Climate change: A critical look at the concept of equity in the international legal regimes

Essay from the year 2009 in the subject Environmental Sciences, grade: b1, University of Abertay Dundee, course: llm petroleum law and policy, language: English, abstract:
Scientific evidence in recent times is indicating that the global climate is rapidly changing than was previously thought. This has made world leaders and policy makers to take action so as to avert environmental disaster . As the table below shows, global greenhouse gas emissions have been on a steady increase over the decades.
FIGURE 1

Source: ipcc-www.greenfacts.org/en/climate-change-ar4/figtableboxes/figure-20.htm - 6k -

How best to achieve success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the focus of a substantial body of literature. Furthermore, the design and implementation of a regulatory scheme is not an easy task.

The question raised in this paper is a critical look at the inclusion of equity in the international climate change regime. This is in view to critically assess the rationale, nature, implementation, success and limitations of equity as it has been provided for by the legal regimes.

Our findings will demonstrate that the inclusion of equity as a cardinal strategy for the reduction of greenhouse gasses and protecting the earth's atmosphere from environmental degradation in general is a noble idea. However, certain loopholes exist in the law as well as the implementation process. The major weakness of the climate change regime is that the United States which is the largest pollutant is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. Also, as will be shown in this paper, the blanket exclusion of developing countries from emissions reduction commitment based on equitable concerns is not neither ideal nor pragmatic; this is because some developing countries are classified as being responsible for global warming due to industrial activities.