The And Non Binding International Environmental Policy Agreements Implemented Over The Last 40 Years

Environmental issues have been a part of living on earth since the beginning of time. The only issue with this however, is that resolutions have only just recently been put in place. Environmental concerns have only been discussed since the last half of the twentieth century. While some small steps were taken here and there, The European Union was the first to deliberate environmental policy in an attentive and compulsory nature. The European Union has some of the highest environmental standards to date. These standards have been evolving since the Paris Summit meeting of the European Community that took place in October 1972. The Paris Summit of 1972 was the first to introduce environmental policy on such a vast scale. One outcome of the summit was a declaration on environmental and consumer policy which gave the Environmental Commission the authority to establish the First Environmental Action Programme (EAP) to implement environmental policy. An EAP is essentially a strategic policy document which reflects the fundamental elements of contemporary environmental thinking and problem perceptions, as well as strategic policy orientation. (http://wwweeborg/publication/chapter-3pdf) It is based on a proposal from the Commission, but is now subject to a full legislative procedure leading to agreement between

Environmental change is a logical certainty, and progressively a lived human concern. However, it is not yet what everybody should call social-global problem in one voice. It's not an essential almost we shape our social practices, nor a sufficiently huge social standard to go about as an imperative on our conduct. Around the planet there is developing energy to characterize environmental change as a security issue and thus as a motivation topping issue that merits noteworthy consideration and assets. Calls for movement are developing - yet at the same time outlined activities to address the issue has a cost or weight that will hamper business and go about as a drag on the economy.

In conversations globally the environment is a hot topic. Issues with the ozone layer, depleting natural resources, and health risks associated with emissions and changes in climate coupled with its resulting natural disasters; have pushed conservation issues into the spotlight. The environmental issues presented today are not the result of one country, one type, or one-industry actions but a communal failure of a mixture of several. With that said many countries and industries are going through policy changes to combat environmental issues that will hopefully benefit the environment, the consumer, and industries.

In what ways is the environment affecting the way countries are being run? What the causes of these environmental issues? Explain if the states are helping or causing these issues. What does this mean for the future? Provide with examples for each question.

The environmental movement has drastically changed over the last few decades, encompassing science, political activism and our social conscience. It is one of the fastest growing political and social movements in the world. Since the mid 1970s, this international movement has engaged the global community indluding many countries, the business world, media, and non-governmental organizations, all who have pushed for increased regulations and compliance towards protecting the environment. Nations within and outside of the UN have been pressured into pursuing a more sustainable future.Our ability to adapt, as well as to compromise, will direct the result of how we will survive in the future. States will have to cooperate and understand problems other nations are facing, and be able to commit to wanting a sustainable earth. Environmental norms are changing due to the overwhelming social push to reduce global warming, causing people to bandwagon to fight for environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, the motives for this movement are not always clear. While citizens of developed countries appear to have the right justifications for saving our planet and are attempting to address, global warming resulting in climate change, this heated political issue has provided NGO’s, governments (state actors) and corporations a platform to demonstrate interest in social issues, but also an opportunity to capitalize of for their own financial or political gain.

As a political science major with a focus on international politics, energy and the environment are not just a means to an end but instead they are the focus of the work itself. Rather than studying business and needing energy to run things effectively, the study of international relationships is in the business of dealing with these large topics in energy reduction especially as they relate to reducing carbon emissions. The deeper one dives into the real core of worldwide energy production the more complicated and hopelessly confusing it may seem. With thousands of government policies dictating energy production, and hundreds of governments acting around the world to come to agreements concerning emission and environmental protection, the concern of global climate change as a result of carbon emissions has been seen by many as beyond hope.

Last week at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Ms. Christiana Figueres, the charismatic Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 2010, gave a talk highlighting the great outcome presented at the COP-21 meeting last December in Paris. She referred to the 2015 Paris Agreement as a “historical achievement”1. Indeed, the fact that almost 200 countries have agreed and committed to

Starting from the Kyoto protocol and culminating in the 2011 Durban agreement, world leaders have put into motion, a coordinated effort to save the world through concerted actions by their countries to reduce the carbon emissions. The reason for this agreement was the perspective that the world will not survive at the rate of the present emissions. Hence, the World Congress is has no option but to act strongly on these lines. The Kyoto protocol has extracted promises from the member nations about the extent to which they will guarantee to reduce carbon emissions by the year 2020. The experts are continuously calculating the impact of global warming on diverse situations in life, while the businessmen are calculating how it will impact their strategies for the future (Alen, D.S., 2012).

One of the greatest threats to humankind present in the 21st century is climate change. Human behavior, especially since industrial revolution led “over 600 thousand tons of carbon to be emitted into the atmosphere from fossil fuels” which thus enhanced greenhouse affects, and alters the natural cycle of global warming and cooling. The consequence of such alteration has devastating effects globally as drastic “temperature increases experienced in the recent years are causing widespread damages” . Effects of climate change not only helps deteriorate the biome as “quarter of all species could be pushed to extinction by 2050” , but also poses a large threat to “living conditions and challenges existing patterns of energy use and security” Given that climate change is one of the most pressing issues experienced in the modern era “there has been little progress in the United Nations (UN) led climate negotiations” . The reason as to why states cannot come to a consensus on international climate change policy is because states reside in an anarchic international system in which states are by nature: conflictual, self-interested and focused on attaining relative gain as shown through neo-realist theory. In ability for states to negotiate a climate change action plan will be shown through states’ pursuit of relative gains in the Kyoto Protocol, the role of economic growth in terms of relative gains, and climate change lag/ state’s personal agendas, which have led to numerous

6.Conclusion: This paragraph will sum up all the major points mentioned in this investigation of the Unite States, and will also address the research question by answering it through saying the different strategies that are used by the UN to limit climate change and therefore promote environmental sustainability.

International law has relatively little relevance for environmental law, the standard of justice revolves around the advancement of peace and respect for basic human rights. The absence of mechanisms under international law does not seem to be unjust, as it does not impinge on international peace and security or the enjoyment of human rights, at least not directly. A wide variety of positions on global justice and fairness support normative obligations for outsiders to compensate rainforest states for protecting their forests, obligations that may well have to be translated into binding law. International law should take into account, much more than is now the case, positive obligations of international solidarity, including the protection of the global commons.

Throughout the world, conflicts over environmental issues abound. As technology progresses and our world continues to become more interconnected, an understanding of the worldâs environmental crises is important and necessary for the well-being of both humankind and the environment. This paper addresses and comments on the issues presented in the following books: Ecology of an African Rain Forest by Thomas T. Struhsaker, Green Guerillas edited by Helen Collinson, NIMBY Politics in Japan by S.Hayden Lesbirel, Where Environmental Concerns and Security Strategies Meet by James A. Winnefeld and Mary E. Morris, and Innovations in International Environmental Negotiation edited by Lawrence E. Susskind, William Moomaw and Teresa L. Hill.

In the last twenty years, the issues surrounding global climate change have become increasingly dominant in the international community, as the implications associated with the global issue pose many threats to the environment and humanity as a whole. Beginning in the 1970’s, scientific research regarding pollution led scientists to discover that chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) where destroying the ozone layer, posing threats to plant and animal life, and humans as a rise in skin cancer followed. Luckily, the world community came together to make the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which established a common goal of reducing and eventually eliminating the use of CFC’s, leading to the restoration of the ozone layer. Unfortunately, the world community has yet to fully collaborate on a universal approach to global warming. Since discovering that the burning of fossil fuels increases levels of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and ultimately causes a rise in the earth’s temperature, successful collaboration between states has been limited. The global climate change regime has had many diplomatic problems due to the varying levels of resources within each state, different opinions regarding the weight of the issue, along with other cultural factors that make cooperation hard to achieve. The three main perspectives of international relations, realist, liberal, and identity, offer contrasting approaches to preventing the progression of global warming and other pressing climate

After growing concern over global climate change, the Kyoto Protocol was proposed in 1997 and ratified in 2005. The protocol was created to address the issue of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, specifically aiming to reduce these emissions globally by giving each country specific goals and percentages of reduction by 2012 relative to 1990 GHG levels1. The need for a global policy stems from the systemic type of environmental problem being dealt with2. Although GHGs are created locally, they affect the world as a whole through their spread in the atmosphere and their contribution to rising average global temperatures. Therefore, their impacts are not local and the entire world needs to come together to limit the rise of

Professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, Scott Barrett, is responsible for producing ‘Environment & statecraft: The strategy of environmental treaty-making’, a book that in his words, “develops a theory of how states can cooperate in protecting their shared environmental resources ” and should utilised to analyse the successfulness of agreements and treaties. What sets this text apart is not his presentation of newly founded information, but rather the craftful piecing together of what Barret labels “disparate ideas” of economic/game theoretic approaches to international cooperation and “to combine and package them in a coherent fashion” (p.358). This is not to suggest that Barrett did not include his unique findings however. Barrett persistently brought to light seemingly original examinations into specific factors influencing poor successful examples of cooperation. This approach results in an extensively scoping survey that highlights the dominant themes in a fashion that allows the information to be accessible and feasibly consumable to any audience willing to follow the core models and is also analytically robust. Notably Barrett put an intensive focus, not only on theory but on how the theory was could be applied in practice. Barrett does this as international cooperation in theory should “provide an approach for the conduct of policy”, and “practitioners need to think deeply about these problems” (p 358). The combination of the ideas and themes