the great debate- paper

8/4/2019 The Great Debate- Paper

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NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INENERGY SECTOR

The Great Debate-

Who bears a greater obligation to combat climate change, thedeveloped or the developing?

Author 1

Name: Gunmeher Juneja

Sex: Female

Institution: Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow

Student B.A. LL.B (Hons) III year

E-mail address: [email protected]

Author 2

Name: Disha Sandeepan

Sex: Female

Institution: Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow

Student B.A. LL.B (Hons) II year

E-mail address: [email protected]


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Introduction

Global warming is a result of the massive emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhousegases into the atmosphere which has been an outcome of industrialisation due to the rapid

burning of fossil fuels, which started around the 19 th century. The debate: whether the

developed nations have been majorly responsible for this state of the atmosphere? If yes,should they bear a greater responsibility in combating climate change? This debate wasstirred principally in the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement linked to the United

Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiated in December 1997 at the cityof Kyoto, Japan, which came into force on February 16 th, 2005. Its major feature is that itsets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducinggreenhouse gas (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990levels over the five-year period from 2008-2012. Under this, developing countries like Indiaand China were exempted from the carbon emission reduction in comparison to developedcountries under the principle of common but differentiated responsibility. The debatemainly circulates around the recognition of this principle. The paper will discuss this in greatdetail. Further we have carbon trading where carbon credits, given monetary value, are

bought and sold between nations. The paper will aim at reaching a solution to the problem of global warming and environmental pollution, while achieving a balance between theresponsibility to be taken up by developed and developing nations, for a safe and better tomorrow.

Global Warming

With glaciers melting, cloud forests drying, sea levels rising, and wildlife scrambling to keep

pace, global warming has shown its effects, to the extent that rhythms of climate that allliving things have come to rely upon are changing. When scientists talk about this issue of climate change, they are referring to their concern about global warming caused by humanactivities.

But what exactly is global warming?

Global warming refers to an average increase in the Earth's temperature, which in turn causeschanges in climate. The average facade temperature of the globe has augmented more than 1degree Fahrenheit since 1900 and the speed of warming has been almost three folds thecentury long average since 1970. It is when greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, water vapour,nitrous oxide, and methane) trap heat and light from the sun in the earths atmosphere that theearths temperature increases. This in turn causes problems for the living things which cannotnow adapt to this change, and as a result, the earth and its living beings are facing someserious problems.

Scientists have different opinions about whether the current global warming is natural or unusual. Some believe that it is part of the Earth's natural cycle of warming and cooling.However most believe that what we are now experiencing is unusual and has been caused by


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human activities, mainly the discharge of green house gases from smokestacks, vehicles, and burning forests. These are perhaps the leading power driving the fashion.

The main cause of global warming is the Greenhouse effect. While Greenhouse effect isalways condemned as it is linked with global warming, the truth is that life on the earthcouldnt have survived without.

It is a known fact that life on earth is dependent on the energy that is radiated from the sun.Around 30 percent of the sunlight that beams towards the Earth is deflected by the outer atmosphere and is scattered back into space. The other 70 percent reaches the surface of the

planet from where it reflected again as a type of slow moving energy called infraredradiation. This heat caused by the infrared radiation is absorbed by the greenhouse gases suchas water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, and ozone. As a result, the escape of this heat fromthe atmosphere of the earth is slowed down. This trapped heat, by the greenhouse gaseswhich account for around only 1 percent of the Earths atmosphere, is held as a warm-air kind of blanket that surrounds the planet. This phenomenon is what the scientists call the

greenhouse effect and it regulates the temperature of the Earth. Without it, scientistsestimate that the average temperature on Earth would be colder by approximately 30 degreesCelsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit), far too cold to sustain our current ecosystem. 1

Even though this Greenhouse effect is an essential phenomenon for survival on the planet, itis when human beings distort the natural process and accelerate the production of thesegreenhouse gases to a level more than required to maintain the ideal temperature on the Earththat raises the problems and issues of climate change. Contribution by human beings to thisgrave concern is owing to a lot of activities such as burning of natural gas, coal, and oil; somefarming practices and land use changes; production of long-lasting industrial gases by somefactories; deforestation, population growth; etc to name a few.

Ky oto Protocol

The first international legal instrument to address the issue of climate change is theFramework Convention on Climate Change (Climate Convention), signed at the 1992 United

Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It is believed that it is the most comprehensiveinternational endeavour to address adverse changes to the global environment, the overridinggoal of the Convention being the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in theatmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the

climate system . 2

The Climate Convention is a framework agreement. It lays out several commitments and principles the most important being the specific ways in which those provisions will be

1 Larry West, W hat is the Greenhouse Effect?- After 150 years of Industrialization, Climate Change is Inevitable < http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/greenhouse.htm > accessed 25 th February, 20112 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development: Framework Convention on Climate Change,May 9 th, 1992, art 2


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actualizedi.e., which countries will lower GHG emissions. Provisions dealing with howmuch these emissions will be reduced were left to subsequent international negotiations and

protocols. The need was felt to achieve more tangible action on GHG emissions. Owing tothis the parties agreed to negotiate a protocol laying down binding targets and timetable for reduction of GHG by developed nations. This decision was made well in time for the third

Conference of Parties (CoP) which was to be held in Kyoto, Japan, at the end of 1997.3

The Kyoto Protocol treaty was negotiated in December 1997 at the city of Kyoto, Japan andcame into force February 16th, 2005.

"T he Kyoto Protocol is a legally binding agreement under which industrialized countries will reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2% compared to the year 1990(but note that, compared to the emissions levels that would be expected by 2010 without the

Protocol, this target represents a 29% cut). T he goal is to lower overall emissions from six greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, HFCs, and PFCs - calculated as an average over the five-year period of 2008-12. National targets range

from 8% reductions for the European Union and some others to 7% for the US, 6% for Japan, 0% for Russia, and permitted increases of 8% for Australia and 10% for Iceland ."4

The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the Conventionencouraged industrialised countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits themto do so.

One of the key principles that were established was the principle of common butdifferentiated responsibility, or CBDR. According to this principle developed nations wereto take the lead in cutting down GHG emissions in order to address the problem of climatechange, expressly excluding developing nations from these binding GHG emission

reductions. This principle can be perceived to have been introduced on the shared notions of justice- the developed nations who were majorly responsible for emitting GHG during their development process have the greatest capacity to compensate for the same. In all fairness,the Convention demands more from those who have been more responsible and are capableof bearing the brunt in comparison to those who have been less responsible.

This issue of excluding the developing nations from any binding agreement to reduce GHGemissions has been the bone of contention and has turned out to be one of the mostcontentious issues before and during the Kyoto reference and continuing so. Clearly, thereason for the United States not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol can be understood from itsinsistence that the developing countries make meaningful contributions to the future GHGreduction efforts. This markedly contradicts the CBDR principle.

3 See Review of the Implementation of the Convention and of Decisions of the First Session of the Conferenceof the Parties, U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties, 2d Sess., AgendaItem 5, at 3,U.N. Doc. FCCC/CP/1996/L.17 (1996).4 Text of the Kyoto Protocol < http://www.kyotoprotocol.com/ >


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Common but Differentiated Responsibilit y - CDBR

The common but differentiated responsibility as a whole, expresses the need to evaluateand bestow responsibility and liability for the remediation of environmental degradation

based on not what is done now but also what has been done in the past, the history taken into

account to mean that the emissions made by the industrially developed nations in the past toreach their present status also is to be compensated for.

Insofar as the climate is of such crucial common concern to humankind, it follows thatthere is a responsibility on the part of countries to protect it. This begs the question of who isresponsible for climate pollution. The answer is a function of each countrys historicalresponsibility for the problem, its level of economic development, and its capability to act.This was suggested by Principle 23 of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, which states that it isessential to consider the extent of the applicability of standards which are valid for the most advanced countries but which may be inappropriate and of unwarranted social cost for developing countries. 5 The CBDR is a guiding principle of international cooperation and

solidarity.

The CBDR principle has been described briefly in Principle 7 of the Rio Declaration onEnvironment and Development:

States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earths ecosystem. In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities. T he developed countries acknowledge theresponsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainabledevelopment in view of the pressures their societies place on the global

environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command.6

The CBDR has two matrices. The first is the common responsibility, which arises from theconcept of common heritage and common concern of humankind, and reflects the duty of States of equally sharing the burden of environmental protection for common resources; thesecond is the differentiated responsibility, which addresses substantive equality: unequalmaterial, social and economic situations across States; different historical contributions toglobal environmental problems; and financial, technological and structural capacity to tacklethose global problems. 7 In this sense the principle establishes a conceptual framework for anequitable allocation of the costs of global environmental protection.

5 Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, June 16, 1972, princ. 23, 11 I.L.M.1416, 1420 (Stockholm Declaration).6 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development: The Rio Declaration on Environment andDevelopment, June 13, 1992, 31 I.L.M. at 877.7 Vito De Lucia, Common but differentiated responsibility, The Encyclopedia of Earth


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The Debate

There are many questions involved in this public debate. Are industrialized nations to blamefor emitting massive quantities of green house gases into the atmosphere during the industrialrevolution? Does it matter that they were unaware of the consequences of their emissions and

global warming throughout most of the industrial revolution? Does this make them lessculpable and thus less obligated to resolve the crisis? Overall, should developed countries bemore obligated to combat global warming?

y Do States have a common but differentiated responsibilit y ?

The Rio Declaration from The United Nations Conference on Environment and Developmentstates - " In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, Stateshave common but differentiated responsibilities. T he developed countries acknowledge theresponsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technologies and

financial resources they command.It is understood that protecting the environment and promoting sustainable development is acommon responsibility of all States. However, due to different social, economic, andecological situations, countries have to shoulder this responsibility in different ways. The

principle of CBDR hence provides for asymmetrical rights and obligations with regard toenvironmental standards, and aims to encourage State acceptance of treaty obligations in a

broader sense, while avoiding the type of problems typically associated with a lowestcommon denominator approach. The principle also mirrors the nucleus elements of equity,

placing more responsibility on wealthier countries and those more responsible for causingspecific global problems. Perhaps more importantly, a conceptual framework for compromise

and co-operation has been given by the principle, in order to effectively meet theenvironmental challenges.

Secondly, emissions per capita are much higher in developed countries (20t per capita in theUS) compared to developing ones (less than 4t per capita) 8. This means that individuals indeveloped countries are more responsible for causing and continuing global warming andthen it can be rightly said that they are more obligated to cut down their emissions and solvethe problem. Therefore, pressure should be put by these individuals on their governments totake greater action on their behalf.

Background for COP 8, Center for Science and Environment, October 25, 2002 - Developing

countries [...] have taken the road to growth and development very recently. In countries like India, emissions have started growing but their per capita emissions are still significantlylower than that of industrialised countries. T he difference in emissions between industrialised

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and developing countries are even starker when per capita emissions are taken into account. In 1996, for instance, the emission of 1 US citizen equalled that of 19 Indians. 9

The catastrophe of the atmospheric common has been the lack of rights to this globalecological space. As a result, countries have borrowed or drawn heavily and without control.They have emitted greenhouse gases far in excess of what the Earth can withstand, and thiswas because they could do so without any limits or quotas put on them. Some researchershave called this the natural debt of the North, as against the financial debt of the South. 10

Calculated in terms of the total emissions of each country, since the early 1900s, we find thatevery living American carries a natural debt burden of more than 1,050 tonnes of C02 (seegraph: Cumulative CO2 emissions). In comparison, every living Chinese has a natural debt of 68 tonnes and every living Indian, a mere 25 tonnes. 11 Therefore, even with all the talks of India and China catching up with rich world in terms of total emissions, the fact is in terms of natural debt it will take many more decades before this happens.

On these lines itself, the theory of Contraction (developed countries cutting down their emissions) and Convergence (the developed countries meeting the developing countries inthe middle) makes sense to address the imbalance between per capita emissions around theworld. This fairly allows developing countries to continue developing and increase per capitaemissions to a level equal to that of the developed countries in the middle. Thus once again,the obligations falls more heavily on the developed that on the developing.

But critics of these points have gone on to say, and rightly so, that chalking out obligations of this sort distract us from the core issue of climate change and our efforts to combat it. Globalwarming is a collective, global problem that can only be successfully combated if everycountry puts its wits and resources fully behind resolving the crisis. Developing countries

should put their frustrations with developed nations for causing global warming behind, andfocus their attention on helping form a collective solution.

Also, the theory of Contraction and Convergence fails to meet its aim as when the developedcountries on the one hand are supposed to cut down their emissions and reach developingcountries in the middle, the developing countries on the other hand are fairly allowed todevelop to equal their emissions with those of the developed countries and meeting them inthe middle. This way one cancels out the other and we are stuck at the same point.

Another view point presented is that making all the developed countries equally liable sees nosense as in modern international capitalism and free trade; states specialize in areas in which

they have a comparative advantage. For example, some states specialize in manufacturingwhereas some in services and emission rates are far apart in context of these countries.

9 Anup Shah, Climate Justice and Equity < http://www.globalissues.org/article/231/climate-justice-and-equity >10 W hat equals effective, (Down to Earth Magazine, CSE, December 15 th, 2007), see on11 Ibid


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y The Economic dimension

Developing nations need to be given an unobstructed opportunity to develop exclusive of emission restrictions. Developing nations need room to develop industry and grow, the sameway as developed nations were allowed to do in their endeavour for industrial development.Heavy emissions regulations hinder such growth and are thus inequitable.

Going "green" in developed nations must not be perceived as a burden, but opportunity.While it may be the case that developed countries are "duty-bound" to pilot on the issue of global warming, this should not be considered a "burden". Enhancing energy efficiency andsetting up technical and capital supremacy in the emerging global green industry is a

potentially game changing prospect for developed nations. Developed nations should, in thismanner, be pleased in any perspective taken by developing countries such as China and Indiathat the developed world is somehow "burdened" by taking the lead in this new gigantic"green" industry. It would give them a head start in establishing their economic dominance inthe industry. At a minimum, developed nations should not be concerned about any economic

costs associated with their "higher responsibility" to combat global warming; it's a goodinvestment in an industry that has a bright future.

However, the non imposition of the emission reduction standards on the developing nationhas its own drawbacks.

Developing nations want to escape these limitations as they want to retard the economicgrowth of developed nations so they can grow economically.

It is not economically advantageous for the world to fuse developed nations with theresponsibility to use more of their resources to combat global warming. The reason being ,that the wealth in developed countries is precisely what runs the global economy andgenerates demand for the work carried out by developing nations.

y The Geographical paradox

A new contention which is being floated around is that the Developed must protectdeveloping from higher costs of warming.

The authors of a 2006 UN report cautioned that affluent countries - especially the wealthyOrganization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations - are impelling anecological crisis that will strike the poor in the hardest manner. These are the nations livingnear the equator and in low-lying coastal areas hence most vulnerable to rising seas. Thisglobal warming "irony" builds a greater obligation on the part of developed countries to takeaction, and protect developing countries from the costs of their blind industrialization, massconsumption, and wealth-accumulation.

However, this contention seems rather irrational as the Developed did not plan for emissionsto harm poor most. Developed nations were completely unaware of the after effects of their emissions through a greater part of the industrial revolution. Therefore, they wereundoubtedly not aware that the consequences would unreasonably fall on poor developing


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nations. Developed nations are not, therefore, responsible or culpable for thesedisproportionate consequences, so they should not be unreasonably compelled to fight globalclimate change on this point.

y Impact of growth in developing nations

Another question of common concern is whether the effect that industrial growth indeveloping countries will have on the environment undermine the efforts made by developedcountries in combating these environmental hazards?

The most likely answer to this is that even with lower obligation, developing states are going"green". Both India and China are already setting up very stringent emissions standards,largely because they are so susceptible to the local outcomes of their large emissions.Reducing smog in their own cities is enough of a motivation for them to make such emissionsreductions. Therefore, even with a lower "obligation" for developing nations, they are stilltaking sturdy actions to battle climate change.

Developing world growth will not counteract developed emissions cuts.

"O ne of the concerns regarding the Kyoto Protocol has been that it exempts developing nations from targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Accordingly, many people worrythat developing country emissions will skyrocket as they develop economically, effectively

swamping the expensive efforts of developed countries required to make large investments inlowering their emissions. However, evidence has shown that this is not likely ."12

However, if anything history has taught us all it is to be prepared for the worst. KyotoProtocol excused developing countries such as China from meeting certain key emissionsstandards. The problem is that the new emissions from China would equalize all emissions

cuts from developed nations. As a result, like mentioned above as well, the world, under Kyoto Protocol, would/will emit more or less the same amount and make little advancementto cutting emissions on the whole. This is intolerable. Developed countries cannot beexpected to lead on climate change under such circumstances.

y Does more blame equal more obligated?

It is only rational to believe that the one who has the most blame should be the one moreobligated to cure or remedy the situation. On these lines, we are referring to the obligation of the developed nations.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu - " It must be pointed out that climatechange has been caused by the long-term historic emissions of Developed Countries and their high per-capita emissions...Developed countries bear an unshirkable responsibility. 13

12 Kevin A Baumert and Nancy Kete. " W ill Developing Countries' Carbon Emissions Swamp Global Emissions Reduction Efforts" . World Resource Institute. 200213 Finfacts Team, China says Developed Countries bear unshirkable responsibility for causing global warming; T emperature in Beijing hits record high for February (Finfacts Business News Centre, February 6 th,2007) < http://www.finfacts.ie/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10008982.shtml >


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Following from this point, it is preposterous on the part of the developed countries to act in ahypocritical manner and complain about developing countries for polluting more heavily at

present when this is what they did in order to reach their present status. Furthermore, itshould be noted that it is only through this heavy industrialization that developed countriesare now in a position of wealth and know-how that offers them the luxury of going "green".

But then again, on the other hand, the developed countries, when they were developing, andas a result emitting huge amounts of GHG, were not aware of how much damage they werecausing to the environment. Therefore, it is inappropriate to hold the developed nationsmorally responsible for causing global warming, because they did not know what they weredoing. And once dependent on fossil fuels, it was not possible for them to immediately act ontheir knowledge and switch their source of energy.

Another argument presented by the pro-developed countries is that once again, just likementioned above, the blame game distracts us from finding a solution and combating the realissue of global warming.

y Does imposing greater obligation on developed nations help solve the crisis?

Once again, thinking from a rational point of view, the answer to this question screams a bigyes applying the basic theory since the worlds richest and most developed countries are thehighest carbon emitters.

However, what we sometimes fail to realise and notice is that it should be the highest emitterswho should be more obligated than the others to combat climate change, and not developedand rich countries per se.

Also, well known fact, population growth adds to the miseries of the global warming facing

Earth. Thus on this point, countries like China and India, and other developing nations have,at least, an equal responsibility to cut their emissions because of their potential to emitcatastrophic amounts of GHG into the atmosphere.

y Leadership dimension

United States is the leader for almost all the things that happen around the world. Going onthe same lines, the US should be responsible to lead in fighting global warming.

Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC. - " It is essential for the U.S. to take action. T he rest of the world looks to the U.S. for leadership

[but] the perception round the world is that the U.S. has not been very active in this area. [... And, this would] undoubtedly reestablish confidence in U.S. leadership on critical global issues. "

The developing countries, with their limited resources and comparable poverty, are not in astate to go green and set guidelines and model for the same. It is the developed countriesthat will automatically be looked upto in this sphere.


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For example, China and India are very concerned, understandably, with their developmentand their capacity to compete with the developed world. They will only go "green" if thedeveloped world goes green first, assuring them that their competitiveness will not be

jeopardized.

On the other hand, however, the view that is held is that nations like US, Japan, China,Germany, India, and Brazil being among the largest and most powerful countries in the worldshare an equal responsibility with developed nations to apply their leadership role in their respective regions to lead the fight against climate change, due to their size, economic power and emissions (now and in the future). This list, and a larger list of G20 states, includes bothdeveloped and developing nations. China, India, and Brazil are the most notable largedeveloping nations in the G20. If they do not, surrounding countries - fearing a loss of competitiveness in particular - will not take strong actions to combat global climate change.

y Sectoral standards

Sectoral standards are standards set across a specific industry, most importantlymanufacturing, for the purpose of ensuring that similar factories around the world are held tothe same emissions standards.

Sectoral emissions standards constrain developing nations.

" Developing countries are hostile to global standards, which they see as a way of imposing targets by the back door on countries which have far lower emissions per head of populationthan most developed nations. India is opposed to all sectoral global standards,' said Malini

Mehra of India's Centre for Social Markets at the Royal Society meeting ."14

There is a very real menace that in adopting sectoral standards among themselves, the

developed countries would use the competitiveness argument to put up protectionist tariffsagainst products from developing countries.

However, reasons suggesting the contrary i.e. developing nations should be held to globalsectoral standards are that the purpose of these standards is to ensure equality amongst similar industries. It is more important to hold the most polluting industries of the world at the sameemission standards than to measure total emissions of a nation as a whole which may be highor low.

14 Fred Pearce, Rising Nations face back door emissions limits (New Scientist, issue 2653, April 26 th, 2008)


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Conclusion

Mentioned above, the Kyoto Protocol was the first protocol laying down target reductions for emission of GHGs. However, the Protocol does not seem to have a very bright future now. Ithas, to say the least, lost its charm with the developed nations who cannot seem to agree onextending the Kyoto Protocol past the close of its first commitment period at the end of 2012.

Canada has become the only country to first ratify and then publicly renounce its 2012emission targets. The move was taken by the Harper government almost immediately after coming into power. The then Environmental Minister, Rona Ambrose told an internationalgathering that there was no chance of lowering emissions to 6 percent below the 1990levels. 15 Officially the Canadian Government has denied its aim to kill Kyoto, but vocally itsupports the deal that was reached in Copenhagen in 2009, as per which, all the emitters,including India, China and the US (who has not ratified the protocol), would have targets of reduction. A similar view is held by Japan.

Further in the two-week Cancun Summit, even though the ultimate goal was clear toeveryone- inclusion of all countries in a single legally-binding agreement to limit globalwarming, cluster of obstacles surrounded the negotiators and the goal. The United States,once again, expressed that it would not ratify the Protocol till the major economies, likeChina and India, were made a party to it. On this, China resisted any legally binding treaty,

but appeared ready to allow verification of its GHG emissions. Russia, which is legally bound by the Protocol, opposed its extension. " Russia will not participate in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ," Russia's climate change negotiator Alexander Bedritsky, aformer president of the World Meteorological Organization, told Cancun delegatesThursday. 16

On the other hand, developing countries are clinged to the Protocol as their last hope againstoverwhelming impacts of global warming.

"O ur aim here is to look at how to cool down planet Earth. O ur planet has a hightemperature, it is wounded, and we are witnessing the convulsions of planet Earth ," saidBolivian President Evo Morales in the Cancun Summit. " W e have an enormous responsibilitytoward life and humanity ."17

There are countless issues on which the two sides of the globe, the developed and thedeveloping, are not getting along. But what one must not forget is that the aim, the goal thatwe are hoping to reach is in the longer and larger interest of all. Global warming increasing

beyond a certain limit signifies the end of all life on Earth. It wont be wrong to label the

15 Shawn McCarthy, Global Energy Reporter, Canada gets ready to walk away from Kyoto Protocol, (TheGlobe and Mail, December 5 th, 2010) < http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canada-gets-ready-to-walk-away-from-kyoto-protocol/article1825976/ >16 Kyoto Protocol Splits Nations at T ense Cancun Climate T alks (Environment News Service, Mexico,December 10 th, 2010) < http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2010/2010-12-10-01.html >17 Ibid


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negligence on the part of all the nations to get into politics rather than looking at the maincause as genocide.

What we need to look into is the main objective that we have been trying to reach, settling theissue of climate change. Once gone over-board, it is going to affect us all equally. Byallowing a certain part of the globe to emit GHGs as they would require for their development and restricting the other part which used to emit the GHGs as much as thedeveloping world is allowed now, we are not going to reach a solution. We are just running incircles, and circles never end. If this issue was reversible, then definitely, letting thedeveloped get away with it to the extent of complaining when the developing are, in the

process of their development, emitting GHG would have been morally wrong. But here weare talking about an irreversible reaction that has developed over time. Once done, it cannotgo back. The only solution we have is to take immense precaution now so as not to disturbthe ecological balance even more, as it would have an adverse effect over everyone. Insteadof allowing the developing countries to continue emitting GHG, what would serve a better

purpose would be to have target restrictions for them as well, not in the same proportion, butrestrictions nevertheless. It is only then that we will be able to reach that place in our missionwhere we can hope to have a better tomorrow for our future generations, by reaching out tosustainable development, and follow our duty.


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References

y Larry West, W hat is the Greenhouse Effect?- After 150 years of Industrialization,Climate Change is Inevitable accessed 25 th February, 2011

y United Nations Conference on Environment and Development: Framework Convention on Climate Change, May 9 th, 1992,

y Text of the Kyoto Protocol < http://www.kyotoprotocol.com/ >y Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, June 16,

1972, princ. 23, 11 I.L.M. 1416, 1420 (Stockholm Declaration).y United Nations Conference on Environment and Development: The Rio Declaration

on Environment and Development, June 13, 1992, 31 I.L.M. at 877.

y Vito De Lucia, Common but differentiated responsibility, The Encyclopedia of Earth

y Anup Shah, Climate Justice and Equity

y W hat equals effective, (Down to Earth Magazine, CSE, December 15 th, 2007), seeon < http://www.globalissues.org/article/231/climate-justice-and-equity >

y Kevin A Baumert and Nancy Kete. " W ill Developing Countries' Carbon EmissionsSwamp Global Emissions Reduction Efforts" . World Resource Institute. 2002

y Finfacts Team, China says Developed Countries bear unshirkable responsibility for causing global warming; T emperature in Beijing hits record high for February (Finfacts Business News Centre, February 6 th, 2007)

y Fred Pearce, Rising Nations face back door emissions limits (New Scientist, issue2653, April 26 th, 2008) < http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826534.400-rising-nations-face-back-door-emissions-limits.html >

y Shawn McCarthy, Global Energy Reporter, Canada gets ready to walk away from Kyoto Protocol, (The Globe and Mail, December 5 th, 2010)

y Kyoto Protocol Splits Nations at T ense Cancun Climate T alks (Environment NewsService, Mexico, December 10 th, 2010) < http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2010/2010-12-10-01.html >

y Paul G. Harris, Senior Lecturer, Department of Politics and Modern History, LondonGuildhall University; Ph.D., Politics, Brandeis University, Common but

Differentiated Responsibility: T he Kyoto Protocol and the United States Policy, (Vol-7, N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J. 27, 1999)

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