Climate Negotiation

Regardless of the number of international studies and reports predicting crisis, nothing has stopped decline of ecosystems and natural resources. The most recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provide clear warnings that climate change is happening fast. Lyster charts the activity of the international community since the first Earth Day, and demonstrates why and in what respects they have failed. An important first step was the 1987 Brundtland Report, around the same time the IPCC was established to advise the UN on the Earth’s climate. This led to the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, where developed countries agreed to cap overall emissions by the end of 2012. A major point of contention here was that the Protocol did not require developing countries to meet targets. The 2016 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit the increase in global average temperature, marked the first time that both developed and developing countries are compelled to act. Finally, Lyster explores how efforts to deal with the climate crisis have often been thwarted by domestic election cycles in fossil fuel-developed economies, pointing to a lack of knowledge and/or political will on the part of many politicians to lead a national discussion on the imperative to take action.