TOP11 Climate Crisis

• greenhouse gases e.g. carbon dioxide exist in our artmosphere and ensures that the tempreture stays at 14 °C on average

  • they reflect the sun light back to earth and only a small share reflects than back to the armosphere

• When the concentrathion of greenhouse gases increase, the probability that even this small share of sunlight will be reflected back in the atmosphere decreases

  • temperatur are rising, in the last 100 years by 1.2 C°

• Extreme wether events: extreme jeat, droughts, powerful storms

• Rising sea levels; increasing heat leads to meldting ice sheets, threatens islands (Mauritius), coasts, salty water trickels in thr groundwater

• Coral reefs declining: Absorb CO2, biodiversity (home to fishes etc.)

• Droughts endanger forests: forest fires, trees absorb CO2

• Agriculture; changes the climatic circumstances, usual methods and crops won’t be fitting to the new climate circumstanses

• Human: increased mortality, climate-related migration of mosquitos, including diseases

• Escapes

• 2015, success of COP21 in Paris

• 2°C, best case 1,5°C, between 2050 and 2100 emission balance

Strengths:

• All countries under international law became part oft he mitigation project

  • International cooperation, dialogue between countries

  • polycentric no fixed hierarchies or authority

• Nationaly Determined Contributions (NDCs), accompanied by a review process

  • Domestic driven climate politics for mitigation actions

    • determine if Paris Agreement and emission balance can be achieved

  • efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change

  • flexibility (different economic and political contribution to climate change) and trust in the countries as experts in own issues

  • Each country has to prepare, communicate and maintain its contribution that it treis to archieve

  • Focus on mitigation

  • Climate finance should assist vulnerable countries to adapt to climate change concept of „loss and damage“

    • mainly financed by means of the industrial countries

  • Peace agreement would become an international treaty

  • Agreement could have had an impact on „business decisions“

    • Send signal to the market about international community’s long-term political objectives (institutions that depend on public financing, will focus on the objectives of its states), can encourage and support voluntary effort by private sector (increasing their reputation)

• Opens up for non-state actors

  • e.g. 5-year cycle of reviewing and communicating achieved NDS

    
    

Weakness:

• Significantly under 2° compared to pre-industrial under international law, 1,5°C is only best case-scenario

  • 2°C would end up in massive consequences and horror scnarios, tipping points e.g. grönland ice-shield melt, than tempreature increasing again-       

• Commitment to significant NDCs as collective good problem per se

  • To reach the 1,5°C goal, countries have no time to hesistate due to CO2-budgets

    • the longer they wait the harder/more efficent they have to decrease their CO2 emissions

    • BUT free rider and strong need fot peers, preferly the powerful and aconomic-strong states (climate action is often seen as costs)

    • +

• No sanctions for not fulfilling

  • Reputational risk not enough to sanction a world power like US (Trump left) + which is that dependend on fossil fuels

  • Especially those countries are important for the long-term success (peer pressure)

Gridlock

• gridlock characterized multilateral negotiations while climate policy experimentation at national level became more actively

YES

• major breakthrough in international climate diplomacy

  • years before where characterized by fruitless efforts (Kyoto coverd only 15% of the world)

• all countries under international law agreed on Paris Agreement

  • buttom-up process

  • opened up for space and dialogue

  • economic less powerful states were able tp raise their voice and get heared “Significantly under 2, best-cas 1,5”

• Send a message to marktet und consumers, became more rstrictive with those products and supply chains

• Paris agreement offered a more realistic chance that governments implement their own designed NDCs

• nearly all high emitters have implemented lawa and regulations dealing with emission controle

NO

• progressive development needs that the regular reporting is fulfilled transparent and and verifiyed

• + if the results show that the efforty or not enough are small goals have been achieved, there is a need that states set more ambitous efforts by themselves

• No sunctions from agreement itself also depends on civil society

• turned into a hybrid system that combines bottom-up and top-down elements

• NDCs

  • reviewed on international level UNFCCC

  • selected, agreed and implemented on national level

• Paris Agreement includes a large number of non-state actors (civil society, social movements, economic actors (business and trade unions), subnational or substate actors (regional local governments, cities and municipalities)

• NGO perform a quasi-monitoring role

  • Climate Action Tracker provide important data and analysis on global emissions trends and national performance

  • Highlighted gap between what countries have in their NDCs and the collective level that would consistent with the 2°C target

  • remaining CO2 budget and efforts that have to be taken to stay in this budget

• Civil Society organisations continue to watch the national policies and their implementations

• Monitoring and setting governments under pressure, depends on the degree they manage to organise

  • depends on the degree to which a country allows civil organisation

  • = influences the number of participants and financial means of NGOs

  • = monitroring ability differs between low- and high-income countries

• Climate Governance as polycentric - without a fixed attribution of hierarchies and authority

• multilateral policies are not sufficent for solving climate change

• Polycentric Governance takes into account the diversity of actors

  • focuses on self-organisation and coordinative adaption rather than cooperation dilemma

  • an adaptive system of multiple self-governing units

    • subsidiarity: problem is tackled on the unit that is the closest to the problem -> nondomination

  • Site-Specific Conditions: take heterogenous preferences, competencies and constraints into account

    • Those who are willing to mitigate are benefiting fossil-based industry have to be compensated

  • Experimentation and Learning: Innovation and adaption is encouraged by knowledge diffusion and experimentation

    • policy adjusting and learning mor important than huge radical changes

  • Trust: crucial for ccoperation. Can be enhanced by positive experiences, monitoring or sanctioning

    • face-to-face interaction