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551. Andean-U.S. Dialogue Forum: Toward a Common Agenda for the Andean Countries and the United States

Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
An opening product of the Andean-U.S. Dialogue Forum, this report is intended to spur conversations on more effective cooperation by identifying convergences and divergences in priorities among the countries and the citizens of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia and the United States. It seeks to open the door to a better understanding of the internal dynamics in each country and to reduce stereotypes that impede cooperation to resolve mutual challenges. This report highlights the transnational issues of energy, climate change, trade, and illegal drugs, recognizing that beneficial progress will demand a collective response from all.
Topic:
Climate Change, International Trade and Finance, Regional Cooperation, and War on Drugs
Political Geography:
United States, Colombia, Latin America, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia

552. Climate Insecurities: Exploring the Strategic Implications for Asia-Pacific Armed Forces

Author:
Evan A. Laksmana
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explore and assess the implications of climate insecurities for the armed forces of the Asia-Pacific region, and in particular Southeast Asia. It identifies key issues and trends related to climate insecurities – in the areas of mass migration, diseases, natural disasters and the scarcity of water, food and other resources. It then details the implications for armed forces in the region with reference to the strategic, institutional and operational realms, and contends that climate change will become both a burden multiplier and a threat multiplier in the decades to come.
Topic:
Climate Change, Health, and Migration
Political Geography:
Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific

553. Climate change negotiations and their implications for international development cooperation

Author:
Lars Engberg-Pedersen
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This report discusses possible implications of the international attempts to address climate change for the organisation of development cooperation. The paper concentrates This report discusses possible implications of the international attempts to address climate change for the organisation of development cooperation. The paper concentrates on questions related to institutions and resources and pays less attention to potential consequences for the objectives and contents of development cooperation. The institutional question is limited to the norms, practices and organisations that emerge primarily at the international level in response to climate change. The resource question deals with the capital that needs to be mobilised to mitigate climate change and to finance the costs of adaptation to climate change in developing countries.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Energy Policy, and International Cooperation

554. Global Climate Governance after Cancun: Options for EU Leadership

Author:
Sebastian Oberthür
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
One year after the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, the next conference of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol in December 2010 adopted the so-called Cancun Agreements. Thereby, the Cancun conference succeeded in keeping the UN climate process alive and averting serious damage to multilateralism more broadly. However, the Cancun Agreements fall seriously short of providing for effective action on climate change. The current weakness of the international framework reinforces the rationale for strengthening domestic EU climate policies. It also requires a further rethinking of the EU\'s international leadership strategy.
Topic:
Climate Change, United Nations, and Governance

555. Adaptive Governance - A Way to Unlock the Current Climate Change Regime

Author:
Ganna Onysko
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Review of: Adaptive governance and climate change, by Ronald D. Brunner and Amanda H. Lynch, American Meteorological Society, 2010
Topic:
Climate Change and Governance

556. China and India: More Cooperation than competition in Energy and Climate Change

Author:
Tofiq Siddiqi
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
Energy and climate change are two important areas in which there is much more cooperation than competition between China and India. After a few years of trying to outbid each other for oil and gas exploration and production licenses, both have found it more productive to bid jointly for many such contracts. Even though neither China nor India has agreed to limits on their emissions of greenhouse gases, both are committed to reducing the carbon intensity of their development, by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 for China, and 20 to 25 percent over the same time period for India. To achieve these goals, the two countries have launched major programs to install power plants using renewable energy sources and nuclear energy, and to increase the efficiency of energy use. It is unlikely that either China or India will agree to absolute reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from their present levels soon, but they may be willing to cap them at future levels that still permit their future per capita income to become comparable to that of countries in Western Europe. At the recently concluded United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, China was strongly supportive of a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol for a second commitment period, but India indicated that it may be willing to explore other approaches suggested by the United States, the EU and small island nations. Though their paths to addressing climate change may begin to differ, it is highly likely that China and India will continue to share the same strategic goal of achieving parity with the West in terms of standard of living of their populations, even if it means higher emissions for another decade or two.
Topic:
Climate Change and Oil
Political Geography:
China, India, and Western Europe

557. Local and National Ownership in Post-Conflict Liberia Foreign and Domestic Inside Out?

Author:
Niels Nagelhus Schia and Benjamin de Carvalho
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The paper takes as its starting point the difficulties encountered in implementing policies aimed at fostering local and national ownership in peacekeeping activities. Especially important in this respect are training programmes aimed at sensitizing people working in peacekeeping operations to the inherent difficulties of local ownership in post-conflict environments. The account offered here is an ethnography of local ownership in a specific context. Through such accounts, we argue, training programmes can go beyond emphasizing the difficulties relating to local ownership, and instead emphasize how these can be solved in different contexts, on a case-bycase basis. By offering an ethnographical account of practices of local ownership in Liberian ministries, problematizing the role played by international embedded experts, we argue that where you stand may actually depend on where you sit. In a difficult post-conflict environment, local ownership in the initial phases may not be possible without borrowing capacity from the outside. In the end, the important question may be not who does the work, but whose perspectives underlie the policies that are adopted and implemented.
Topic:
Climate Change and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Liberia

558. Face Reality? After You!--A Call for Leadership on Climate Change

Author:
Henry Shue
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In Joseph Heller's comic war novel, Catch-22, the catch-22 of the title refers to a supposed military regulation that allowed one to be relieved of military service if one was insane, but further provided that no one who realized he would be better off out of military service could possibly be insane. Humanity's so far leaderless approach to dealing with rapidly accelerating climate change embodies a similar, but profoundly tragic, catch-22 that has, among other twists and contradictions, transmuted justice into paralysis. Many thought that the natural global leader of the effort to gain control of global climate change would be the United States, with its splendid cadre of scientists and its history of technological innovation. But our politicians have failed to be worthy of our scientists or of the trust we citizens have placed in them. Facing reality appears to be increasingly unpopular among those who pass as our national political leaders. Those who refuse to face reality often find that what they ignore may come back to bite them, and worse, it may hurt others who trust them with their well-being. It is unclear which members of the U.S. Senate have sold their souls to the fossil-fuel interests and which have simply closed their minds. But the effect is the same: the facts on the ground—and in the air, water, and ice of the planet—are racing further and further ahead of the faltering U.S. political efforts to respond to them. And the American failure of political leadership is one major factor that is crippling efforts to negotiate multilateral action at the international level.
Topic:
Climate Change
Political Geography:
United States and America

559. Globalizing Responsibility for Climate Change

Author:
Steve Vanderheiden
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
How is the just assignment of climate change mitigation costs related to the fair allocation of burdens for climate change adaptation? In distributing the costs associated with climate change, most scholars have focused exclusively upon mitigation burdens, which reduce ongoing contributions to climate change, primarily through greenhouse gas abatement efforts. Few consider the distribution of adaptation costs, which concern projects that seek to minimize harm from human-induced climate change. This article explores both, grounding each in the justice framework appropriate to each activity, with mitigation efforts based in distributive justice and adaptation activities in corrective justice, and outlines an overarching account of responsibility that! links the two. From such an account, it suggests, a more coherent view of the tradeoffs between mitigation and adaptation is possible, enabling a more integrative policy framework for linking ongoing efforts in one category with required burdens in the other.
Topic:
Climate Change and Globalization

560. Climate change: Beyond coping. Women smallholder farmers in Tajikistan

Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Evidence from scientific research and from previous qualitative research into the experiences of farmers in Tajikistan makes it clear that climate change is already impacting the country and the lives of people from rural Tajikistan.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Environment, and Food
Political Geography:
Central Asia and Tajikistan