Global Issue in a “Backyard Society”

The causes and effects of climate change can arguably be defined as a clearly global problem, especially when looking at the issue in the context of global governance. Climate change is in fact a global issue in that various groups of people act as the emitters and subsequent victims of climate change in the forms of increasingly extreme weather fluctuations. However, the definition of what is considered “global” is exceedingly difficult to define succinctly and fairly when landed before the ‘global’ audience. Thus, first this sort of definitive explanation of the word must be established before effective work can be done to tackle the issue effectively on the international stage.

So what is a “global approach to climate change? The UN has worked very hard to put together a working model of various interest groups and politicized nations to discuss, provide advice, debate, and establish rules, regulations, and policies that will be agreed upon for the most part by national delegates and therefore individual countries and citizens around the whole world. This process is simply daunting and hard to define in and of itself. A working model can be constructed carefully and with the best of intentions, but individual interests always play into this concept of a “global” stage. So, perhaps individual actions and agreements are in fact the definition of what is considered the issue of “global” climate change. Each human is in fact a working (or non-working) piece of the climate change jigsaw puzzle—needless to say a jigsaw puzzle with 7 billion pieces (and increasing) as the sides of each piece change rapidly and without warning. This is the concept of a “global” issue–by civilization’s very existence, climate change became “global.”

Reading the UNFCCC document leads one to believe that formal organization of various working groups, government organizations, and non-governmental organizations can accomplish anything, especially when they are meeting every year to draft, expand, and discuss new research—yet how can this issue be tackled effectively and efficiently in a relatively fast time span?? The answer appears to be somewhat of a question mark. Bulkeley and Newell state, “…If we think of global as a casual rather than a spatial category (particularly one bounded by the borders of nation-states), we are directed to a very different starting point for thinking about who governs climate change and where that governing takes place (Governing Climate Change 2-3).” Thus, how can these organizations mesh together to affect real momentum against this issue, when a single definition of who can govern these changes can’t even be established. One doesn’t want to sound critical hear: obviously this idea is excitedly complex, intricate, and varied in individual motivations, actions, and ideologies (see jigsaw puzzle analogy!). Bulkeley and Newell further expand this idea that there is NO ONE FIGURE for governing such necessary action and that individual action plays a just as large a part on the global stage as “higher up” figures who wield this undefinable “power” during negotiations and other talks. (For a counter argument to this view, see Maniates article on the futility of individual action
). Bulkeley and Newell further demonstrate that there is no defining boundary between domestic and international arenas for policy creation yet (i.e. US’s individual lack of real action to curtail carbon emissions, and instead, a market-based  reliance on carbon capture and “cap-and-trade” actions.) A further definition of “governance” provided by James Rosenau, analyzes real governance as such: “Rule systems that exercise authority in the pursuit of goals and that function outside normal national jurisdictions.” This definition in itself is paradoxical in some respect. The system we have set up with UN COP conferences is perhaps why organizing and action is so difficult—-because real change is trying to be made outside of “normal national jurisdictions.” This then begs the question, of who possesses that national jurisdiction and what they already have (or have not) done with that governing power and how that plays into this idea of a “global” stage.

Therefore, the model the UN has created is the only model we have built (and I would argue could ever conceivably be built) on the global stage that is consistently working to push forward new knowledge, and fair policies to satiate the  national interests of various individual groups. As Bulkeley and Newell argue, “global governance acknowledges both the multi-level and multi-arena nature of climate governance (Governing Climate Change 13),”–as indeed it should to accomplish real and socially-just climate policies. Thus, this model is working with the motto “accountability, equity, and effectiveness” will provide concrete change to a highly undefinable and individualistic governance model we currently possess.

Individuals must hope this will work.  By putting aside many personal beliefs and selfish motivations, this new “global” model may indeed work the way it is suppose to.

WORKS CITED

UNFCCC, 2007. “Uniting on Climate, A Guide to the Climate Change Convention and Kyoto Protocol.” UNFCCC Secretariat, Bonn, Germany.

Bulkeley and Newell, Global Institutions: Governing Climate Change. London and New York: Routledge Global Institutions, 2010.