The case of the climate change

AGU International Journal of Research in Social Sciences & Humanities (AGUIJRSSH) 2017, Vol. No. 5, Jul-Dec http://www.aguijrssh.com e-ISSN: 2455-1554; p-ISSN: 2455-6084 Global Environmental Governance and India’s Response: The case of the climate change Gursharn Singh1, Beant Singh2 (M.SC. GEOGRAPHY, M.A. ENGLISH), Department of geography, University of Jammu, (India) (M.A. PUNJABI) Department of Punjabi, University of Jammu, (India) This paper has submerged from the thinking on global and its implication in the local level. Global Environmental Governance is the sustainability of environment achieved by collective management and environmental development from the national to international level. Environmental governance as it currently stands is far from meeting one or more of the so imperatives. The need to deal with the complex character of environmental issues calls for the adoption of coherent multilateral management by a great variety of stakeholders. However, the global community has proved incapable of meeting this challenge and environmental governance is currently victim to a great many afflictions. This paper shows that impressive institutional machinery has actually been built, but also that the overall state of the global environment seems not to have improved as a consequence of this. Numerous multilateral environmental agreements have been concluded, many meetings are held each year to advance implementation, and significant amounts of human resources are spent to produce national reports on the efforts undertaken. Yet, as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have shown us, ecosystem decline and global warming continue, representing real dangers to our planet. I.INTRODUCTION In February 2007, 46 countries came together in Paris for a joint proposal to upgrade the United Nations Environment Programme to a Specialized Agency within the United Nations system. This proposal is not new. In fact, the debate on a special UN agency for the protection of the environment dates back more than thirty years to George Kennan‟s (1970) proposal for an international environmental agency. Now, with the recent support of one fourth of the community of nations, including many powerful countries from the North and South, the debate has reached a new stage. A variety of names have been used in proposals for the creation of a new agency, including “International Environmental Agency,” “Global Environmental Organization,” “World Environment Organization,” or “United Nations Environment Organization.” The official proposal of the 46 countries models the new body along the lines of the World Health Organization. Therefore, in this chapter, I will refer to such a new agency as the “World Environment Organization (WEO).” This chapter explores three basic objectives that I believe a WEO could achieve, and discusses five major issues that currently stand at the center of the debate.3 It draws on, but also differs from my previous writing, in that it reflects some of the criticisms that have been raised. 905 | P a g e AGU International Journal of Research in Social Sciences & Humanities (AGUIJRSSH) 2017, Vol. No. 5, Jul-Dec http://www.aguijrssh.com e-ISSN: 2455-1554; p-ISSN: 2455-6084 In a nutshell, I propose to maintain the current system of issue specific international environmental regimes while strengthening environmental protection by upgrading UNEP from a mere UN program to a full-fledged international organization with increased financial and staff resources and enhanced competencies and legal mandate. In this model, a WEO would function and have powers similar to other international organizations. Member States might then be inclined to shift some competencies related to the environment from those other bodies to the new WEO. In particular, the new organization would provide a venue for the co-location and eventually joint administration of the myriad convention secretariats. The organization would also have its own budget, based on assessed contributions by Member States, and it could make use of future innovative financial mechanisms, such as revenues from emissions trading regimes. Additional financial and staff resources could be devoted to the fields of awareness raising, technology transfer and the provision of environmental expertise to international, national and subnational levels. The elevation of UNEP to a world environment organization of this type could be modeled on the WHO or the International Labor Organization (ILO), that is, independent international organizations with their own membership, structure, and budget. If UN Member States would agree on establishing a WEO as a UN Specialized Agency, this body would be based on a constitutive legal instrument that would require ratification of a certain number of states to become effective. The creation of such an organization would not require the legal acquiescence of all nations, and it would have autonomy over its own organizational design. A separate decision by the UN General Assembly would be needed to formally abolish UNEP and to transfer its staff and assets to the new agency. Upgrading UNEP to a Specialized Agency would follow the longstanding policy of functional specialization within the UN system, with the United Nations Organization as the focal point among numerous independent organizations for specific issues, such as food and agriculture (FAO, established in 1945); education, science, and culture (UNESCO, 1945); health (WHO, 1946); civil aviation (ICAO, 1944); or meteorology (WMO, 1947). While some specialized organizations are much older than the United Nations itself (for instance the Universal Postal Union, created in 1874), most were founded simultaneously with the establishment of the United Nations, since it was felt at that time that the vast number of issues in the economic, social or technical fields would “over-stretch” the world body. Environmental problems, however, were of no major concern in 1945, with the term “environment” not even appearing in the UN Charter. It was only in 1972 that UNEP was set up as a mere program, without legal personality, without the capacity to determine its own budget, and—according to its founding instruments—with only a “small secretariat,” and as a result it bears no comparison to specialized agencies that can avail themselves of more resources and hence influence. Given the multitude of reform pitches, my proposal for a WEO is a moderate proposition. It even seems to be agreeable to some of the outspoken opponents of a world environment organization. Adil Najam, for example, proposes “to convert UNEP into a Specialized Agency (as opposed to a „Programme‟) with the concomitant ability to raise and decide its own budget.”This is what I more or less propose as a WEO. The proposed WEO differs from some of the more radical approaches in the literature that demand, for example, the abolishment of major existing agencies such as the World Meteorological Organization, the creation of a new agency with enforcement power—e.g. through trade sanctions—or the creation of a new agency in addition to UNEP, which would remain but transfer many of its functions to the new organization. Most of these radical designs appear unrealistic and undesirable as well as politically unfeasible or unnecessary today. Strong enforcement mechanisms, such as trade sanctions, tend to be 906 | P a g e AGU International Journal of Research in Social Sciences & Humanities (AGUIJRSSH) 2017, Vol. No. 5, Jul-Dec http://www.aguijrssh.com e-ISSN: 2455-1554; p-ISSN: 2455-6084 unfair by typically targeting less powerful developing countries while leaving larger industrialized countries unaffected. Establishing a new agency in addition to UNEP—as proposed by Kirton might even create new coordination problems while attempting to solve others. In the following section, the three core functions that a world environment organization should fulfill are described followed by a section on five major issues in the current discussions. II.INDIA AS A PLAYER IN GLOBAL GOVERNEMENTAL GOVERNANCE To understand India‟s role in global environmental governance, it is useful to go back in history and review the country‟s rapid evolution from a developing country to an emerging economy with growth rates between 7 and 9 % over the past decade. This explosive economic growth has been accompanied by the emergence of middle class and significant technological advancements. At the same time, it has resulted in an acceleration of environmental degradation, while insufficiently reducing poverty: over 80% of the Indian population still lives on less than 2$ per day and the country remains, in many ways, strongly attached to its traditional ways of living (Damodoran 2010). The evolving nature of the tension between economic, social and environmental development has significantly impacted India‟s stance on global environmental governance. The focus on development has long been the central point of reference in India‟s approach to environmental issues. At the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi set the tone for India‟s environmental policy for decades to come when stating that “we do not wish to impoverish the environment any further and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?” (Gandhi 1972). Until very recently, the Indian position in environmental governance institutions has thus tended to be rather defensive and conservative, focusing on equity concerns and arguing for the right to development first and the necessity for industrialized countries to provide financial and technology transfer in line with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. In the run-up to the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, Prime Minister Singh promised, for instance, that his country would never exceed the average per capita emissions of industrialized countries, without, however, showing preparedness to make further commitments (Korppoo/Luta 2009: 54). Yet, as a result of a rising awareness about climate change and its own vulnerability, India has begun to undertake actions at home, but also with a view to the global political debate and the negotiations under UN auspices. Domestically, the Indian government has initiated actions at regional and local levels, trying to nest global conventions, notably the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, in its national policies (Damodaran 2010). For one, it has created national and regional versions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), i.e. an “Indian Network for Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment” of monitoring bodies that are to provide a clearer picture of the real changes occurring within the country and will be publishing GHG inventories at regular intervals (Ramesh 2010). Second, it has taken steps to diversify its energy mix. For instance, a fuel switch from coal to gas is under way, while a clean energy tax on coal is levied, whose revenues will be used toward funding the research and development of clean energy technologies, so as to augment notably its solar power generating capacity. Third, India has opened up to 907 | P a g e AGU International Journal of Research in Social Sciences & Humanities (AGUIJRSSH) 2017, Vol. No. 5, Jul-Dec http://www.aguijrssh.com e-ISSN: 2455-1554; p-ISSN: 2455-6084 the idea of emissions trading, which is currently being experimented in two of its states (Gujarat, Tamil Nadu). Finally, India has put into place strategies on forestry and coastal management. In global environmental negotiations, notably on climate change, India has softened its stance rhetorically under its new Environment and Forests Minister Ramesh, in office since May 2009. Although the National Environmental Policy of 2006 still mentioned the “over-riding priority of the right to development” as key guideline of its actions (Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests 2006: 43), the country has in the meantime demonstrated openness for environmental action beyond pure equity concerns. Most interestingly, it accepted an energy intensity target of 20 to 25% by 2020 from 2005 levels, which it inscribed into the Annex of the Copenhagen Accord and a commitment to which it has reconfirmed since then (UNFCCC 2010). At the 2010 Cancun climate summit, Ramesh also announced that India‟s Twelfth Five Year Plan, to be launched in April 2012, will be centrally based on a low-carbon growth strategy, fulfilling a key demand by industrialized countries (Ramesh 2010). At the same time, the country‟s stance against an international verification of its actions has remained, at least publicly, quite hard. To inter alia fight off what is perceived as too much of an external interference in its domestic policies, India has actively sought to join ranks with China and other emerging economies within the BASIC coalition. In this group, it has taken on a key role in developing positions and strategies, mediating, for instance, between the US and China in Cancun. In sum, if India has become part of the problem of environmental degradation at a global scale, there are very recently numerous signs that it will also take on responsibilities as part of the solution, with the stated ambition of providing “responsive leadership” in global environmental governance (Ramesh 2010). It is yet unclear how far the planet‟s most populated democratic state is precisely prepared to go in this regard, but there are chances that it could, in the climate domain, even accept binding targets in the medium-term future. III.CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have argued that the establishment of a World Environment Organization would improve coordination of global environmental governance; would pave the way for the elevation of environmental policies on the agenda of governments, international organizations and private organizations; assist in developing the capacities for environmental policy in India. The paper argues the case for a multi-tiered environmental governance system for India based on locally prepared and implemented plans that harmoniously blend conservation goals relevant to multilateral environmental agreements with local conservation plans which focus on sustainable development and livelihood protection. Such plans, being holistic and sensitive to local aspirations, have a higher probability of effective and efficient implementation. More fundamentally they achieve inter- convention synergies at the local level. As noted elsewhere (Damodaran, 2006), in practical terms, this means that local self-governing agencies could facilitate „co-management‟ of resources in the area based on the principle of nested representation. In the context of coastal ecosystems, this further means that local self-governing agencies that perform operational management functions at the local level would report on observance of shore zone guidelines and other protection schemes to the provincial and federal governments. Such an arrangement will induce reverse flow of opinions from local communities to federal governments and to global bodies that administer multilateral environment agreements. 908 | P a g e AGU International Journal of Research in Social Sciences & Humanities (AGUIJRSSH) 2017, Vol. No. 5, Jul-Dec http://www.aguijrssh.com e-ISSN: 2455-1554; p-ISSN: 2455-6084 REFERENCES [1.] BERKES, F. (1989). Solving the Common-Property Dilemma: Village Fisheries Rights in Japanese Coastal Waters.In F. Berkes (Ed.), Common Property Resources: Ecology and Community-Based Sustainable Development. London: Belhaven. [2.] DAMODARAN, A. (2012). Fiat and Forbearance: The Challenge of Capturing Plurality and Diversity in Environmental Governance. Society and Management Review, 1(1), 33-45. IIMK, Sage Publishers. [3.] DAMODARAN, A. (2010). Encircling the Seamless - India, Climate Change and the Global Commons. Delhi: Oxford University Press. [4.] DAMODARAN, A. (2006). Coastal Resource Complexes of South India: Options for Sustainable Management. Journal of Environmental Management, 79, 64-73. [5.] Biermann, F. 2006. Global Governance and the Environment. In International Environmental Politics, ed. M. Betsill, K. Hochstetler, and D. Stevis, 237-261. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [6.] Gandhi, I. 1972. Man and Environment. Speech at the Plenary Session of the UN Conference on the Human Environment. Stockholm, 14 July 1972. [7.] Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests. 2006. National Environment Policy. 18 May (available at http://www.envfor.nic.in/nep/nep2006e.pdf, last accessed 22 February 2011). 909 | P a g e