Climate: The Changing International Response

The inclusion of environmentalism to mainstream international diplomacy has been a process that has finally gained momentum. Over the past decade, green groups have gone from being mere special interest groups to virtually becoming churches of a ‘post-modernist religion' sparking the imagination of nations and their governments all over the world. The global ecological crisis, pre-eminent in conditions such as global warming, forms a major concern in political, legal and economic affairs of the world today. With the increasing amount of scientific data on the issue of climate change, it is not too difficult to understand the urgency that surrounds this nagging threat to the global environment. However, the creation of a unified climate agenda in the global community requires more than just the acceptance of scientific fact. The institutionalized cooperation on climate change is shrouded in the politics of development and the economic repercussion of this global ecological drive.

Even a cursory examination of the some of the major environmental issues affecting the world today indicates that these problems are insoluble outside the realm of the international politico-legal structure. What then constitutes the philosophical basis for a system of international justice in this area? History has shown us that attempts to create viable machinery of international law to prevent war or end genocide have often been laughed out of court, made ineffectual in practice, or simply ignored. In Hobbesian terms, the "war of each against all", of rational self-interest of nations blunts the pragmatic effectiveness of these international mechanisms. However, even with Hobbesian insight, the case of global environmental concerns envisages a pragmatic rationale behind a nation's cooperation on an international scale. In the case of climate change, the leitmotif of the entire debate is the global nature of such a concern. Unlike, in the case of human rights violations or civil wars, with the over-heating of our planet- everyone loses (or might lose) if these concerns are not addressed. That is to say, if one nation loses its fight against the environmental problem or simply does not address it, any other nation could and in many cases would be likely to suffer as well. Therefore, the creation of a viable system of international justice, going beyond the restrictions of local sovereignty, to deal with our environmental ethical concerns is a functional necessity.

The assertion that global environmental problems need global solutions has provided a window for these issues to be perceived as the ‘common concerns of mankind' as accepted by the UN General Assembly in 1988. The notion of common concern caters to the interests of the international community as a mutually beneficial resource in contrast to limited national responsibilities, allowing concerted action for issues that cannot be grappled in bilateral or regional frameworks.

Building Bridges: Global environmental law