A View from the Side? Gendering the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations

This article invites the reader on a journey through the legal arguments that would confirm the application of the United Nations (UN) climate change regime to belligerent occupations. Although the regime is silent on this issue, its application should not be limited to peacetime due to the seriousness of global climate change and its adverse effects on the environment and living entities. A harmonious interpretation and application of the UN climate change regime and the law of occupation would allow Occupying Powers to ensure the safety and well-being of the civilian population and contribute to the protection of the Earth's climate system.

After almost two decades of active implication in the United Nations (UN) climate change regime, the European Union’s (EU) engagement in this domain of global environmental politics has become widely considered as emblematic of its participation in global multilateral governance generally.2 In this time span, the internal and external parameters for EU activities in this domain have considerably evolved. The science of climate change, reflected in successive reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has become ever more compelling, transforming the issue into a priority foreign policy topic (IPCC, 2007). At the same time, the global politics of climate change as well as the governance structures within and beyond the UN climate regime have undergone significant transformations. Not in the least, the EU itself has become a foreign policy actor in its own right, not only driven by several internal treaty reforms, but also by recurring attempts at finding its place in the evolving regime context. One parameter that has remained a constant throughout all this time, however, is the Union’s desire to ‘play a leading role in promoting concerted and effective action at global level’, formulated by the European Council in Dublin in June 1990 (European Council 1990: Annex II – ‘The environmental imperative’). This leadership aspiration, paired with a commitment to searching for multilateral solutions to the problem of climate change, has been reinvigorated at different moments in the evolution of the climate regime on the basis of both norms and interests shared among EU Member States (van Schaik and Schunz, 2012).

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to critically investigate the Ethiopia’s climate change adaptation and mitigation regulatory frameworks and their congruency with the guiding principles under the United Nations (UN) Climate Convention, to show the alignment of the regulatory frameworks with the UN Climate Change rules. Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall distribution, recurrent droughts and floods require robust climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and effective implementation in the country.Design/methodology/approachThrough the doctrinal legal research method, the author has used a detailed analysis of primary sources, both national and international legislative enactments. Besides, the research has benefitted from secondary sources like research reports, online publications, scientific journals, international reports, books and journal articles.FindingsThe findings reveal that in Ethiopia, there is no national climate change-specific policy and legislation. Although there are scattered sectoral climate-related policies and strategies, they are not consistent with the principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).Originality/valueThis study argues that having comprehensive specific climate change policy and legislative frameworks consistent with UNFCCC guiding principles could help to mitigate and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change in the country.

This introduction lays the groundwork for this Special Issue by providing an overview of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP), and by introducing three main analytical themes. The first theme concerns the emergence and continuation of the APP. The contributions show that the emergence of the APP can be attributed to international factors, including the United States’ rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, and its search for an alternative arena for global climate governance, and other countries’ wish to maintain good relations with the US; as well as domestic factors, such as the presence of bureaucratic actors in favour of the Partnership, alignment with domestic priorities, and the potential for reaping economic benefits through participation. The second theme examines the nature of the Partnership, concluding that it falls on the very soft side of the hard–soft law continuum and that while being branded as a public–private partnership, governments remain in charge. Under the third theme, the influence which the APP exerts on the post-2012 United Nations (UN) climate change negotiations is scrutinised. The contributions show that at the very least, the APP is exerting some cognitive influence on the UN discussions through its promotion of a sectoral approach. The introduction concludes with outlining areas for future research.

Many countries pledged to take necessary measures and limit the global temperature rise to 2&#x2009;&#x00B0;C, or better yet, 1.5&#x2009;&#x00B0;C, at the United Nations (UN) climate summit in Paris. However, according to a survey from <i>Nature</i>, many scientists think global temperatures may reach a disastrous 3&#x2009;&#x00B0;C above preindustrial levels, and around 60&#x0025; of experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expect average global temperatures to reach that point by the end of the century if governments do not markedly slow the pace of global warming <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">[1]</xref>. That dynamic played out again during the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), in Glasgow, United Kingdom, in November 2021. The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, declared that 2&#x2009;&#x00B0;C of temperature rise would be a &#x201C;death sentence&#x201D; for island countries. On 13 November 2021, COP26 concluded with nearly 200 countries agreeing to the Glasgow Climate Pact, which aims to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5&#x2009;&#x00B0;C and finalize the outstanding elements of the Paris Agreement.

The UN’s ‘recover better’ (UN 2020a) statement of attaching climate mitigation to COVID-19 recovery plans and the desire of much of the UK public to ‘build back better’ through support for a more climate-friendly, green economy (Vaughan 2020) has yet to be fully materialized in policy and has seemingly lost traction in efforts to fast-track the opening up of global economies. For example, the UN has teamed up with Futerra and other environment and development consultancy groups to develop the ‘good life goals’ as an accessible entry point for the public to engage with the SDGs at the level of the everyday. See https://www.goodlifegoals.org/ for their strategy and approach. https://www.academia.edu/43531525/An_Address_to_the_Corporales_of_the_Republic_of_Sunlight Boykoff M (2011) Who speaks for the climate? Making sense of media reporting on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Google Scholar CarbonBrief (2020) Analysis: coronavirus set to cause largest ever annual fall in CO2 emissions. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions Accessed 24 Jul, 2020 de Certeau M (1974) The practice of everyday life. University of California Press, Berkeley Google Scholar Doyle J (2011) Mediating climate change. Ashgate, Abingdon Google Scholar Doyle J, Farrell N, Goodman M (2017) Celebrities and climate change: history, politics and the promise of emotional witness. In: Nisbet M (ed) The Oxford encyclopedia of climate change communication. OUP, Oxford Google Scholar Evans DM (2018) Rethinking material cultures of sustainability: commodity consumption, cultural biographies and following the thing. Trans Inst Br Geogr 43(1):110–121. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12206 Article Google Scholar Evans DM (2019) What is consumption, where has it been going, and does it still matter? 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Nat Clim Chang 10(July):647–654. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0797-x Article Google Scholar Lefebvre H (2014) The critique of everyday life. Verso, London Google Scholar Moser S (2016) Reflections on climate change communication research and practice in the second decade of the 21st century: what more is there to say? WIREs Climate Change 7(3):345–369 Article Google Scholar Munshi D, Kurian P, Cretney R, Morrison SL, Kathlene L (2020) Centering culture in public engagement on climate change. Environmental communication, (May). https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2020.1746680 NOAA (2020) ‘Rise of carbon dioxide unabated’, NOAA Research News, 4 June 2020. https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2636/Rise-of-carbon-dioxide-unabated accessed 22 Jul 2020 Norgaard KM (2011) Living in denial: climate change, emotions, and everyday life. MIT Press, Cambridge Google Scholar Shove E (2010) Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change. Environ Plan A 42:1273–1285 Article Google Scholar Sullivan R (2020) The geography of the everyday. University of Georgia Press, Athens Google Scholar United Nations (2020a) Climate change and Covid-19: UN urges nations to ‘recover better’. https://www.un.org/en/un-coronavirus-communications-team/un-urges-countries-‘build-back-better’ Accessed 24 Jul, 2020 United Nations (2020b) The Sustainable Development Goals. https://sdgs.un.org/ Accessed 15 Jul, 2020 Vaughan, A (2020) UK citizens' assembly shows big support for green covid-19 recovery. New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/2246693-uk-citizens-assembly-shows-big-support-for-green-covid-19-recovery/ Accessed 24 Jul, 2020 Download references This Special Issue arose out of a workshop held at the University of Reading in 2016 entitled ‘Practicing Everyday Climate Cultures’ that was generously supported by the following funders and individuals at Reading: the Walker Institute (Ros Cornforth); the Global Development Research Division (Rosa Freedman); the Climate, Culture and Society Research Cluster (Alex Arnall and Hilary Geoghegan); the Human Geography Research Cluster (Hilary Geoghegan); The Reading Centre for Climate and Justice (Catriona McKinnon); and the Prosperity and Resilience Research Theme (Dominik Zaum). Additional funding support came from the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) and the Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community, Bournemouth University. We wish to thank all of the authors in the Special Issue for their hard work and patience in producing the excellent work here, but also the additional workshop participants of Alexandra Sexton, James Painter, Alex Arnall, Lydia Messling, Alison Anderson, Jo Hamilton, Melanie Rohse, Lucy Veale, Jo Littler and Martin Mahony. A special note of gratitude goes to Sabine Mayeux for her invaluable work on and support of the workshop. Many thanks to Alex Sexton, David Evans, Dave McLaughlin and Max Boykoff for reading earlier versions of our editorial introduction to the Issue. Finally we...

‘A whole new world’: using new technologies to develop women's leadership in Kyrgyzstan by Joanna Hoare In the areas of both new technology and leadership, women everywhere tend to be under-represented. In this piece, we hear about an innovative programme in Bishkek, capital of the central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, which combined these fields, developing women's skills, and enhancing community development in the process. To help Haiti, upend aid habits, and focus on its women by Elaine Zuckerman On 12 January 2010, a devastating earthquake struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti, killing tens of thousands of people. Those who survived are now struggling to rebuild their lives and their country. In this blog piece, originally posted in February 2010 on the website of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Elaine Zuckerman argues that it is imperative for Haiti that its women are directly involved in the reconstruction process. The 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference and beyond: an interview with Celeste McKay December 2009 saw the holding of the long-awaited United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen – officially, the fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – where government delegates sought to reach agreement on new measures to combat climate change post-2012, building on the Kyoto Protocol. G&D wanted to know about how strongly the issue of gender featured in the talks, so we asked Canadian environmental activist and campaigner Celeste McKay, who attended the Climate Change Conference, to give us her impressions, and to tell us more about her work with the Native Women's Association of Canada. Where is the money for women's rights? 2009 research highlights and reflections by Sarah Rosenhek and Cindy Clark Without adequate funding, effective work on women's rights becomes impossible. Over the past few years, The Association for Women's Rights in Development has been conducting research into the funding environment in which women's rights organisations are currently operating, and here, they share their findings with us.

Water sprays from an open fire hydrant in Brooklyn, New York, in the midst of a July 2010 heat wave that affected much of the eastern United States.In 2007 the New York City Department of Environmental Protection first teamed up with Alianza Dominicana, a Washington Heights community organization, to educate city residents about the appropriate use of fire hydrants and other ways

For about 2 weeks, thousands of official delegates attended the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In addition, thousands of protesters and law enforcement officers were active in the streets, often at odds with each other. The confrontation between these two groups was sad to view, as both sides are on the same side of history. Their primary goal was to get the governments of the world to create a plan for a sustainable atmosphere. Yet, minimal agreement was reached. Watching from afar via television, the conference appeared to resemble organized chaos more than a high-level, enlightened, humanitarian consideration of our global climate change crisis. It was clear that many delegates were only concerned with the here and now, not with the future of the Earth's biosphere and humankind. According to Lester Brown, the human reasons for concern about climate change varied widely for the 193 national delegations who gathered in Copenhagen. Delegates from low-lying island countries were principally concerned about rising sea levels. For countries in Southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are of growing concern. The climate change conference was about all these things and more. In a more fundamental sense, it was about food and water security for a population still growing at 80,000,000 people per year. It should have been, about human overpopulation, the single most important driving force responsible for all of our environmental concerns. The archaic and outdated format of this meeting often seemed like an exercise in bargaining, trading, compromises, and deal making. More world leaders attended this meeting than any meeting since the formation of the United Nations. Anyone who has ever organized or attended a large meeting knows that putting thousands of delegates in a conference room, with each delegate trying to promote his or her own agenda, is not the best way to organize and manage such a meeting. A much better approach would have been to have a significant portion of the work completed before arrival, with common ground already established between groups with common concerns. This usually requires organizational skills and coordination of efforts on behalf of these countries so that maximal impact can be achieved. When the delegations arrived at the meeting, they should already have had the relevant accurate data, knowledge, and policy positions on the major and Water Air Soil Pollut (2010) 207:1–3 DOI 10.1007/s11270-010-0336-x

The policy significance of climate change was realised by the international community in the 1980s. As some of the countries most affected by climate change, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have influenced the United Nations (UN) climate negotiations from the very beginning. This chapter analyses the climate foreign policy purposes of SIDS and their early impacts on the UN climate governance system. It is argued that, despite their weak material capabilities to shape international affairs, SIDS have made a notable and disproportionate impact on the UN climate negotiations to address their special case. Using constructivist approach to foreign policy analysis, this chapter explains how the ideas about common but differentiated responsibilities promoted in international climate negotiations have shaped SIDS’ climate agenda during pre-and post-UNFCCC negotiations in driving climate governance for them. It is argued that an understanding of this disproportionate impact helps to better understand present and future trends in SIDS climate politics.

Tanzania is participating in the United Nations (UN) climate change mitigation strategy of reduction in Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). The strategy is implemented through both Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) and Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) initiatives. In implementing programmes, the country developed pilot projects whereby there are preliminary findings that can be used to analyse the progress of the establishments. This study uses the findings from these pilot areas to draw policy implications on how carbon trade in the country can be enhanced to meet the UN set objectives as required by the Kyoto protocol. The findings suggest that for the sustainable carbon trade enhancement the country needs to set the institutional environment for carbon trade right. Such undertakings are not costless and that the transaction costs that would be incurred for the process need to be institutionalised to reduce the private costs in the carbon market. Moreover the policy process should be informed that at the market level there are multiple objectives that should be understood to avoid what is termed as optimization in standard economic theory, instead there should be clear definition of the specific objectives for various stakeholders involved in the carbon trade. Besides, within the carbon market framework not all stakeholders incur the same costs since natural resource transactions involve externalities. These externalities need to be identified and internalised to equally distribute the costs and benefits among the stakeholders.

Earlier this month, while the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference convened in Glasgow, countries also gathered at the Global Conference on Health and Climate Change to recognize the climate crisis as a global health crisis-a consequence of increased poverty, food and water insecurity, and infectious disease transmission, among other dangers. Unsurprisingly, both crises are worse in lower-income countries. These countries are also experiencing the greatest number of deaths and collateral damage from COVID-19.

This paper endeavours to understand the climate change phenomenon and identify measures taken to contain it. It discusses global warming causes and consequences and assesses effectiveness of the United Nations (UN) polices following failure of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In pursuing this course of action, this paper utilizes data collected from East Africa region. Key issues discussed in the paper include findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the role of urbanization in global warming as cities emit most of greenhouse gases. Special reference is made to developing cities which are growing extremely fast and will consume more energy in future. They are becoming economic engines and adopting industrialization as an economic model while developed cities are experiencing de-industrialization. Developing cities have neither the ability to adopt green technology nor the capacity to establish large capacity public transport systems to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. It is evident that UN efforts to combat climate change are not effective because past experience shows that CO₂ generation cuts weren’t near enough. The recent Paris Agreement may restore a faith in UN process if implemented but doesn’t reduce temperatures as needed unless all drivers of climate variability are considered, particularly the abortive role of developing cities. The UN Programme appears to be focusing on attaining urban resilience rather than targeting grassroots causes. Urbane-bias global policies drive the rural population to leave their land and flood cities while over-usage of natural resources by the rich is left unchecked. A new UN strategy making the countryside a more appealing place to live in and work whilst normalising urban growth is needed as well as mobilizing local leaders who enjoy more autonomy to enact regulations. It should also alleviate poverty, deter excessive practices and put science and technology under community control.

This paper endeavours to understand the climate change phenomenon and identify measures taken to contain it. It discusses global warming causes and consequences and assesses effectiveness of the United Nations (UN) polices following failure of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In pursuing this course of action, this paper utilizes data collected from East Africa region. Key issues discussed in the paper include findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the role of urbanization in global warming as cities emit most of greenhouse gases. Special reference is made to developing cities which are growing extremely fast and will consume more energy in future. They are becoming economic engines and adopting industrialization as an economic model while developed cities are experiencing de-industrialization. Developing cities have neither the ability to adopt green technology nor the capacity to establish large capacity public transport systems to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. It is evident that UN efforts to combat climate change are not effective because past experience shows that CO₂ generation cuts weren’t near enough. The recent Paris Agreement may restore a faith in UN process if implemented but doesn’t reduce temperatures as needed unless all drivers of climate variability are considered, particularly the abortive role of developing cities. The UN Programme appears to be focusing on attaining urban resilience rather than targeting grassroots causes. Urbane-bias global policies drive the rural population to leave their land and flood cities while over-usage of natural resources by the rich is left unchecked. A new UN strategy making the countryside a more appealing place to live in and work whilst normalising urban growth is needed as well as mobilizing local leaders who enjoy more autonomy to enact regulations. It should also alleviate poverty, deter excessive practices and put science and technology under community control.

The global political agenda has included some high-profile environmental summits over the past few months. Three of these events stand out. The 2022 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, was held from 6–20 November 2022. This was followed from 7–19 December 2022 by the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montréal, Canada, and the UN-Water Summit at UN Headquarters in New York City from 22–24 March 2023. Of these three events, the Biodiversity Summit made the most impact as delegates committed to protecting 30% of land and 30% of coastal and marine areas by 2030. This pledge is remarkable because it re-establishes political commitments to protect biodiversity, which is a key component of climate action. At the same time, many observers of the summit questioned how nation-states will implement this goal. Like the SDGs, the “30 by 30” commitment is long on aspirations but short on operationalization details. This observation is not a criticism of the agreement per se but a recognition of the challenges preventing ambitious biodiversity conservation plans from being fully implemented.