Climate Change: the IPCC and the Nation States as two Global Actor Groups - Essay Example

Climate Change: the IPCC and the Nation s as two Global Actor Groups IPCC and Climate Change Assessment Ensuring wide international participation is important for climate change assessment, because climate change means different things to different countries (Schrope, 2001). Both international assessment bodies like IPCC and the stakeholder nation states, besides a range of institutions and organizations, play particular roles in such an emerging system of global governance (Siebenhuner, 2003). Established in 1988 by World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the IPCC has been designed as an inter-governmental body that should assess the existing scientific knowledge on the causes and impacts of climate change and options for adaptation and mitigation. The terms of reference also require the IPCC to provide, on request, scientific/technological/socio-economic advice to the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1997). The strength of the IPCC lies in the fact that it seeks to provide an unbiased assessment of the science of climate change, for the benefit of the policy process, and international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Burton, 2003). Since its establishment, the IPCC has published three major assessment reports (1990, 1995 and 2001) besides publishing a number of special reports, technical papers, and guidelines. As an international body with the capacity to affect communication between science and policy, the IPCC has a duel role to play. Firstly, it should provide credibility to the scientific community, and secondly, it is intended to feed scientific and technical information into the political negotiation and implementation processes (Bolin, 1994). This interface has been developed very carefully due to the high level of contestation inherent in issue of climate change and political options involved. Recent trends have shown that specific influence of an individual nation state in the IPCC is restricted owing to a growing tendency of internationalization in the field of climate research and climate policy. The dynamic internal structure of IPCC demarcates boundaries for the performance of individual actor groups such as government representatives and scientists (Siebenhuner, 2003). Internal dynamics within the IPCC over the past years made it a powerful institution in addressing issues of global warming and in advising political decision-making. Being the largest effort to assess the existing knowledge about an environmental problem so far, the IPCC has gained much attention by researchers as well as policy makers. Over the years, the design of the assessment changed significantly and much dynamism has been noticed in the internal structure of the IPCC, which makes the study of changes in the roles of constituent actor groups representing particular nation states more interesting. To analyse the role of nation state such as the US within the IPCC structure, the criteria developed by Mitchele (Mitchele, 2003) namely the science policy interface, participation, and the conflict resolution mechanism has been described to be the most comprehensive. The US as an Actor Nation State in Climate Change Assessment How the interaction between the climate scientists and the political community is designed, in particular vis--vis the role of national governments and their representatives is worth exploring. Because of diverse arguments involved with the issue of climate change and the political options involved, this interface has been assigned a good deal of importance (Siebenhuner, 2003). The U.S. Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) relies primarily on innovative partnerships with the private sector, states, and localities to address the challenge of global warming while strengthening the economy. The CCAP is a comprehensive plan targeting major greenhouse gases in all sectors of the economy. The EPA contribution to the CCAP involves more than 50 voluntary programs that build upon existing programs, technologies, and voluntary efforts to deliver cost-effective results ((EPA, 2000). Among the nation states involved in climate change programmes, the US is investing the highest. Within the last five years, the US has spent more than $20 billion on climate change assessment activities. The proposed climate change budget for the year 2006 is $5.5 billion. Towards achieving the goal of a cleaner environment, the United States planned collaborative approach with developed as well as industrialized countries with a series of bilateral and multilateral initiatives aimed at adopting cleaner and less polluting energy sources such as methane, hydrogen, wind or solar energy. The role of US as an actor in international climate change assessments is not fixed in any kind of assessment but is rather variable, which calls for a case by case analysis (Siebenhuner, 2003). The role of nation state such as the US is of particular importance because apart from pursuing the country's political interest, it also becomes part of a scientific process, and is obliged to sensitize the policy makers about the latest research findings. The role of the US in international environmental decision making process has also come under scrutiny in this context. While one group of research scholars vouch for growing influence of international institutions as opposed to nation states (Young, 1991), there are others who hold that all power in the international arena is controlled by the nation states, and international institutions does not have any independent role as actors in the environmental decision making (Grieco, 1990). Since the establishment of the IPCC in 1988, more institutions have been established in the field of climate change leading to a decreasing influence of individual nation states in the whole process due to more rigorous and new set of rules of the newly set up institutions and the mechanism which deals with inter-governmental participation. As more and more nations will participate, the role of individual nation states may diminish to a great extent. However, influential nation states like the US would still have a role in the decision making process of IPCC in the form of veto power through the consensus principle. Although, in the preparation of the summary for policy makers, the US is granted a sizeable influence, the whole process is dynamic with a set of rules which level out any national biases. Particularly in cases where there is dispute among scientists, the IPCC rules restrict government interference and scientific integrity is protected from particular political interest of national governments. Two Actor Groups: IPCC vis--vis the Nation States Finding an equitable resolution to the climate change problem is an immense task that remains critical to any long-term resolution of the problem. Defining fairness for allocating GHG emissions in terms of a positive environmental right poses some important problems, both theoretical and practical, that may unduly inhibit climate change negotiations. The linkage between environmental problem and participation of nation state is of utmost importance. In environmental problems of global scale such as climate change or ozone layer depletion, participation should cross the narrow boundary of nations and participation of all nations is called for. The time has come for formulating a viable global climate policy regime even as it seems obvious that the major initiative will have to come from the actors like the United States, which currently appears indisposed to take any meaningful action. There is technical, economic, social, and political barriers to developing policies that focuses solely on technology or pricing (Ranjan, 2006). It is argued that significant changes in the US policy towards global climate change are unlikely to take place in the near future. However, there is possibility of a shift in the climate change policy, consequent upon wide ranging change in domestic political situation or other major events (Christiansen, 2003). While the IPCC has provided a wealth of scientific information on climate, it has not convincingly made its case that increases in carbon dioxide levels are indeed occurring and that increase will have harmful effects (Gray, 2002). Among several lines of attack are reflections on the quality and reliability of measurements; views on what weight should be given to different influences on the earth's temperature; and the validity of computer modelling in this context. There is insufficient ground to attribute the observed warming over last fifty years to green house gas concentrations. Model simulations are still largely inadequate to base public policy upon these. However, in seeking a fair outcome, an equal per capita distribution of the global atmosphere holds great promise, as well as broad support (Leigh, 2006). As long as the initiatives of actors like the national governments are based on impact mitigation preparedness policy emerging out of a precautionary principle, it seems to be the sensible thing to do. Dismissing potential climate change impact to be unreal may make, particularly the developing countries, to pay dearly. So, the developed countries have the dual role of safeguarding themselves and facilitating risk assessment and mitigation for developing nations through necessary technology transfer and other means such as identifying stakeholders, reviewing existing information, interviewing experts and building a sound knowledge base. Comprehension of the situation is at an early stage, and particularly IPCC and the nation states as actor groups would have to tread on somewhat weak premises despite a range of ardent initiatives undertaken. If scientific authors like Gray (2002) are to be believed to be even only half-right, that the IPCC consensus relies on poor science and inadequate reasoning, then the policy decisions beginning to flow from the IPCC consensus will be fraught with the risk of being flawed too. Within the IPCC, there is growing indication of shrinking influence of nation states in the field of climate change assessment. The role of the United States within the IPCC involves appointing scientists who can participate as authors, reviewers or carry out other academic responsibility entrusted to them within the panel. Though, participation of scientists from the developing countries had gone up over the years, in the scientific and decision making process within the IPCC, the industrialized countries of the west still rules the roost. The IPCC has developed a highly sophisticated review process to ensure scientific quality and credibility to both scientific and political community and also to resolve conflicts among individual scientists and their views. This is done to present balanced, politically unbiased and scientifically sound reports. Although nation states have a considerable influence on the review procedure, the evolution of the IPCC in the recent years has led to a decreasing influence of nation states like the US on the climate negotiation procedures through the assessment process. More players have led to a decreasing influence of the individual player (Siebenhuner, 2003). The evolution of the IPCC has undeniably resulted in reduced influence of nation states like the US on the climate negotiations through the assessment process. Added to this indirect influence, the nation states as member of the COP can impact the international political process much more directly. These evolving developments have made the climate change negotiation process a topic to keep close watch on. References Bolin, B (1994) Science and Policy Making, Ambio, Vol.23, pp.25-29 Burton, I (2003) Climate Change 2001: Book Review: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability Report of IPCC Working Group II, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol.117, pp. 123-124 Christiansen, A.C (2003) Convergence or Divergence Status and Prospects for US climate change strategy, Climate Policy, Vol.3, Issue 4, pp.343-358 EPA, (2000) Global warming actions- Government Programmes, retrieved from the website: (http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/) on 13th March, 06. Grieco, J (1990) Cooperation among Nations: Europe, America and Non-tariff Barriers to Trade, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Leigh, Raymond. 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