispute resolution)
4) The Convention on the Continental Shelf (established the regime governing the superjacent waters and airspace, the laying and maintenance of submarine cables or pipelines, the regime governing navigation, fishing, scientific research and the coastal nation's competence in these areas, delimitation, and tunneling).
UNCLOS II: In an attempt to deal with the issues that remained unresolved after UNCLOS I, the General Assembly called for a second United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (now commonly referred to as UNCLOS II). The parties met for just over a month in early 1960 with the objective of settling the question on the breadth of the territorial seas and fishery limits. While the conference adopted two resolutions, the parties were unable to come to consensus on the issues at hand
UNCLOS III: The deliberations lasted for nine years, saw the participation of 160 nations, and concluded in 1982 with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is now commonly referred to as simply "UNCLOS" or the Law of the Sea Treaty. UNCLOS is one of the largest, and likely one of the most important, legal agreements in history. The treaty contains 320 articles and 9 annexes. It synthesizes and builds upon the agreements that were developed at the first conference (see UNCLOS I above). The agreement addresses a myriad of issues including navigational rights of ships and aircraft, limits on the extension of national sovereignty over the oceans, environmental protection of the oceans, conservation of living resources and mining rights. While UNCLOS was first signed in December of 1982, the agreement did not come into force until November of 1994; a period of nearly 12 years UNCLOS required 60 signatures for ratification and could only enter into force one year after the final nation had ratified or acceded to the treaty. The main reason many nations took so long to sign the treaty is because of Article 309, which prohibits nations from taking out reservations to any part of a treaty. A reservation is a statement made by a nation when accepting a treaty, whereby it excludes or modifies the legal effect of certain provisions of a treaty as those terms apply to the nation accepting the treaty. The inability of a nation to take out reservations to particular terms of the treaty caused many nations to hesitate. UNCLOS represented a significant number of compromises and some of the terms of the agreement did not sit well with various nations. However, in order to establish a unified doctrine of the law of the sea, UNCLOS necessarily had to prevent reservations or risk maintaining a fractured regime.
Position Paper:
Delegates need to answer these questions while writing their position paper:
1) Are there any disputed/ occupied / unclaimed territories that concern your country?
2) What resources are available and being exploited in these areas?
3) Have any treaties been signed and ratified by your country relating to the subject?
4) How does your country propose to solve existing dispute?
5) What are the state of human rights and environmental standards in these regions?
Agenda 2 : Rethinking Kyoto, Montreal and Copenhagen: a Follow up to major environmental treaties.
~ I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? ~
Environmental law is an integral and critical element of international law today. Diplomats have been postponing and neglecting it for too long and the world is reaping the benefits. Though climate change may not be as dramatic an issue as say, genocide, it is no narrower in scope or less capable of destroying lives. Join us as we look at attempts over the last half-century to save our Earth before it becomes too late.
The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
" Perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol. " -Kofi Annan, Former Secretary General of the United Nations
In 1985 the Vienna Convention established mechanisms for international co-operation in research into the ozone layer and the effects of ozone depleting chemicals (ODCs). 1985 also marked the first discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole. On the basis of the Vienna Convention, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was negotiated and signed by 24 countries and by the European Economic Community in September 1987. The Protocol called for the Parties to phase down the use of CFCs, halons and other man-made ODCs.
After a series of rigorous meetings and negotiations, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was finally agreed upon on 16 september 1987 at the Headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. The Montreal Protocol stipulates that the production and consumption of compounds that deplete ozone in the stratosphere--chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons, carbon tetrachloride, and methyl chloroform--are to be phased out by 2000 (2005 for methyl chloroform). Scientific theory and evidence suggest that, once emitted to the atmosphere, these compounds could significantly deplete the stratospheric ozone layer that shields the planet from damaging UV-B radiation.
Man-made chlorines, primarily chloroflourobcarbons (CFCs), contribute to the thinning of the ozone layer and allow larger quantities of harmful ultraviolet rays to reach the earth.
The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is one of the first international environmental agreements that includes trade sanctions to achieve the stated goals of a treaty. It also offers major incentives for non-signatory nations to sign the agreement. The treaty negotiators justified the sanctions because depletion of the ozone layer is an environmental problem most effectively addressed on the global level. Furthermore, without the trade sanctions, there would be economic incentives for non-signatories to increase production, damaging the competitiveness of the industries in the signatory nations as well as decreasing the search for less damaging CFC alternatives.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
It is in fact because of the need of broad and balanced information about climate change that the organization was created back in 1989. It was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) as an effort by the United Nations to provide the governments of the world with a clear scientific view of what is happening to the world’s climate. The initial task for the IPCC as outlined in the UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53 of 6 December 1988 was to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change; social and economic impact of climate change, possible response strategies and elements for inclusion in a possible future international convention on climate.
The scientific evidence brought up by the first IPCC Assessment Report of 1990 unveiled the importance of climate change as a topic deserving a political platform among countries to tackle its consequences. It therefore played a decisive role in leading to the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the key international treaty to reduce global warming and cope with the consequences of climate change.
Since then the IPCC has delivered on a regular basis the most comprehensive scientific reports about climate change produced worldwide, the Assessment Reports. It also continued to respond to the need of the UNFCCC for information on scientific technical matters.
The IPCC Second Assessment Report of 1995 provided key input in the way to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The Third Assessment Report came out in 2001, and the Fourth in the course of 2007.
Along with the Assessment Reports, the IPCC has produced several Special Reports on various topics of growing interest, and many other papers and contributions to the advancements of the climate change science. It also prepared methodologies and guidelines to be used by Parties under the UNFCCC for preparing their national greenhouse gas inventories.
The participation of the scientific community in the work of the IPCC has been growing greatly, both in terms of authors and contributors involved in the writing and the reviewing of the reports and of geographic distribution and topics covered by the reports.
UNFCCC
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC) is an international environmental treaty produced at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The objective of the treaty is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The ultimate aim of the UNFCCC is
‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic human induced interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner’
The treaty itself sets no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms. In that sense, the treaty is considered legally non-binding. Instead, the treaty provides for updates (called "protocols") that would set mandatory emission limits. The principal update is the Kyoto Protocol, which has become much better known than the UNFCCC itself.
The UNFCCC was opened for signature on May 9, 1992, after an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee produced the text of the Framework Convention as a report following its meeting in New York from 30 April to 9 May 1992. It entered into force on March 21, 1994. As of December 2009, UNFCCC had 192 parties.
One of its first tasks was to establish national greenhouse gas inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals, which were used to create the 1990 benchmark levels for accession of Annex I countries to the Kyoto Protocol and for the commitment of those countries to GHG reductions. Updated inventories must be regularly submitted by Annex I countries.
Kyoto Protocol :
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.
The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the Convention encouraged industrialised countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so.
Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, the Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.”
The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. The detailed rules for the implementation of the Protocol were adopted at COP 7 in Marrakesh in 2001, and are called the “Marrakesh Accords.”
The Kyoto mechanisms
Under the Treaty, countries must meet their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Kyoto Protocol offers them an additional means of meeting their targets by way of three market-based mechanisms.
The Kyoto mechanisms are:
• Emissions trading – known as “the carbon market"
• Clean development mechanism (CDM)
• Joint implementation (JI).
The mechanisms help stimulate green investment and help Parties meet their emission targets in a cost-effective way.
Monitoring emission targets
Under the Protocol, countries’actual emissions have to be monitored and precise records have to be kept of the trades carried out.
Registry systems track and record transactions by Parties under the mechanisms. The UN Climate Change Secretariat, based in Bonn, Germany, keeps an international transaction log to verify that transactions are consistent with the rules of the Protocol.
Reporting is done by Parties by way of submitting annual emission inventories and national reports under the Protocol at regular intervals.
A compliance system ensures that Parties are meeting their commitments and helps them to meet their commitments if they have problems doing so.
Adaptation
The Kyoto Protocol, like the Convention, is also designed to assist countries in adapting to the adverse effects of climate change. It facilitates the development and deployment of techniques that can help increase resilience to the impacts of climate change.
The Adaptation Fund was established to finance adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Fund is financed mainly with a share of proceeds from CDM project activities.
The road ahead
The Kyoto Protocol is generally seen as an important first step towards a truly global emission reduction regime that will stabilize GHG emissions, and provides the essential architecture for any future international agreement on climate change.
By the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, a new international framework needs to have been negotiated and ratified that can deliver the stringent emission reductions the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly indicated are needed.
The Conference in Copenhagen also made good progress in a number of areas including improvements to the clean development mechanism, amending Annex I to the Convention to add Malta, guidance on REDD+, and draft decisions on adaptation, technology, and capacity-building. However, the Bali Roadmap negotiations could not be concluded and negotiations have been continued through 2010, and COP 16 is to be held in Cancun in December
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali Indonesia (2007)
The Conference, hosted by the Government of Indonesia, took place at the Bali International Convention Centre and brought together more than 10,000 participants, including representatives of over 180 countries together with observers from intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations and the media. The two week period included the sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, its subsidiary bodies as well as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. A ministerial segment in the second week concluded the Conference.
The conference culminated in the adoption of the Bali Road Map, which consists of a number of forward-looking decisions that represent the various tracks that are essential to reaching a secure climate future. The Bali Road Map includes the Bali Action Plan, which charts the course for a new negotiating process designed to tackle climate change, with the aim of completing this by 2009. It also includes the AWG-KP negotiations and their 2009 deadline, the launch of the Adaptation Fund, the scope and content of the Article 9 review of the Kyoto Protocol, as well as decisions on technology transfer and on reducing emissions from deforestation
Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009 - "Hopenhagen"
The Copenhagen climate conference COP15 resulted in a document called the Copenhagen Accord. It was hammered out by a small group of countries - including the world's two biggest greenhouse gas polluters, China and the US. The conference as a whole did not adopt the accord, but voted to "take note" of it.
Was the summit a success?
This depends on your point of view.
On the positive side, the Copenhagen Accord, for the first time, unites the US, China and other major developing countries in an effort to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol did not achieve this - it imposed no obligations on developing countries to restrain the growth of their emissions, and the US never acceded to it. The accord also says developed countries will aim to mobilise $100bn per year by 2020, to address the needs of developing countries.
On the other hand, the summit did not result in a legally binding deal or any commitment to reach one in future. The accord calls on countries to state what they will do to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but these will not be legally binding commitments. Furthermore, there is no global target for emissions reductions by 2050 and the accord is vague as to how its goals - such as the $100bn of funds annually for developing countries - will be achieved.
What are the key points of the Copenhagen Accord?
• A commitment "to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2C" and to achieve "the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible"
• Developed countries must make commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and developing countries must report their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions to the UN by 31 January 2010
• New and additional resources "approaching $30bn" will be channelled to poorer nations over the period 2010-12, with an annual sum of $100bn envisaged by 2020
• A Copenhagen Green Climate Fund will be established under the UN convention on climate change, to direct some of this money to climate-related projects in developing countries
• Projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries will be subject to international monitoring if they are internationally funded
• Programmes to provide developing countries with financial incentives to preserve forests - REDD and REDD-plus - will be established immediately
• Implementation of the accord will be reviewed in 2015 and an assessment will be made of whether the goal of keeping global temperature rise within 2C needs to be strengthened to 1.5C
Which countries backed the accord?
The essential points of the deal were brokered by US President Barack Obama with representatives of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Mr Obama also consulted with the leaders of France, Germany and the UK. Most countries at the conference gave it their support, but some countries were resolutely opposed, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba.
Why did the Copenhagen summit take place at all?
The majority of the world's governments believe that climate change poses a threat to human society and to the natural world.
Successive scientific reports, notably those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have come to ever firmer conclusions about humankind's influence on the modern-day climate, and about the impacts of rising temperatures.
In 2007, at the UN climate talks held in Bali, governments agreed to start work on a new global agreement.
The Copenhagen talks marked the end of that two-year period.
Why is a new global agreement needed?
The Copenhagen talks sat within the framework of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), established at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992.
In 1997, the UNFCCC spawned the Kyoto Protocol.
But neither of these agreements can curb the growth in greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to avoid the climate impacts projected by the IPCC.
In particular, the Kyoto Protocol's targets for reducing emissions apply only to a small set of countries and expire in 2012.
Negotiations therefore began on new treaty that was bigger, bolder, wider-ranging and more sophisticated than the Kyoto agreement, and the plan was that these would conclude in Copenhagen.
Successor to Kyoto
A successor to the Kyoto regime of 2008-2012 should be one that would build on what is good about it and fix what is most lacking. The six desired criteria for such an approach are
(1) More comprehensive participation
(2) Efficiency, via those market mechanisms
(3) Dynamic consistency
(4) Equity
(5) Robustness with respect to uncertainty
(6) Compliance.
What is required is a proposal that seeks realistically to bring in all countries and that looks far into the future. The path of quantitative emission targets for the 21st century must be selected sequentially, perhaps one decade at a time, all within a common framework. An analogy for the appropriate framework would be the post-war General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which gave the world 50 years of successful rounds negotiating trade liberalisation, even though the original signers did not know what specifics would emerge Virtually all careful economic modeling attempts, by contrast, purport to trace out at once an optimal path over the period of a century or more. The problem with this approach is that governments cannot bind their successors. Nobody knows what the objective scientific, technical, economic, and political realities will look like in the future. Thus it is rational and sensible that the system is unable to commit to specific targets for the rest of the century. If the designers of a treaty specify a path for steep future reductions, their successor governments will not likely be willing to pay the high economic costs necessary to follow through when the time comes. Those making investment decisions today – from power plant construction, to housing, to technological research – know that tomorrow’s policies will not be consistent with today’s promises, and will act accordingly. This is the definition of dynamic inconsistency, the third criterion listed above. One implication is that the desired path entails more aggressive steps earlier-on than the optimal path that comes out of standard forward-looking “integrated assessment models.”
A common framework of quantitative targets would allocate relative targets across countries by means of a formula that is fairly general at first, but that becomes increasingly specific as the decade in question approaches. Viewed at the horizon of one decade, the formula for emission limits would be phrased as cuts from the expected can be shown statistically that the emission cuts that were agreed among industrialised countries at Kyoto followed a progressive pattern: richer countries agreed to make proportionately larger cuts from their BAU paths than less-rich countries. The same pattern could be built into the formula for emission targets expected of new joiners in the future. Second, the framework of a nested sequence of formulas could include the possibility, at least at a rhetorical level, that the target for emissions in the limit, as the year under consideration approaches infinity, puts zero weight on income or past levels of emissions, and complete weight on population. In plainer English, in the very long-run, the developing countries would notionally achieve their equity-based demand for equal levels of emissions per capita. The fifth criterion is robustness with respect to uncertainty. At the level of aggregate global emissions, a good way in any given decade to ensure that costs don't go unexpectedly high is a hybrid system that caps costs through an escape clause, also called a safety valve. At the level of individual countries, a good way to narrow the range of variation of costs is to use formulas that index emission targets, within the decade, to national output.
The sixth and final criterion is a realistic mechanism for compliance, which is lacking from the Kyoto Protocol. Whatever other carrots or sticks someone might dream up – trade sanctions, moral suasion, or penalties in the form of steeper cuts in the future – minimising ex ante the chances of substantial economic loss is the sine qua non of assuring ex post compliance. This leads us back to progressivity and robustness under uncertainty. Countries will not in the end comply with an agreement unless they are insulated against the risk that the target commitments will impose huge economic costs on them.
Points to consider:
1. Has your nation made any binding pledges in the international arena on any piece of environmental legislation? (ex: Kyoto protocol)
2. If not, have any reasons been offered and if yes, which ones?
3. How dependent is your nation’s economy on renewable energy resources vis-a-vis non renewable energy resources and how do scientists estimate your contribution to climate change (Delegates, please remember to be mature. Do not use your position paper to blame other nations for their numerous failings as it is a waste of the valuable space you are permitted.)
4. How important is climate change prevention and environmental legislation to your country domestically?
5. If you are representing a shadow delegation, has your organization made any statements/ pledges regarding international environmental legislation?
6. As a representative of your country/organization, put forward some ideas of your own to strengthen and gain support for environmental treaties.
7. Keeping in mind that the time period for the Kyoto Protocol is drawing to close, come up with post-Kyoto options for the world as a whole.
Suggested sites:
http://unfccc.int/
http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php
http://www.ipcc.ch/
Copenhagen : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8278973.stm
