Search

Global climate change raises profound questions for political theorists. The human impacts of climate change are sufficiently broad, and generally adverse, to threaten the rights and freedoms of existing and future members of all countries; and they will almost certainly exacerbate inequalities between rich and poor countries despite the limited role of the latter in their origins. This article focuses on the question of how the burdens associated with selecting and implementing a robust global climate response ought to be distributed. This problem has two key features: identifying the nature and extent of the burdens; and identifying the agents who should shoulder these burdens. Identifying in a fair and transparent fashion the agents that should take the lead in combating climate change, as well as the precise burdens they must bear in terms of mitigation, adaptation or compensation, will be a key feature of the next generation of global climate policies. The paper argues that only a principled and philosophically robust reconciliation of three approaches to burden sharing ('contribution to problem', 'ability to pay' and 'beneficiary pays') can generate a satisfactory mix of theoretical coherence and practical application. At the time of writing, no proposal designed to replace the existing, Kyoto-based, climate architecture on its expiry in 2012 appears to meet this challenge. The paper considers, however, three climate proposals that offer some useful insights as to how the burden-sharing problem might be solved in future proposals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how recent innovations in the life sciences have provided the foundations for developments in liberal internationalist discourses and practices of both peace and war post-1989. Specifically it aims to show how innovations within the life sciences have enabled the new form that liberal internationalism has taken since the end of the Cold War; Global Governance. The development of Global Governance is understood by its proponents to be part of the gradual evolution of the efforts of human societies to organize their life as a common species in emancipation from historical conditions of war and insecurity. This paper demonstrates how, all the while, Global Governance brings to bear its evolutionary powers of learning, adaptation and information exchange for the deployment of militarised violence against opponents to this project. For it is a fact that the new forms of scientific thinking and technical know-how concerning the organization of species life which are enabling the evolutionary advancement towards a world society are today also being galvanised for the purposes of violently exterminating its outlaws. Indeed, the information and communication sciences and technologies which Global Governance heralds as the avenue to a more secure and peaceful future are also the means today for specifically liberal forms of violence. Hence this paper seeks to draw attention to the ways in which Global Governance wages war militarily through the deployment of newfound powers of learning, adaptation and information exchange encoded in these technologies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though it is often viewed by environmentalists as defeatist to seriously discuss adaptation to climate change (as opposed to mitigation), it is evident that many regions will be affected by the advance of global warming. This paper will outline the predicted impact of climate change on the world's most destitute peoples, most of them in the southern hemisphere but some in the far north. It will then evaluate the normative implications of international responses to date, including various capital and technology transfer mechanisms, and argue that in order to pursue global justice on this issue a plethora of associated problems, such as the impact of invasive species, infectious diseases, and reduced livelihood possibilities, must be addressed as well. In this sense global warming might act as a catalyst towards global equity, though most models of international relations would suggest otherwise. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Several key topics are discussed in the report: the recipient society's integration potential; adap-tive abilities of migrants; social practices of interaction between the population and ethnic mi-grants; problems of integration and migration policy's adequacy to economic and social chal-lenges. The author focuses on the analysis of experience of the population interaction with ethnic immi-grants. The analysis of integration potential of the Russian society, sociological survey of anti-migrant phobia incidence, of population's notions of ethnic social stratification, experience of direct contacts, use of migrant labor on the basis of a sample taken from the Russian monitoring of the population economic and health condition (the RMEHC) (this data array encompasses in-formation on 12 thousands respondents over 38 Russian regions). The author focuses on the immigrants' potential for adaptation, social practices of migrant workers' inclusions in the local markets, influence of an economic crisis on discourses and so-cial practices. The methodology of project included sociological studies of representatives of the Azerbaijan and Tadjik minorities and local population in Astrakhan and Samara (2008, 2009). The special attention is given actors of integration policy and fundamental problems of integra-tion policy in Russia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many observers have hailed the entry into force of the 'Kyoto Protocol' to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2005 as a landmark achievement in combating global climate change. However, this treaty is but a first step, and its core commitments will expire in 2012. Even full compliance with the Kyoto agreement will not prevent 'dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system' - the overall objective of the climate convention. This situation has led to wide-ranging debates among policy-makers, academics and environmentalists on the future of climate governance after 2012. This quest of finding stable, effective and equitable solutions for long-term climate governance stands at the centre of this chapter. It has also been the focus of the comprehensive research programme that is reported here: the research group 'Post-2012 Climate Governance' of the EU Integrated Project 'Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies' (ADAM). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A material premise of the international relations of the past has been abundant, cheap energy and unlimited waste sinks. Whether implicit or explicit, easy fossil fuels and a vast atmosphere have underpinned trade policy, security relations, even global environmental politics. Localization may be a logical outcome of the disappearance of a one-time, historically minor periodâ??i.e., the age of abundant, highly available energy. How localization proceeds becomes one of the defining questions of our time. We will all be asking not if localization is occurring, but how localization is proceeding, and how it should proceed. We will intuitively see that localization can be a force for good (think healthy food, less stress and more neighborliness) or a force for evil (think warlords and survivalists). We will imagine that localization can be democratic, say, and yet resource depleting, peaceful and yet unjust. If these conjectures are correct, the central question of our time will not be how to enact global management schemes for global change, but how to ensure a process of localization that is peaceful, just, democratic and ecologically sustainable, and do so at all levels, from the local to the global.Localization, then, is not "the local" nor the opposite of globalization. So what is it? In a nutshell, it is a process that points toward localities, yet is not strictly about localities. As overextended economies and ecosystems spend themselves, as they dissipate, economic and cultural exchange will shift inward, moving toward a new equilibrium state, however dynamic, where societies live on current sunlight, on recharging water, and on self-renewing soils and biota. The centrifugal forces of globalizationâ??cheap energy, technological advance, intensified commercialization and communication, displaced wastes, concentrated economic and political powerâ??shift to the centripetal forces of diminished energy and material, personal security, and faith in centralized authority (figure 4). Localization entails increased attention to the tangible, the interpersonal, the face-to-face, and to place-based community. It entails more direct connection to the natural world, especially that which provides sustenanceâ??food and shelter, for instanceâ??and that which enhances well-beingâ??greenery and clean rivers, for instance. This is not to say, as discussed below, that localization is inattentive to the regional, national and international. Quite the contrary. It is only that the primary direction, the focus of attention, is inward, to the concrete, to direct interactions with and social and natural systems, rather than outward, to the abstractions and diversions of economic and technological systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]