Ethics and Climate Change: A Study of National Commitments Ethics and Climate Change A Study of National Commitments Donald A. Brown and Prue Taylor (Eds.) IUCN Environmental Law Programme Environmental Law Centre Godesberger Allee 108-112 53175 Bonn, Germany Phone: ++ 49 228 / 2692 231 Fax: ++ 49 228 / 2692 250 [email protected] IUCN Environmental Policy and Law Paper No. 86 www.iucn.org/law IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law Ethics and Climate Change A Study of National Commitments Ethics and Climate Change A Study of National Commitments Donald A. Brown and Prue Taylor (Eds.) IUCN Environmental Policy and Law Paper No. 86 The designation of geographical entities in this book, and the presentation of the material, do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IUCN concerning the legal status of any country, territory, or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of IUCN. Published by: IUCN, Gland, Switzerland in collaboration with the IUCN Environmental Law Centre, Bonn, Germany Copyright: © 2015 International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Reproduction of this publication for educational or other non-commercial purposes is authorized without prior written permission from the copyright holder provided the source is fully acknowledged. Reproduction of this publication for resale or other commercial purposes is prohibited without prior written permission of the copyright holder. Citation: Donald A. Brown and Prue Taylor (Eds.) (2015). Ethics and Climate Change. A Study of National Commitments IUCN, Gland, Switzerland. xxx + 170 pp. ISBN: 978-2-8317-1709-8 DOI: 10.2305/IUCN.CH.2015.EPLP.86.en Cover design by: IUCN Environmental Law Centre Cover photo: © shutterstock Layout by: layout & more, Bonn Available from: IUCN Publications Services Rue Mauverney 28 1196 Gland Switzerland Tel +41 22 999 0000 Fax +41 22 999 0010 [email protected] www.iucn.org/publications Contents Foreword .................................................................. vii Acknowledgements .......................................................... ix Editors .................................................................... xi Contributors ............................................................... xiii Introduction ................................................................ xvii A Change in the Weather? Australia and Climate Change Politics 2007–2014 Peter D. Burdon 1 The Plurinational State of Bolivia’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Beth Jean Evans 15 Canada’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Anne D. Fouillard 25 China’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Sanna Kopra 53 Ethics and Justice in Climate Change Policies – Report on Italy Alessandra Solazzo and Massimiliano Montini 63 Japan’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Kathryn A. Gwiazdon 77 Kenya’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Martin Oulu 87 New Zealand’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Chris Hadley 95 The Netherlands’ Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Vivian Ike 109 Concerns of Ethics and Justice in Russian Climate Politics Katia Vladimirova 115 v South Africa’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Radhika Perrot 123 An Overview of South Korea’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice in its Climate Policy Sun-Jin Yun and Rakhyun E. Kim 135 Thailand: Shirking Away from Ethical Responsibility to Respond to Climate Change Danny Marks 143 Uganda’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Policies Akampurira Andrew 149 The United States of America’s Consideration of Ethics and Justice Issues in Formulating Climate Change Policies Donald A. Brown 159 vi National Climate Change Commitments Foreword Climate change is the most significant moral and environmental issue of our time. The collapse of the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations lead many to question whether the international community really had a moral compass to follow, beyond shallow declaratory statements and ambiguous phrases. The critical 2015 Paris negotiations will again put the actions and inactions of states squarely before the world’s peoples. To use the jargon of the negotiations, what will it take to get states to lift the level of moral and legal ambition and deliver a result that meets the criteria required by the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Reports? The IUCN’s conservation mission and work programmes have included climate change for many years across a number of Commissions. The World Commission on Environmental Law (‘WCEL’), for example, has a Specialist Working Group on Energy Law and Climate Change and the Environmental Law Programme works with a number of partner organisations on climate change issues. The IUCN and the WCEL have a strong commitment to global ethics as evident in the 1980 World Conservation Strategy and in the IUCN’s endorsement of the Earth Charter in 2008. This publication continues the important task of specifically relating considerations of ethics and justice to climate change. Donald Brown and Prue Taylor are world-renowned experts in the field of climate change ethics and leading members of the WCEL Ethics Specialist Group. They initiated this project and its publication. Their leadership attracted experts from fifteen nations who investigated moral and ethical considerations underpinning the climate commitments of their respective governments. The fundamental question asked of all states is this: to what extent do their national climate change commitments take into account responsibility (for those most vulnerable) and fairness (a fair share of global greenhouse gas emissions)? It is well recognized that transparent answers to these fundamental questions will be central to the success of any future global climate change agreement. In the interests of creating necessary transparency and in bringing considerations of ethics and justice to the fore, this book contains fifteen highly informative country reports. The reports concern China, the United States, Australia and Canada, together with three African states (South Africa, Kenya and Uganda), three European states (Italy, Netherlands and Russia), a selection from the Asia Pacific Region (Japan, South Korea, Thailand and New Zealand) and one South American state (Bolivia). The authors were asked to report against a standard set of questions to facilitate comparability between states. It is intended that this initial selection of reports will be added to (and in some instances updated) in the coming months via the project website: www.nationalclimatejustice.org. The objective is to create a repository of country reports that reveals the moral position of nations when determining their national commitments. This book makes an important contribution to the task of relating ethics and justice to climate change in a manner that is timely and practical. Global cooperation can only be built on trust and this in turn requires the highest attention to the moral imperatives of climate change. This book tells us how vi vii committed states have really been. It also provides guidance for ongoing climate negotiations, for the further development of national policies and laws, for decision-makers in public and private sectors and indeed for everyone concerned with our common destiny. Professor Klaus Bosselmann Chair, Ethics Specialist Group IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law viii National Climate Change Commitments Acknowledgements This project owes its existence to a determination to make considerations of ethics and justice integral to climate change policy in a way that is practical, transparent and accessible. It is our objective to shine a light on the justifications that states currently use for developing mitigation and adaptation policy, and measure those justifications against some basic criteria agreed upon by most states. The fifteen reports published in this book are the first in what we hope will become a comprehensive series covering as many nation states as possible. Our thanks go to all the authors with reports in this current collection. We have been energized by their interest and enthusiasm and we acknowledge their generosity in volunteering to research and write reports. Hopefully their efforts will inspire others to join us by contributing more national reports. This project began with a workshop run at the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Colloquium, Tarragona, in July 2014. It was through this vehicle that we were able to present our project to colleagues, solicit helpful suggestions on the research template, and gauge support. Our thanks go to all those who participated in this workshop. Financial support was provided by our home Universities: Widener University School of Law (US) and the School of Architecture and Planning, University of Auckland (New Zealand). We are grateful for this assistance. Finally, we would like to thank the wonderful team at the IUCN Environmental Law Centre in Bonn for working with us. The efforts of the director Alejandro Iza, together with Ann DeVoy and Anni Lukács, has enabled us to deliver this project as an e-book