Associate Professor, A S College, Khanna, India
Online published on 7 November, 2013.
The aim of this paper is to provide a better theoretical and empirical knowledge of the emerging arena of transnational climate governance. Global warming is a threat to the whole of humankind and to life on the planet. Yet, human-induced global warming is a deeply inequitable environmental problem. On one hand, it has been caused by economic growth that has only benefited to date a minority of the world's population concentrated in a small minority of countries. On the other hand, the people who are most at risk of global warming and its negative impacts on the poorest countries and the poorest people in each countries. To combat global warming, at global level, countries, around the world have expressed a firm commitment to strengthening international action and broader participation under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.To pursue the objectives of the Convention on climate change Kyoto Protocol came into force on 16 February, 2005. This protocol clearly states that developed countries have to reduce their GHG emission levels by at least 5% against the baseline levels of 1990 in five years’ time from 2008 to 2012. And to assist non annex-I countries without emissions targets (ie developing countries) in achieving sustainable development.
Years of hard bargaining have failed to produce policy architecture to adequately address the complexities of climate change. The 17th conference of parties (COP17) at Durban having formally adopted a decision to launch a fresh structured process, to develop a new global legal compact by 2015 to replace the Kyoto Protocol and come into effect by 2020. The architecture that would emerge from DP is for the moment truly open-ended. This means that entire global climate architecture will now be renegotiated virtually ab initio. Everything will be up for grabs, all principles will be reopened and all the old arm-twisting and back room manoeuverings will be back in full swing. But with one big difference: no developed-developing firewall, rather a single framework for all countries. At the same time, differential mitigation targets could be set for different categories of nations even within a single framework based on, like per capita emission, historical contribution to accumulated carbon stocks. The paper focuses on the concepts of burden sharing according “carbon budget” models and the role of India in this context.
