DEVE
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Committee on Development (DEVE):
A framework for ‘common but differentiated global responsibilities’: how should Europe contribute to a fair distribution of the costs for climate mitigation and adaptation between the developed and the developing world?
Committee Article
The common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) principle has played a major part in the post-2012 climate change negotiations. However, the rise of emerging economies and the multiplication of State categories have called the initial compromise under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) into question and, until now, no balance between the conflicting claims of States has been found. Meanwhile, the principle is still not fixed in terms of its formulation, legal nature and practice. Although it enabled agreement on the UNFCCC in the 1990s, the principle has also contributed to climate negotiation deadlocks. While there is a the need for action from both developed and developing countries, there are substantial differences in circumstances and capabilities between countries that cannot be ignored. Action on climate change needs to be fair and thus differentiated. The EU has long recognised that climate change is a global problem, and that the solution demands concerted international action. Should international efforts continue to focus on the development of a single, comprehensive global regime? Can the EU lead the debate and reconciliation of these differences and responsibilities in nature and magnitude in absence of other international leadership effort? Being the key advocate for a new binding agreement, is the EU giving adequate weight to the principle of CBDR? Is linking the problem of climate change to the problem of development more likely to succeed than treating climate change in abstraction from development, and should additional categories of countries be defined and, if so, on what basis?
Links:
- The Principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities: Origins and Scope http://cisdl.org/public/docs/news/brief_common.pdf
- Equitable But Ineffective: How The Principle Of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities Hobbles The Global Fight Against Climate Change http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=sdlp
- The Common but Differentiated Responsibilities Principle: Changes in Continuity after the Durban Conference of the Parties: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.14679388.2012.00758.x/asset/reel758.pdf?v=1&t=hgmeowoh&s=efe8346a7925cbaaf109443643663d73cd5a24b4