From 1950 through 2012, there have been more than 1,159 Multilateral Environmental Agreements. Over time, environmental issues have been grouped into three categories, namely — green (deforestation, reduction of green cover), brown (air pollution) and blue (water pollution). The tricolor of green, brown and blue has become an important symbol that both unites and divides the world. It unites by providing the world with a common cause and motivates each entity to muster their resources to achieve a common ‘superordinate’ goal. It divides by creating a new paradigm of looking at the world and thereby engendering new interest groups. The developed and the developing economies are seen as competing interest groups on the stage of environmental change and negotiations. Similarly, the small corporations are seen as separate interest groups, the green energy ones as separate from the traditional ones and a proliferation of factions takes place like a fission chain reaction. Like any political situation, the environmental agenda runs the risk of becoming a battle between forces of cooperative growth and the forces of destructive petty self-interest.
Nevertheless, as Stephen Hawking has said, “Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking”. The only way to bring together divergent ideas and interests regarding the environment is through dialogue. The dialogues started between governments back in the late 1970s regarding the issue of the survival of our planet, culminating in the First World Climate Conference (1979) at Geneva.
At this time, on an ‘awareness-to-action continuum’, the talks were primarily focused on creating a general awareness of the magnitude of the environmental challenge. The creation of the World Climate Research Programme and later the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, were the results of the maturation of the ‘awareness stage’ thus heralded by the First Conference. Charged with the aim of revealing “scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the degree of risk of human-induced climate change”, the IPCC produced some incisive research that sent shock-waves through the world and brought home the realisation that something had to be done, urgently, to keep the planet habitable.It took nearly a decade to graduate from the ‘awareness stage’ to the beginning of the ‘acceptance stage’, which, it can be said, was inaugurated with the 1990 Second Climate Conference in Geneva. Indeed, as it has been pointed out by many, this conference was somewhat more political, for it made clear the writing on the wall — that firstly, climate change had real impact on the lives of people, the global economy and public health; and secondly, the creation of unique interests in the global community was ineluctable.
It became evident that rapid industrialisation had created a situation wherein, on one hand more of it would be deleterious to the planet and on the other, nations that had yet not achieved industrial growth would be at a disadvantage. Developing nations protested and a not-so-laissez-faire mechanism of the ‘carbon credit system’ was invented with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) set up in 1992.
With Kyoto, the ‘acceptance stage’ of the environmental movement seemed to imperceptibly give way to the ‘action stage’. The Kyoto Protocol could be christened ‘positive affirmative action for the developing world combined with responsible progress for the developed nations’. Yet, many members of the global community felt shy to put to action, what had been vowed to in words.
In the United States, despite the Clinton Administration signing the treaty the US Senate never ratified it. President George W Bush famously claimed “it (Kyoto Protocol) exempts 80 per cent of the world... from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the US economy”. In 2011, Canada declared its withdrawal from the Protocol and Japan and Russia also made clear their non-committal stance to further Kyoto targets. Hence, the transition from ‘acceptance’ to ‘action stage’ has not been smooth.
Since the UNFCCC treaty, 18 Conferences of the Parties (COP) sessions have been held and in that time global CO2 emissions have risen significantly. While doomsayers speak of the end of the “age of environmentalism”, it must not be forgotten that the “keep talking” principle is still driving gradual, yet steady progress. It is heartening that there has been a conscious effort to bridge conflicting interests. The COP21 to be held in Paris can serve as a momentous step in bridging the gap between industrial development and environmental conservation by serving as the harbinger of an “age of sustainable development”.
By co-opting the private sector to the cause of environmental protection and making a second attempt at achieving a legally binding agreement on climate (only this time with greater buy-in), this conference could be a turning point in the history of environmentalism.
What is needed for the attempt to be successful is to sustain the urgency of ecological concerns and to do this by highlighting benefits of such an approach to each individual and group’s personal needs. An interesting strategy could be ‘reward substitution’, as discussed by behavioural economist Dan Ariely. It is a difficult proposition because climate change is a problem that seems less urgent because its impacts appear to be placed quite far into the future. Further, an individual may feel that whatever one does for the cause is a mere drop in the bucket. The solution offered by Ariely is to apply the concept of reward substitution: “Getting people to care, because they care about something else”. For example, some Indian NGOs are successfully creating a sense of environmental awareness by showing people how climate change affects their children and their health.
The concern for the next generation and personal health translates into a concern for the environment. Similarly, as corporations and economies realise climate change may have negative repercussions on their financial well-being, they start appreciating the value of environmental conservation.
