Conventions of climate change: constructions of danger and the dispossession of the atmosphere

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Abstract

Climate change has emerged as one of the key issues of the early years of the twenty-first century, bringing together concerns about human relations to nature, the responsibility of rich nations to poorer, the links from local activities to global conditions, and the obligations of present to future generations. This paper focuses on three key ‘narratives’ that are enshrined in international climate policy – asserting that ‘dangerous climate change’ is to be avoided; that the responsibility for climate change is common but differentiated; and that the market (in the form of carbon trading) is the best way to reduce the danger. The goal of the paper is to analyse the origins of these narratives, the power relations they reflect and promote, and some of the concepts and images used to support them, including those of climate determinism, climate stabilisation, ‘burning embers’, ‘tipping points’, Global Warming Potentials, targets and timetables, and carbon credits. I argue that by choosing the market solution of trading carbon we have created a new and surreal commodity, unfairly allocated pollution rights to nation states based on 1990 emission levels, and established a new set north–south relations and carbon transactions in the name of sustainable development.

Introduction

Climate change has emerged as one of the dominant international issues of the early years of twenty-first century, bringing together concerns about human relations to nature, the responsibility of rich nations to poorer, the links from local activities to global conditions, and the obligations of present to future generations. At the international level the response to climate change has become framed by three key ‘narratives’ – asserting that ‘dangerous climate change’ must be avoided; that the responsibility for climate change is common but differentiated; and that the market – in the form of carbon trading – is the best way to reduce the danger. These narratives are particularly powerful because they are formalised in international climate conventions that include the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

This paper argues that these narratives tend to obscure the historical geographies of anthropogenic climate change and have fostered solutions that are often unequal and somewhat ineffective in reducing the risks. The narratives have been employed to design an international response to climate change that has been influenced by powerful political interests and has embraced the neoliberal project of market environmentalism. This response has resulted in emission reductions that are modest to date, even as climate science has argued that the risks are greater than originally conceived.

These three narratives were allocated enormous political and discursive power through their role in international legal conventions. Every time the parties to the Kyoto protocol and the Framework Convention come together in negotiations – such as those in Bali in December 2007 – tense discussions centre on the significance of avoiding dangerous climate change, ensuring common but differentiated responsibility, and promoting carbon markets as well as on the relevant science, institutions and rules needed to implement them.

The analysis in this paper focuses on the political economy and inequality underlying and promoted by these three narratives and their implementation within international relations and geographies. As suggested in recent work by Bulkeley, Okereke and Schroeder, insights into climate governance can be gained from combining elements of neo-Gramscian and governmentality approaches to examine power, the relation between public and private and structure and agency, and the exercise of these relationships through a range of institutions.1 Critical scholars of international climate policy have examined both power relations and discourses, especially those associated with carbon markets and the role of non-state actors and have linked climate policy with neoliberal environmentalism. For example, Biermann describes the evolution of global environmental policy from command and control collective regulation in the 1970s to a market and trade approach in the 1990s as consistent with a liberal political economic order of free trade, markets and private property.2 Similarly, Paterson argues that carbon emission reductions have been framed as a modern economic and ecological strategy consistent with accumulation by powerful political actors including renewable energy and insurance companies.3 Insights are also offered by those working more generally on neoliberalism and environmental governance, including careful studies that emphasise issues of property rights and the heterogeneous landscapes of privatisation and commodification, and the roles of re-regulation in neoliberal processes of environmental governance.4

Hajer uses ideas of governmentality and discourse to analyse the shifts in international environmental management towards ecological modernisation and market solutions.5 This analysis is reinforced by Oels who suggests that the governance of climate change has shifted from an environmental issue based on the biopower of data collection and computer modelling to an economic question of neoliberal governmentality through market and technology solutions.6 Backstrand examines discourses (shared ideas, concepts, practices) used to discuss climate policy and carbon forestry, and the power of different agents to promote, control and institutionalise them.7 She examines the evolution of the debate over tree plantations as carbon sinks in the developing world using three core discursive themes – ecological modernisation with market solutions, green governmentality through scientific expertise, and civic environmentalism through participation and partnerships. Demeritt argues that social constructions of climate science in the form of climate models and the ‘hockey stick’ curve of historical global temperatures have influenced approaches to managing climate change.8 Bulkeley places climate governance within the ‘risk society’ and as negotiated through discourse coalitions.9 Slocum employs feminist science studies to interrogate the representation of climate change by NGOs.10

This paper builds on these studies to examine three primary narratives formally enshrined in international climate agreements and the political economy they reflect and promote. It also analyses the policy and equity impacts of these ideas in terms of material emission reductions and resource flows.11 The paper is structured to examine each of the narratives in turn – avoiding dangerous climate change, allocating responsibility, and market solutions – and for each examines their origins and implications for the geographies of climate policy. The historical significance of these narratives lies in their impact on the environmental, energy and economic development policies of many countries, their role in the creation of carbon as a new commodity, and the structuring of a new set of international relations around responsibility for causing and solving climate change.

Section snippets

Constructing the idea of dangerous climate change

The origins of international concern about the risks of anthropogenic climate change are often traced to the publication of the Mauna Loa series of measurements of a rise in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. This was linked to the rise in consumption of fossil fuels, and a one-dimensional radiative balance analysis of what this might mean in terms of global temperatures.12

Allocating responsibility for climate change

A second grand narrative of climate policy is the concept of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ for climate change as formalised in Article 3(1) of the Framework Convention. The blame for anthropogenic climate change and greenhouse gas emissions has been variously assigned to the global collective, to nation states, to economic sectors and to individuals, but because the international climate regime is based on nation states it is the allocation of responsibility to countries that has

The market as solution

Perhaps the most significant idea in creating the international climate regime was the proposal that the market could provide a mechanism for mitigating climate change and meeting Kyoto commitments. Consistent with broader ideologies of market environmentalism and ecological modernisation, the US brought a proposal for carbon trading to the second COP in 1996. They presented a narrative that argued the demonstrated effectiveness of cap and trade schemes in controlling sulphur emissions in the

A new narrative: climate change as an investment opportunity

In Europe, the period since Kyoto came into force in February 2005 has seen an explosion of carbon trading and new investment and employment opportunities. More than $10 billion was traded across all markets in 2005, $30 million in 2006, and $64 billion in 2007.46 The creation, sale and

Conclusion

My goal in this paper was to show how three key narratives – dangerous climate change, common but differentiated responsibility, and carbon trading – became part of the international climate conventions and to analyse some of the implications for equity and the environment. I have tried to demonstrate that dangerous climate change is a subjective concept that has become the focus of climate science with inadequate attention to the human and geographical dimensions of climate risks. I have

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