Climate Change Policy in a Globalizing World - Essay Example

Climate Change Policy in a Globalizing World Introduction Climate change is articulated as global warming that entails the increase in average temperatures, although, it involves much more. Long-term transformation in precipitation, ocean salinity and acidity, high-tide levels, wind patterns and extreme weather events, droughts, heavy rainfall, heat waves and the concentration of tropical cyclones, confront humanity with huge realistic challenges. It will be crucial, therefore, to build a resonance scientific understanding of the systems through which climate change discloses, and, on the foundation of this information, to alleviate its force as far as possible while adjusting to its effects (Schreuder, 2009, p. 13). 1. The Facts: According to the 4th assessment report, there is proof that Africa is warming quicker than the global average, and it is likely to persist. It is projected that by 2100, temperature changes will drop in ranges of about 1.4 to almost 5.8˚C raise in mean surface temperature contrasted to 1900, and around 10 to 90cm increase in mean sea level. This warming is most over the heart of semi-arid boundaries of the Sahara also the central southern Africa. Before the atmospheric amount of carbon dioxide equivalent has multiplied by two, the worlds mean precipitation is anticipated to be around 1-5 % more than 1900. Under the least warming situation, equatorial east Africa will have rainfall increase by 5-20 % during December, January as well as February and diminish by 5-10 % during June, July also August (Schreuder, 2009, p.39). Agricultural production with foodstuff security in most areas of Africa is likely to be strictly compromised by climate change, as well as climate variability. Climate change will deteriorate the water stress presently faced by some nations; while some of those nations, presently not at risk of water stress, will be affected. Changes in an array of ecosystems are by now being noticed faster than expected, mainly in the Southern African environments. Climate change and unpredictability could also lead to the flooding of low lying lands, comprising coastal settlements. Human health could also be more negatively affected by climate change with climate variability, for instance there has been a raise in the frequency of malaria in southern Africa as well as East African highlands. These unfavourable effects together with poverty, institutional frame works and Poor policy, cause Africa to be one of the most susceptible continent to climate change as well as climate variability. It is established that the anthropogenic climate force is the chief cause of climate change. This comprises of green house gases, land surface changes and aerosols. Research has shown that while a rise in the amount of green house gases would augment global warming, a rase in atmospheric aerosols would reduce it, although alterations in the land cover could either augment or reduce the local temperature (Schneider, 2002, p.22). The increase in the GHG since industrialization in the 1900s is the main cause of the ongoing global warming. The raise has been related to a rise in the burning of fossil fuels, growing dependence on fossil fuel driven technologies, elevated population growth rates and land use results. More increase in the GHG altitudes is anticipated in the future as the developing nations are becoming further industrialized. Nevertheless, any increase in GHG increases the “green house” characteristics of the earth’s environment. These gases permit solar radiation to go through the atmosphere but hinder the reflected heat from escaping back into the apace which results to the earth’s temperature rise. Climate change is the main factor defining human advancement issues of the generation. All development is eventually on expanding human potential and expanding human freedom. It is about persons developing their abilities that allow them to make choices and their values. There is persuasive evidence that the impacts on the atmosphere from the whole of the human kinds development actions are heating up the globe towards levels hazardous for life. This shows unequivocally that present global development exercises taken all together are fundamentally indefensible at planetary scale (Schneider, 2002, p. 34). Summed together, the effects of climate change are potentially terrible for Africa as they become more and more severe during the rest of this century, always aggravating existing pressure areas and generating new ones. Climate change has set development hard work back and made attainment of the millennium development goals considerably more difficult. Additionally, Africa is highly susceptible to climate change due to its large population that remains greatly dependent on rain nourished agriculture for foodstuff, its natural resource founded economy, and restraints on internal trade. People or states carry an unjust burden in experiencing the negative results of climate change to the path of which they have little or no contribution. Here, the ethical complexity lies in resolving what is unfair and unjust in the allocation of the negative results of climate change, but also in the allotment of the benefits of activities that bring climate change. 2. Global Corporation’s Point of View: The United Nations has the framework of ethics of virtual. In its United Nations framework convection on climate change, it permits for the introduction of practices to the convention. Several global initiatives are being executed to assist in the operations of the UNFCCC. For instance, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) works as an operating unit of the UNFCCC financial device and has been sustaining the national capacity self appraisal process of national level for a while, among other things. The objective is to provide countries with a chance to articulate their own capacity requirements in realizing the UNFCC. The final objective of the UNFCCC is to calm greenhouse gas concentrations “at a point that would avoid dangerous anthropogenic intrusion with the climate.” This is regarded by developing countries as an essential part of the stated objective stated earlier. This should be attained within a time frame which permits ecosystems to adjust naturally to climate change while assuring that food production is not at danger and that development happens in a maintainable manner (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2006). The United Nation in this legal instrument identifies a broad range of measures to tackle climate change, which comprises mitigation and adaptation, but also other actions such as scientific and technical cooperation, finance, technology transfer and others. The UNFCC permits any state to become a party, and by 2011, it had 194 members, therefore, making it a worldwide instrument. Within this framework of international participation, actual responsibilities of parties differ considerably between developed and developing nations. The UNFCC enshrines several key ethics including the principle of “equity” and “common but distinguished responsibilities and individual capabilities.” Today’s accrued greenhouse gas emissions originate mostly from over 150 years of carbon founded industrial activities in industrialized states. Thus, the UN recognizes that all nations have a common liability to tackle climate change, however, places a heavier burden on developed states as an accomplishment of their own historic liability for the causes of climate change (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2000). The ethics of virtual is reflected in the compulsions established for industrialized and developing nations in the convention, comprising those relating to mitigation, adaptation, communication, finance and technology transfer. The convention goes extra to make provision for nations in special circumstances, including particularly venerable nations, last industrialized nations, undergoing change to a market economy (Schreuder, 2009, p.68). 3. Other Global Actors’ Points of View: The effects of climate change on human rights have been clearly acknowledged by the African Commission on Human and peoples’ Rights. In its AU Resolution, the African Communication is incorporated in the African Union’s bargaining team on climate change. It thus recognizes the framework of social justice through human rights. The 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights is a person rights agreement that asserts environmental human rights in broadly qualitative conditions. It defends the peoples’ rights both to the “best achievable state of bodily and mental wellbeing and to a universal satisfactory atmosphere favourable to their growth”. Article 24 of the African charter creates a binding human rights founded approach to ecological protection, connecting the right to surroundings to the right to development (Schreuder, 2009, p.78). Social justice is reflected when the revised African Convention on Conservation of Nature and Natural resources become accustomed by the Second Ordinary session of the African Union (AU) Assembly of Heads of States and Government in Maputo, Mozambique in July 2003. It has, nevertheless, not yet come into power. The acknowledgment of a right to an acceptable environment via the African charter and the adventives jurisprudence by the African Commission take up the matter of environmental security from a human rights point of view and underline the connection between climate change and human rights, in a contemporary holistic approach to one of the largely burning subjects in the society (Schneider, 2002, p. 36). Deontological moral system stresses the reasons behind why certain actions are taken. Just following the right moral rules is not sufficient instead the right motivation is vital. Action to avoid serious damage to humans or the environment should not be delayed until vital scientific proof is ascertained about the causes and outcomes of that harm. A more explanation of the standard was prepared by COMEST in 2005. It is further predetermined that scientific doubt in the context of threat and possible danger does not establish a basis for inaction, but rather for action, as well as the active pursuit of more knowledge about possible risk and danger. The COMMEST states that judgement of the plausibility ought to be based on scientific investigations. Investigations should be continuous so that chosen actions are subject to reconsider. Uncertainty may affect, but must to be limited to, causality or the limits of the likely harm. Actions are intrusions that are to be assumed before harm arises that seeks to avoid or diminish harm. What is already known about overall climate change is that it creates a risk of ethically intolerable harm, which is hesitant only in terms of the extent and timing. It is because of hesitation that it is vital to study climate change in a careful and rigorous way in order to resolve any doubts which can be determined while also shaping an improved understanding of how ethically intolerable threats will appear (Schreuder, 2009, p.78). 4. Recommendations Concerns on global climate change involve concerns about effects on upcoming generations, as well as far-away upcoming generations. We consider here not only of our offspring and their offspring, but of the generations who will be ever more menaced by climate change consequences. Scientifically speaking, several climate change models foretell a rise in normal temperatures and sea levels that may persist over a thousand years posing the bigger problem of sustainability. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) was started in 2001, in response to calls from policy makers and scientists alike for a more integrative, complete, global ecosystem assessment process. The aim was to measure the costs of ecosystem change, with human well-being as the main focus, and to offer a scientific basis for action necessary to enhance preservation and sustainable application of those systems, as well as their contribution to the human well being (Metz, 2007, p. 117). The MEA made it plain that human activities are exhausting earth’s natural capital, “putting such tensions on the environment that the capability of the planet’s environments to maintain upcoming generations cannot be overlooked again.” The MEA advocates that a system for reimbursement for ecosystem services to be launched and that land and water rights be made clear. This ensures utilitarianism. Policies that ensure a win-win situation can be designed to protect the climate and enhance ecosystems. For instance, an initiative to decrease deforestation and encourage reforestation and the revival of the degraded lands would attain most goals, like reinforcing ecosystems and biodiversity, increasing food production, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, and offering employment mostly to the local people. Adaptation plans will play a major role in strengthening the resilience of societies affected by climate change in such regions such as the coastal zones, forests, agriculture, health, water and infrastructure, each of which presents its difficulties and entails a diversity and form part of a wider framework that comprises incorporated coastal zone organization, incorporated water resource administration (Metz, 2007, p. 117). Conclusions The international climate change management is rising, nevertheless, in order to realize more climate change justice for Africa certain gaps should be closed and rights and responsibilities be distributed with greater equality in the future. This in turn, will ensure that poor and marginalized population in Africa does not experience a disproportionate burden linked with climate change. Climate change calls for further intellectual collective action centered on the human affliction that climate change is anticipated to cause, mainly in Africa (Mckibbin & Wilcoxen, 2002, p. 48). While acknowledging that there is a broad range of ethical concerns related to the consequences of climate change and that each necessitates a reaction, there is also extensive international agreement that climate change needs a collective response from everybody that takes part in causing it. Table of Contents Climate Change Policy in a Globalizing World 1 Introduction 1 1. The Facts: 1 2. Global Corporation’s Point of View: 3 3. Other Global Actors’ Points of View: 5 4. Recommendations 7 Conclusions 8 Table of Contents 9 References 10 References Mckibbin, W. J., & Wilcoxen, P. J. (2002). Climate change policy after Kyoto: a blueprint for a realistic approach. Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution Press. Metz, B. (2007). Climate change 2007: mitigation of climate change : contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Schneider, S. H., Rosencranz, A., & Niles, J. O. (2002). Climate change policy: a survey. Washington, DC, Island Press. Schreuder, Y. (2009). The corporate greenhouse: climate change policy in a globalizing world. London, Zed. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (organization). (2006). Thematic assessment report: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Samoa, Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Meteorology. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (2000). Kyoto protocol. [Bonn, Germany], UNFCCC. http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php. Read More