World Climate Change

The Role Of International Law And Institutions

Ved Nanda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000010695
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

World Climate Change: The Role of International Law and Institutions is a collection of papers on global climate problems prepared for a two-day conferences held in 1980 at the University of Denver College of Law. The papers describe and evaluate the present state if our efforts to reduce or adapt to manmade stresses on the global environment.

Part 1 INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE AND WEATHER-RELATED ACTIVITIES, PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

1 Climate and Climate Impacts

DOI: 10.4324/9780429268113-3

Robert S. Chen

I.

One often hears of the "global" nature of the earth's climate, a reference to the obvious fact that the atmosphere envelopes our entire planet. Less often emphasized, however, but perhaps more important, is the pervasive nature of climate—the also obvious fact (once stated) that the climate affects each and every one of us in virtually everything we do. We wear clothing, construct buildings, and consume energy in large part to shelter ourselves from the variable, sometimes adverse, and often capricious conditions that characterize the natural climate. The climate both permits and constrains our cultivation of land, raising of livestock, and use of water. It often determines our mode and route of travel, whether by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, ship, or aircraft. Climatic extremes such as storms, droughts, and floods inflict many casualties and considerable damage every year worldwide. These pervasive impacts of climate on human activities, irrespective of nationality, race, sex, or technological development, make international consideration of climate fluctuations and their impacts particularly critical.

II.

One of the most striking characteristics of our climate is its great variability, both predictable and unpredictable in nature. Temperature and other atmospheric conditions undergo regular daily and seasonal fluctuations on local, regional, and hemispheric scales. On the other hand, we experience many different and hardto-predict combinations of temperature, rain, snow, wind, clouds, and so on—in any particular location for varying periods of time. Occasionally, we encounter episodes of anomalous climatic conditions that might be termed "climatic extremes" or "climatic hazards", such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms, and hailstorms. Although these environmental phenomena are sometimes themselves affected locally or regionally by such human activities as the development of urban "heat islands", deforestation, or water diversions, they are almost entirely beyond our direct conscious control, that is, through weather or climate modification.¹ Instead, throughout history, humanity has adapted to its environment, depending on its artifacts and ingenuity for its comfort and survival.²

As mammals, humans have the ability to maintain internal physiological environments that are markedly different from the outside environment. This ability is of course limited in many respects—excessive cold or warmth, cold combined with wind, extreme dryness or wetness, or lack of food or water can, for example, tax the unprotected human body beycnd its ability to cope. To avoid these limits, we have learned either to modify our local environment by wearing clothes and building shelters or to adapt our lifestyle and practices, for example, or by planting different crops, transporting food and other goods, or migrating. In essence, we engineer a "human climate" around ourselves in which we can live and work generally in greater comfort and safety than in the natural climate. The difference between the "human" and "natural" climates might be viewed as the climate's impact—that is, the adjustments we must make to ensure our survival and welfare amidst a constantly changing and sometimes hostile environment.

A room is a good example of the human climate we construct for ourselves. Among other things, we build walls to stop the wind and help insulate from the cold or warmth (or pollution) of the outside. We add a roof to shelter from rain and snow, completing the enclosure. To provide for light and fresh air when we desire them, we place windows in our walls or skylights in our ceilings. As we often require more light than available naturally from the sun at particular times of the day or night, we generate "artifical" light. In higher latitudes, we find it necessary to burn fuels during some or all seasons to provide heat for our comfort; in equatorial latitudes, we have discovered that comfort, efficiency, and sometimes even survival depend on protection from the heat through ventilation or perhaps air conditioning. Since not every location receives adequate amounts of precipitation, we store and transport water, usually through a massive infrastructure of reservoirs, wells, and pipes. Many of the materials we use or consume last longer or have greater appeal if stored in an environment different from that normally found in a room; we therefore create "minienvironments" such as refrigerators, root and wine cellars, water heaters, and greenhouses that incorporate different combinations of temperature, humidity, and illumination.

Obviously, rooms also have a variety of purposes beyond that of providing physiological shelter, including the creation of additional usable space when we stack them in a building and the psychological and cultural functions of privacy and decoration, to name two. But in large part, the energy, resources, and effort we devote to shelter are an important component of the substantial costs we incur in adjusting to climate. In the United States, for example, space heating and air conditioning constituted about 19 percent of gross energy consumption in 1973, lighting and refrigeration were another 8 percent and water heating just under 4 percent.³ Much energy is also used to help equalize climatic differences between regions—for example, many agricultural products in the United States are transported across long distances from areas of good climatic conditions for particular crops to their markets. Thus, at least one-third, and probably much more, of U.S. energy use is directly attributable to the climate. This does not include energy used indirectly, such as that involved in making clothes, building houses, or constructing dams.

Major costs also arise because of our imperfect ability to adjust to climate. Climatic extremes such as storms, floods, droughts, and heat waves entail considerable direct losses. In the United States, for example, damages from floods and frost each result in over a billion dollars annually on average. Over five hundred deaths per year on average are caused by climatic hazards such as hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms, snow in urban areas, and lightning.⁴ The combined heat wave and drought during the spring and summer of 1980 led to over 1300 heat-related deaths and over $18 billion in agricultural losses according to federal government estimates.⁵ The droughts of the 1890's and 1930's had even more devastating impacts, including the mass exodus of one-half to three-fourths of the population from large areas of the Great Plains in the 1890's and one-fourth to one-half of the population in the 1930's. However, it is notable that less migration has occurred during recent droughts, perhaps due to society's increasing ability to absorb and distribute adverse impacts.⁶

A significant part of the costs of climate stems from the uncertainty inherent in natural climate variations. If we knew exactly when and where storms were going to hit and droughts and cold spells occur, we could in many instances take steps to minimize or ameliorate the impacts, for example, by conserving water or fuel, shifting supplies, evacuating vulnerable populations, or even not bothering to plant crops. Although such steps would not be "cost-less", they would most likely be less than the costs of death, damage, and/or disruption that might otherwise ensue. Unfortunately, our ability to predict weather or extended episodes of climatic extremes is extremely limited.⁷ We must instead rely on past experience to furnish us with some inkling of the likely future variations of climate.⁸

Even if we did have perfect knowledge of future climatic variations, we might still incur large costs in maintaining our human climate. Obviously, the need to heat, cool or otherwise modify undesired climatic conditions would still remain, although we might be able to use our resources more efficiently. But more importantly, adjustments to climate may require steps that are economically, socially, or politically difficult. The 1980 heat wave provided a simple but graphic example of this in the United States—many elderly people in urban areas suffered more than others from the heat because they kept their windows closed for fear of crime. At an institutional level, various existing agreements that apportion water rights among users in major U.S. river basins have constrained efforts to conserve water and provide minimal supplies to some during times of shortages.⁹ in many developing countries, the basic food transportation and storage infrastructure is extremely primitive, so that the establishment of food reserves or the distribution of foreign food aid is difficult and may be of only limited benefit.¹⁰ Indeed, some experts claim that much of what is usually considered to be the impacts of climate, such as starvation and malnutrition during drought, may in reality stem from the inability of some members of society to obtain basic human needs; climatic hazards or adverse episodes may aggravate this inability, but are not the root cause. These experts cite a number of instances in which large exports of grain, meat, and cash crops continued and even grew despite widespread drought and famine conditions, as in the case of many Sahelian nations in 1970-73 and India during the massive Bengal famines of 1943-44 in which millions of people died.¹¹ Such examples illustrate further that some groups in society, e.g., the poor and elderly, may be more vulnerable to climatic variations than others.

Without adequate understanding of and information about climate, our ability to adjust to climate variations is likely to be even worse. In the case of the Colorado River Basin, water-management agreements were based on incomplete streamflow records that failed to show the true long-term climatic variability characteristic of the river system—much less water is now known to be available on average than was apparent when the agreements were reached.¹² In building the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and the Hood Canal Bridge in Washington state, engineers failed to account adequately for the likelihood and effect of extreme wind conditions: both bridges collapsed due to high winds.¹³ We are also just beginning to realize that there may be subtle interconnections between climatic episodes worldwide that could have important implications for society. For example, Table 1 illustrates quantitatively the statistical relationship between good or bad weather in one cropgrowing region and good or bad weather in others for major grains of the world. Interestingly, bad weather— and therefore reduced yields—in, say, a wheat-growing area is more likely to be accompanied by bad weather in other wheat-growing areas than one might expect if the weather in these areas were...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents Page
• PREFACE PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PAGE
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE AND WEATHER-RELATED ACTIVITIES, PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES
• PART II: EXISTING AND ALTERNATIVE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INSTITUTIONS: RESPONSES TO WEATHER AND CLIMATE PROBLEMS
• PART III: APPRAISAL AND RECOMMENDATIONS
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX