Transcript Risk - Glasgow Caledonian University

Christopher Shaw, University of Oxford
Crunch results, at least in part, from the
way our policy responses allocate risk,
attribute responsibility and confer rights
 Risk – does policy merely displace
risk? What are the political risks arising
from the way rights and responsibilities
are allocated?
 Rights – who has the right to a high
carbon lifestyle? What rights count in
consideration of what is an acceptable
level of climate risk?
 Responsibility – responsibility to actors
who lack the agency to reduce their
emissions? Where does responsibility
lie – in production or consumption?
 A briefing note, synthesising the
research findings of the six, four year
ESRC Climate Change Leadership
Fellowships.
 A series of six workshops with UK and
international audiences.
 Sharing the insights generated during
the workshops.
 A high profile journal paper,
summarising responses emerging out of
the workshop discussions.
 Getting delegates to stay focused on the themes of rights, risks and responsibilities
challenging – mean different things to different audiences.
 Boundaries between these concepts is fuzzy.
 Not everything that audiences came back with fitted into these categories.
 Responsibility the theme which most engaged people and found easiest to discuss.
 Policy audiences more concerned with risk.
 Rights proved to be the element of climate justice which our audiences had least to
say about.
 Getting traction with these issues about timing and framing
 Withdrawing Risk Protection:
• What’s worth protecting and who decides?
• Triage: withdrawing cover from un-insurable assets
 What can ‘we’ afford and who pays? What does the
state accept responsibility for protecting? (state
duties to provide collective protection v Individual
responsibility for insuring property)
GLOBAL IMPACTS OF UK CLIMATE POLICY
 Who bears the burdens of mitigation actions?
(e.g CDM controversies/biofuels)
Raises governance challenges : accountability
inclusion, participation to ensure those who bear
least responsibility do not bear most burden
Strong support by UK for carbon markets, but what
sorts of reforms are necessary to avoid displacing
risks and burdens in these ways?
 How far do duties extend? Funding adaptation in
UK by re-directing foreign aid?
 Increasing emphasis giving individuals responsibility for
dealing with climate change
 Government and social pressure – not limited to direct
emissions in household sector but to fuller consumptionbased carbon footprint
 Our research: people in the UK ascribe role of responding to
climate change to actors whom they perceive to have
greater power, responsibility and capacity to act
 Outcome of OECD event: no focus on individual
responsibility; primary focus on UNFCCC negotiations
regarding territorial emissions of nation states
 Governments tend to avoid the political risks of taking long
term action – place responsibility back on individuals,
communities and firms
 Result? Neither publics nor politicians willing to respond to
radical calls for action
Q: How to have a meaningful dialogue about this?
 UNFCCC negotiations (following Kyoto,
Copenhagen) – emissions accounted under
territorial/production accounting principles (PAP)
 Should we also consider consumption accounting
measures (CAP)?
 e.g. CARBON FOOTPRINT
 Considerable attention at national and devolved
levels in the UK
 House of Commons Energy and Climate Change
Committee consultation and report on
Consumption-Based Emissions Reporting
 Wales unique in UK context, producing more
carbon than it consumes
 Issues with CAP in terms of (a) information for
accounting; (b) CONSUMER KNOWLEDGE,
GOVERNMENT JURISDICTION and CONTROL
 Big single producer and exporter in Welsh Iron and
Steel sector – Port Talbot steelworks (Tata of India)
 Around 5,000 employees
 Biggest single emitter of CO2 in Wales (30% of
Welsh emissions covered by EU ETS in 2011)
 Also local air quality concerns, but improving
(along with carbon intensity) through work
(cooperation with Welsh Government) on resource
efficiency
 Key strategic sector in the Welsh economy
 Serving downstream manufacturers in both the
rest of the UK and overseas
 If production and related emissions weren’t
located in Wales, would they simply relocate (with
potential net increase in global emissions)?
Climate Policy interacts with rights in at least three ways:
 1: Rights as Constraints on Climate Policy – mitigation negatively impacting on
rights
 2: Rights and Energy Use – Should we think in terms of equal rights to emit if
people have different needs?
 3: Rights, Participation and Procedural Justice - Rights concern not just outcomes,
but procedures. Who has what rights to shape which decisions?
Core Point: Climate Policies (whether mitigation, adaptation or geoengineering) can
impact on the extent to which people can enjoy rights.
Internationally
Issue 1: potential implications of energy policy: eg first generation biofuels
1.
Concerns about food v fuel (2005-2008)
2.
Concerns about labour right violations (Brazil)
3.
Concerns about landgrabs (palm oil Malaysia)
Complex issues about causality and responsibility
Also: potential for future generation biofuels to address these concerns.
See Nuffield Council on Bioethics Biofuels: Ethical Issues (2011).
(2011).
 Renewable Energy Directive in EU targets 10% of
transport fuels to come from renewable sources by
2020. This target said to be contributing to human
rights abuses outside of EU borders (p 85).
 Rights to livelihood:
EU‘s biofuels targets have acted as a stimulus to oil
palm production in countries such as Indonesia and
Malaysia resulting in the consolidation of oil palm
production into large-scale plantations, squeezing
out smallholders who are unable to compete.
But, poverty reduced dramatically in Brazil from 20 %
of the population in 2004 to 7 per cent of the
population in 2009. One major reason for the
improved economy in Brazil is the dramatic growth in
commodity-based exports, sugar cane and ethanol
are among these commodities.
BIOFUELS: ETHICAL ISSUES
 Breaking down justice debate into components can allow for a more targeted
message
 Reveals how displacement of risks, responsibilities and rights violations runs
through discussion of justice
 Timing important
 Build bottom-up deliberation on these issues