Differentiation as Affirmative Action: Transforming or Reinforcing Structural Inequality at the UNFCCC?

Miriam Prys-Hansen

doi:10.1080/13600826.2020.1739635

Abstract

ABSTRACT Structural inequality is at the heart of the struggle to prevent dangerous climate change. This makes the global climate regime a particularly interesting case, when it comes to conceptualising and assessing the role of international institutions as sites for the reproduction and transformation of macro-level inequalities that structure the international system. This article uses these interlinkages to, first, assess, in how far the debates, conflicts and doubts regarding effectiveness and justifications of affirmative action at the domestic level, introduced as a reaction to domestic structural inequality, can teach us something about the actual potential of and the obstacles to the transformation of structural inequalities through differentiation internationally. Second, it assesses whether and how institutional mechanisms of categorisation and (re-)distribution within the UNFCCC have led and are likely to lead in the future to a reinforcement or a transformation of global structural inequalities.

Highlights

Structural inequality is at the heart of the struggle surrounding the global attempts to prevent dangerous climate change
This makes the global climate regime a interesting case, when it comes to conceptualising and assessing the role of international institutions as sites for the reproduction and transformation of macro-level inequalities that structure the international system. This article uses these interlinkages to, first, assess, in how far the debates, conflicts and doubts regarding effectiveness and justifications of affirmative action at the domestic level, introduced as a reaction to domestic structural inequality, can teach us something about the actual potential of and the obstacles to the transformation of structural inequalities through differentiation internationally. It assesses whether and how institutional mechanisms of categorisation anddistribution within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have led and are likely to lead in the future to a reinforcement or a transformation of global structural inequalities
As a first goal in this article, we investigate in how far the debates, conflicts and doubts regarding effectiveness and justifications of affirmative action (AA) at the domestic level can teach us something about the actual potential of and the obstacles to the transformation of structural inequalities through differentiation internationally. This will help us with the second research goal, which is to assess whether and how institutional mechanisms of categorisation anddistribution within the UNFCCC have led and are likely to lead in the future to a reinforcement or a transformation of global structural inequalities

Summary

Introduction

Structural inequality is at the heart of the struggle surrounding the global attempts to prevent dangerous climate change. While many international environmental agreements instead, state universal commitments for all, for example the Montreal Protocol, and qualify the more substantive norms with regard to developing countries, the UNFCCC and in particular the Kyoto Protocol have chosen this compensatory path, which designated groups of states have not been required to reduce their GHG emissions.33 In climate terms, this implies that “states [are given] ... The KP’s rigid interpretation of the CBDR had enormous distributive consequences within (OP 2) through intra-organisation processes (for instance the development of differentiated monitoring schemes) This triggered shifts at OP3, at the inside-out level where internal distribution decision had an impact on the external environment by redefining the macro-structure as well as the status of individual actors at the macrolevel beyond climate politics.

Conclusion

Findings

Notes on contributor