5th Global Conference
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Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Monday 3rd July - Thursday 6th
July 2006
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 6(a): Rights, Justice and Regulation
Chair: Stephen Woolpert
Carbon Justice? The Case Against Equal per capita
Emissions
Derek
Bell
Department of Politics,
University of Newcastle, United
Kingdom
The threats posed by human-induced climate change raise
significant questions of justice, which are not only philosophically
interesting but also practically urgent. These debates are usually
framed either in terms of duties (who should pay the costs of mitigation
and adaptation?) or in terms of rights (who should have what rights
to emit greenhouse gases?). The most popular rights-based approach
proposes ‘contraction
and convergence’ toward equal per capita emissions on a global
scale with total global emissions capped to reflect sustainable limits. This
paper examines the merits and defects of ‘equal per capita emissions’ as
a principle of ‘carbon justice’.
The paper is divided into
two sections. The first section addresses
the question: How should carbon justice be related to broader issues
of social, economic and environmental justice? More specifically:
Are carbon emissions a plausible ‘currency’ of justice? Should
the right to emit carbon be conceived as an additional ‘primary
good’? Is the right to emit carbon commensurable with other
social and economic rights? Should the sale of rights to emit carbon
be permitted?
The second section of the paper addresses the question:
Should rights to emit carbon be distributed equally among persons? More
specifically: Does the application of a principle of equality to carbon
emissions ignore the lessons of the ‘capabilities approach’? What
other principles for distributing rights to emit carbon might be plausible? Is
it legitimate to use historic emissions levels to justify future emissions
rights?
The principle of equal per capita emissions is rejected and an
alternative theory of carbon justice is proposed and defended.
Using more Effective Conflict Management Processes
to Achieve Sustainable Outcomes
Tania
Sourdin
Department of Law and Dispute Resolution, La Trobe University,
Melbourne Australia
It is now relatively common for facilitative dispute
resolution processes to be used in many countries where public policy
disputes arise. Facilitation and mediation are used where planning disputes
arise over land use and where government policies change. Such processes
are often supported by government agencies and may vary according to
the individual dispute and the facilitators involved.
Public issue disputes
or ‘‘disputes which affect members
of the public as well as the principal parties’’ can
be divided into three main categories:
- enforcement disputes (relating to compliance with laws and regulations);
- permitting disputes (relating to planned construction of new facilities); and
- policy or law-making disputes (related to the establishment of new policy or standards in management).
There are few guidelines available
to assist in the development of approaches to deal with complex public
disputes which
can present environmental, economic and social dilemmas. Wootten divides
these categories into ‘‘site-specific disputes and policy-related
matters’’. Increasingly,
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) processes are being used to help
plan and manage discussions about these disputes. This approach is a
departure from the “Commission” or “Inquiry” approach
where recommendations appear to be largely unimplemented and the discussions
often feature positional rather than interest- or needs-based approaches.
In many public disputes there appears to be some reluctance to use ADR
processes, particularly among those in the conservation movement.
This
caution aris[es] in part from the observation that some proponents of
EDR [environmental dispute resolution] appear to believe that the use
of such techniques will help to restore the “proper balance” between
environmental and development interests, the premise being that environmental
interests have been accorded too much weight recently by governments.
On the other hand, such processes can be viewed as encouraging more participatory
decision making. This paper discusses the use of facilitative dispute
management processes in managing environmental conflict and focuses on
system design issues that include broader definitional issues, negotiation
dilemmas as well as framework constraints.
Global Environmental Governance: Mapping Unequal and
Contested Terrain
Andrew
Deak
Department of Philosophy,
University of Sussex, United Kingdom
This essay seeks to use a class analysis to make sense of the current
thought and practice of environmental regulation. I will try to capture
differences in class and geo-political location by applying a transnational class
analysis, which abstracts three main groups from the global political
economy: the ruling ‘capitalist’ class, the managerial ‘cadre'
class in the middle and those on the receiving end of the global governance
processes (van der Pijl, 1998). My first task will be to expound on
this social ontology.
I shall look at the possibilities for environmental regulation as seen
in the proposed World Environment Organisation. Thus, my second task
will be to give an overview of the WEO. I will also briefly consider
the role of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) as a half-hearted
attempt by the World Bank to implement its own strategies for global
environmental governance. Following this, I will show how both are responses
of particular social interests to a process of environmental degradation
that “arises out of the normal and mundane practices of modernity and
not from the accidental or abnormal.” (Saurin, 1993, p.62). The
response, though sanctioned by the ruling classes, is facilitated by
the middle ‘cadre class’. In discussing the perspective of
those on the receiving end of the process, the fundamental contradictions
in the conception and realisation of institutions of global environmental
governance will become evident. I will show that both the proposed WEO
and the actual creation of the GEF will not substantively alter the process
of degradation, and as such, will leave this class in the cold and bearing
the brunt of the consequences of environmental degradation. Finally,
I will argue that alternative solutions to environmental degradation
may emerge from a class alliance between those on the receiving end of
the global governance process and radical factions of the cadre class.
