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Adaptation under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change: The International Legal Framework
Abstract
As a global society, we need to take action not only to prevent the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change but also to adapt to the unavoidable effects of climate change already imposed on the world. Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change looks at the challenges of ensuring that policy responses to climate change do not place undue and unfair burdens on already vulnerable populations. All countries will be endangered by climate change risks from flood, drought, and other extreme weather events, but developing countries are more dependent on climate-sensitive livelihoods such as farming and fishing and hence are more vulnerable. Despite this, the concerns of developing countries are marginalized in climate policy decisions that exacerbate current vulnerabilities.
Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change brings together scholars from political science, economics, law, human geography, and climate science to offer the first assessment of the social justice issues in adaptation to climate change. The book outlines the philosophical underpinnings of different types of justice in relation to climate change, present inequities, and future burdens, and it applies these to real world examples of climate change adaptation in Bangladesh, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, and Hungary. It argues that the key to adapting to climate change lies in recognizing the equity and justice issues inherent in its causes and in human responses to it.
ContributorsW. Neil Adger, Paul Baer, Jon Barnett, Maria Bohn, Kirstin Dow, Saleemul Huq, Roger E. Kasperson, Mizan R. Khan, Janica Lane, Neil A. Leary, Robin Leichenko, Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer, M. J. Mace, Karen O'Brien, Jouni Paavola, Stephen H. Schneider, David S. G. Thomas, Chasca Twyman, Anna Vári
Recent years have witnessed an increase in global average air temperatures as well as ocean temperatures, as documented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The rise in temperature is considered irrefutable evidence of climate change, and this has already started to have serious consequences for water resources and will have even more dire consequences in the future. Compounding these consequences are population growth, land-use changes and urbanization, increasing demands for water and energy, rising standards of living, changing dietary habits, changing agricultural practices, increasing industrial activities, increased pollution, and changing economic activities. All these will likely have adverse effects on water resources. This article briefly discusses climate change and its causes and impacts on water resources.
Increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and slow progress on international emissions mitigation negotiations have encouraged the development of governance systems for adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Adaptation involves initiatives that moderate harm and/or exploit beneficial opportunities (McDonald 2010: 8). For this discussion, autonomous adaptation includes responses undertaken by individuals, families and businesses without incentives, requirements or exhortations from an authority, while planned adaptation involves some level of planning for a group, region, nation or group of nations (McDonald 2010: 8). Planned adaptation requires a range of policy instruments and actions, and responses can be reactive or anticipatory (examples in Table 4.1) and involve incremental or major change. For all but the least developed countries (LDCs), planned adaptation is more about government, especially national government, than governance at this stage, for reasons that will be explained in this chapter. The nature of the problem (climate change) and the diversity of possible adaptation responses mean however that more comprehensive governance arrangements, including some international coordination, will be both desirable and necessary.
The major livelihood strategy in rural Bangladesh is subsistence agriculture either through agriculture production activities, agriculture labor or both. On the other hand, agriculture plays a key role in economy due to its role in food security, employment and livelihood. For increasing food production and attaining food sufficiency, Bangladesh has achieved remarkable progress in agriculture since its independence in 1971. Bangladesh has been one of the prime beneficiaries of the global “Green Revolution” based on introduction of high yielding seeds, use of chemical fertilizers, and irrigation of land for enhanced agricultural productivity. It has been seen that food production has tripled from 10 million metric tons to 30 million metric tons over last three decades. Record amount of food produced in 1996–1997 which ultimately helped to attain self sufficiency. Despite tremendous accomplishments related to food security, this chapter tries to give the insights of livelihood security through the improvement of agriculture sector.
It became apparent in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that climate change impacts are already being felt (IPCC 2007) and that those most vulnerable to these impacts are the poorest communities within poor countries, notably in the small-island developing states, the least industrialized countries, and countries whose economies heavily rely on climate-sensitive activities, particularly in Africa (Huq and Ayers 2007; IPCC 2007: 9). Yet it is also apparent, as we lay out in this chapter, that climate governance under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 'climate convention') still fails to adequately address climate change adaptation needs in developing countries. Adaptation to climate change describes the adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities (IPCC 2007). Adaptation is seen as one of two options for managing climate change; the other is mitigation, which involves the limiting of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly of carbon dioxide and methane. Although adaptation and mitigation are inherently linked in the climate system (the more effective mitigation is undertaken now, the less need for adaptation in the future), until very recently they have been viewed as separate or even competing policy options under the convention (Swart and Raes 2007). Mitigation has been treated as an issue for industrialized countries who hold the greatest responsibility for climate change, while adaptation is seen as a priority for developing countries where mitigation capacity is lower and vulnerability is high (Dodman et al. 2009). Adaptation has historically been seen as a marginal policy option, mitigation's 'poor cousin' in the climate policy arena (Pielke et al. 2007).
Cap and trade systems have been pursued as a primary strategy for addressing climate change but have received surprisingly little analysis from a justice perspective. Using a multivalent justice framework that includes the dimensions of distribution, recognition, and representation, this article examines the development of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), the largest multijurisdictional North American attempt to create a greenhouse gas (GHG) cap and trade system. Decisions involving five components of creating the system are interrogated: participation metrics, stakeholder consultations, methods of policy analysis, market boundaries, and policy guidelines. This analysis yields two sets of observations. First, the article documents how market-oriented regulation contracted understandings of climate change policy. Decisions taken to facilitate the commodification and marketization of GHGs narrowed the understanding of justice with the WCI to the concept of “fair play” among market participants. Second, the article argues that using a multivalent approach to justice facilitates the observation of how a relatively shallow understanding of justice was shaped in this particular context. It also concludes, however, by considering the limitations of this approach to justice, in particular the dimension of representation, when faced with multiscalar and ambiguous policy contexts such as those inherent to climate policy.
Climate change is no longer a distant possibility. Potentially harmful climatic changes are already underway. If we want to or believe we ought to minimize the harmfulness of eventual climate impacts it will therefore be necessary for us to adapt to our changing climate. As people will be differentially affected by climate impacts depending on when, where, and in what circumstances they live, adaptive measures will have to vary with context. It turns out that those least causally responsible for climate change are predicted to suffer the most from climate impacts. As these are disproportionally the world's poor and their vulnerability is partly due to their poverty, adaptation will often intersect with development. Determining who should be held responsible for meeting the costs of adaptation, the topic of this review, is therefore a difficult task. After reviewing the relevant literature, this review identifies the need for further work on the conceptual and practical issues that arise when thinking about the ethics of adaptation. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 687–700 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.132
This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Ethics and Climate Change
This article suggests that a multiscalar and interdisciplinary construct is required to analyse climate justice as an appraisal of the distribution of climate finance for adaptation. The analysis of climate justice necessitates a determination of whether the inter- and intrastate distribution and ultimate effectiveness of climate finance for adaptation is realized across and between scales. This article finds current approaches to climate justice lacking in empirical research that can incorporate multiple scales. Using climate finance for adaptation projects as a proxy, the article applies theoretical frameworks from Geography and Political Science to realize climate justice as an accumulative top-down process.
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The creation and funding of international institutions for adaptation to climate change involve questions of justice. Should unconditional assistance flow to governments or should assistance be provided in ways that ensure benefits flow to vulnerable populations? Do major emitters of greenhouse gases have special obligations to assist the developing world adapt to climate change? Which actors are the proper bearers of obligations to assist? After reviewing both state-centred and cosmopolitan arguments about adaptation assistance, it is argued that neither philosophical perspective justifies the statist design of existing institutions. A more just and effective international agreement on climate change adaptation must achieve a higher degree of consistency between the principles of burden sharing applied internationally and domestically. Adaptation assistance should target human welfare rather than provide compensation to states, and should be funded through measures that impose similar emission costs on affluent people in both developed and developing countries. These arguments are briefly demonstrated using the case of China.
The dangers that future climate change poses to physical, biological, and economic systems are accounted for in analyses of risk and increasingly figure in decision-making about responses to climate change. Yet the potential cultural and social impacts of climate change have scarcely been considered. In this article we bring the risks climate change poses to cultures and social systems into consideration through a focus on places-—those local material and symbolic contexts that give meaning and value to peoples' lives. By way of examples, the article reviews evidence on the observed and projected impacts of climate change on the Arctic and Pacific island atoll nations. It shows that impacts may result in the loss of many unique natural and cultural components of these places. We then argue that the risk of irreversible loss of places needs to be factored into decision-making on climate change. The article then suggests ways forward in decision-making that recognizes these non-market and non-instrumental metrics of risk, based on principles of justice and recognition of individual and community identity. (c)© 2011 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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