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Begin New Search Political Geography Durban Publication Year within 25 Years

1. "If Equity's In, We're Out": Scope for Fairness in the Next Global Climate Agreement

Author:
Steve Vanderheiden, Jonathan Pickering, and Seumas Miller
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In the final hours of the United Nations climate change conference held in Durban, South Africa, in late 2011, senior negotiators from wealthy and developing countries clustered in a widely reported "huddle" to resolve out- standing points of discord on how to launch negotiations for a long-term global climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Among the statements voiced in the huddle, one of the most intriguing was attributed to the lead United States negotiator, Todd Stern: "If equity's in, we're out." In other words, if the resulting decision contained any references to the term "equity," the United States would refuse to participate. As it transpired, the United States and like-minded countries succeeded on this point. The agreed upon Durban Platform for Enhanced Action contained no references either to equity or to the "common but differentiated responsibilities" of all parties for protecting the climate system. These omissions were notable since both are core principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, Article), under whose auspices the negotiations took place.
Political Geography:
United States, South Africa, and Durban

2. Climate Negotiations Open a Window: Key Implications of the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action

Author:
Robert N. Stavins and Joseph E. Aldy
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
A key outcome of the Seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP-17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Durban, South Africa, late in 2011 — the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action — represents an important milestone in the history of climate negotiations. This is because it departs from the long-standing and problematic dichotomous division of the world's countries into those with serious emissions-reduction responsibilities and the others — with no such responsibilities whatsoever. That distinction, now apparently abandoned, has prevented meaningful progress for decades. The Durban Platform — by replacing the Berlin Mandate's (1995) division of the world into a set of countries with ambitious responsibilities and another set of countries with no responsibilities — has opened an important window. National delegations from around the world now have a challenging task before them: to identify a new international climate policy architecture that is consistent with the process, pathway, and principles laid out in the Durban Platform, while still being consistent with the UNFCCC. The challenge is to find a way to include all key countries in a structure that brings about meaningful emission reduction on an appropriate timetable at acceptable cost, while recognizing the different circumstances of countries in a way that is more subtle, more sophisticated, and — most important — more effective than the dichotomous distinction of years past.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
South Africa, United Nations, and Durban

3. Post-Durban Climate Policy Architecture Based on Linkage of Cap-and-Trade Systems

Author:
Robert N. Stavins
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The outcome of the December 2011 United Nations climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, provides an important new opportunity to move toward an international climate policy architecture that is capable of delivering broad international participation and significant global CO2 emissions reductions at reasonable cost. We evaluate one important component of potential climate policy architecture for the post-Durban era: links among independent tradable permit systems for greenhouse gases. Because linkage reduces the cost of achieving given targets, there is tremendous pressure to link existing and planned cap-and-trade systems, and in fact, a number of links already or will soon exist. We draw on recent political and economic experience with linkage to evaluate potential roles that linkage may play in post-Durban international climate policy, both in a near-term, de facto architecture of indirect links between regional, national, and sub-national cap-and-trade systems, and in longer-term, more comprehensive bottom-up architecture of direct links. Although linkage will certainly help to reduce long-term abatement costs, it may also serve as an effective mechanism for building institutional and political structure to support a future climate agreement.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Environment, International Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
South Africa and Durban

4. Archaeology of the Present: Organized Crime through the Study of Urban Built Environments

Author:
Eyal Weizman and Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
The urban landscape is a testament to the impact of transnational organized crime (TOC) in the everyday lives of citizens. Because of this, architects and urban planners have an interesting role to play in understanding the complexity of this issue. Acting as archaeologists of the present, they can trace the intricate relationship of crime and its different actors within a transnational network, as it touches ground and transforms cities across borders. Cities are the ultimate battleground of TOC. The controversial topic of occupation law is approached in a conversation on how urban environments are increasingly performing both as spaces of control and spaces of contestation and resistance, and are therefore shaped and transformed by this interplay. Eyal Weizman, director of the Centre for the Research of Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, developed a 'forensic' field of study within the realm of architecture, where, by examining the traces of history and its politics within the built environment, a larger understanding of a city and its society can be read. In the context of this issue, Weizman discusses with Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa, architect and Master in Design Studies candidate at Harvard University, how architecture can perform as an able narrator in interpreting and unveiling the way crime embeds itself within the built environment of our cities and thus becomes an active participant in shaping them.
Topic:
Environment
Political Geography:
London and Durban

5. African dynamics at the climate change negotiations

Author:
Jean-Christophe Hoste and Andrew Anderson
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
The climate change negotiations in Cancun saved the multilateral negotiation process under the UNFCCC, but what were the African political dynamics at the negotiations? In this Africa policy brief the international climate change negotiations are analysed as a “political marketplace” where international, regional and national agendas meet and have an impact that goes far beyond the theme of the negotiations. It addresses three questions to understand the African political processes at the climate negotiations. First, why did the African Union endorse the Copenhagen Accord after COP 15? Second, why was Kenya so active in the high-level segment of the negotiations in Cancun? Third, what could South Africa do to bring the negotiations forward in Durban?
Topic:
Climate Change, Globalization, International Cooperation, Politics, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, South Africa, and Durban

6. "French Suburbs" : A New Problem or a New Approach to Social Exclusion?

Author:
Sylvie Tissot
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
At the end of 1980s, the question of « quartiers sensibles » (at-risk neighborhoods) started to be very publicized in France. It was not only the subject of many front-page articles, but also the target of a new public policy aimed at promoting urban and social development in about 500 neighborhoods (Politique de la ville). I argue that such a focus on « quartiers sensibles » does not only result from increasing problems such as unemployment, poverty or juvenile delinquency ; it also represents a major change in public policy. Focusing on « quartiers sensibles » directly contributed to the restructuring of the French welfare state by centering its action on specific urban spaces rather than national territory, and on social links rather than economic reality, contrary to what the welfate state claimed to do during the Fordist period. The outbreak of riots in November 2005 is inextricably bound up with the way some problems (like lack of communication and weakening social links) have been associated with the question of « quartiers sensibles » whereas the French model of integration, based on equality among abstract citizens, left some others (like ethnic discrimination) unquestioned.
Topic:
Political Violence, Political Economy, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Europe and Durban

7. Beirut Reconstruction: A Missed Opportunity for Conflict Resolution

Author:
Lourdes Martinez-Garrido
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
al Nakhlah
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
In the BBC documentary, “War generation: Beirut,” snipers from the different warring factions are interviewed. One reveals how the inequalities between the awful housing conditions in which he and his family were living and the opulence that he saw in the city center created in him a deep feeling of anger. According to his confession, this bitter emotion was only mitigated when he took part in the destruction of the St. Georges Hotel, a landmark of the luxurious side of Beirut. Urban references in the snipers' memories of the war are a constant theme.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution and Civil Society
Political Geography:
Lebanon and Durban

8. Sovereignties, the World Conference against Racism 2001 and the Formation of a Dalit Human Rights Campaign

Author:
Dag Erik Berg
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
This paper examines how the World Conference against Racism in Durban 2001 intensified an old debate in India about caste and race. The controversy arose after the 'National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights' wanted to present caste discrimination in Durban as equivalent to racial discrimination. The Indian government protested, and distinguished sociologists entered the fray by claiming that race is a western concept which cannot be compared to caste, strengthening the official position. Conceptual logic became central to the debate. First, the position represents conventional knowledge, which reflects the anti-colonial attempt to define race as being irrelevant to India. But, secondly, the scholarly discourse acted to exclude oppression from the debate in clear contrast to the Durban agenda on racism and intolerance. The debate showed, broadly, how Durban represented a transformative potential by connecting global racism discourse to the moral status of an embedded postcolonial state. Further, the paper argues that the dominating conceptual focus reflects a paradigmatic individualism, which informs the scholarly approach to modern caste formations. While individualist approaches exclude Dalit rhetoric as subjective, they do not sufficiently acknowledge that the exclusionary logics inflicted on Dalits in modern bureaucratic institutions is a racial dynamic. To shed light on the Durban controversy, the paper outlines the larger background to caste in India and provides examples of Dalit discourse. It also presents the formation of the hum an rights network and controversial issues regarding the way they define themselves as NGOs, Dalits and Christians. These attributed properties were fundamental for the debate(s). Durban cannot be seen as an episode with tangible empirical impact. Rather, the debate was an intense moment in an ongoing historical argument about hierarchical practices and equality in India as well as about its moral status in the global community. In December 2006, however, at an international conference in New Delhi, the Prime Minister of India compared the Dalit situation to apartheid.
Topic:
Human Rights, Poverty, and Race
Political Geography:
India, East Asia, Asia, New Delhi, Kurdistan, and Durban

9. Terrorism and Racism: The Aftermath of Durban

Author:
Anne F. Bayefsky
Publication Date:
12-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Confronting bin Laden's rallying cry of "good" and "bad" terrorism lies at the heart of any battle to defeat terrorism. This now entails the courage to address directly the terrorists' and their state sponsors' rhetorical weapon of choice, the accusation of racism. In fact, their claim inverts the very heart of a civil libertarian agenda, since it is closely associated with a deep-rooted antisemitism.
Topic:
Security, Religion, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Middle East, Arabia, and Durban