In A Climate of Injustice, J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks offer a theoretical synthesis and empirical analysis that illuminates several aspects of the linked problems of climate change and development. The authors begin from a world systems perspective and attempt to synthesize some of its key insights with other theoretical approaches; they then draw testable hypotheses from their theoretical models, and evaluate them empirically through regression analysis. The main argument of the book is that the conflict between developed and developing nations in global climate negotiations—sometimes called a “stalemate” (p. 23), sometimes an “impasse” (p. 218)—results more than anything else from the inequality of the North and South, rooted in the structural legacy of colonialism. Its policy conclusion is that innovative approaches to reducing this inequality will be necessary to induce southern cooperation in solving the climate problem.
I find the book to be insightful, both clear and rigorous, and admirably ambitious; its contributions to the field are substantial. Its attempt to integrate multiple strands of international relations theory will be of interest to a wide range of people interested in global climate policy and international environmental politics more broadly. However, as I will attempt to show, the book somewhat oversimplifies—and, arguably, mischaracterizes—the North-South conflict in the climate negotiations. (Note that I co-authored a book with Tom Athanasiou [Dead Heat, 2002] that makes a similar argument, and my critique of Roberts and Parks applies to that work as well.)
After Chapter 1 introduces the book's themes, Chapter 2 provides an extensive narrative of the reasons why the South might not want to cooperate in addressing climate change. As demonstrated through a survey of recent trade negotiations and other international regimes, global inequality produces not only different understandings of what is fair, but a pattern of beliefs and behaviors by southern governments that are rooted in mistrust and an ongoing history of northern “opportunism.” The authors are careful to discuss southern positions in terms of “perspectives,” but it is also clear that the authors are sympathetic to the South's normative claims about justice, climate, and development; the South's worldviews and causal beliefs “cannot be dismissed as false constructs” (p. 29).
Chapters 3 and 4 are about vulnerability to climate risk. Chapter 3 uses three case studies (Honduras, Mozambique, and Tuvalu) to show how climate vulnerability is shaped by national circumstances (one could call them “socio-economic” or “political-economic” circumstances). Chapter 4 introduces their approach to regression analysis, building a structural model on the foundations of world-systems theory and integrating a variety of additional theoretical components. Chapter 5 analyzes nations' levels of CO2 emissions and the factors that predict them; Chapter 6, nations' participation in environmental treaties and in the Kyoto Protocol in particular.
A detailed exposition and critique of the models in these chapters would require many times the available space. Certainly all three quantitative chapters will be of interest to researchers working in the related areas. Yet the more important question is surely what the conclusions of each chapter lend to the main argument, and before one can address this, more needs to be said about that argument and its strengths and weaknesses.
The book's narrative creates a relatively monolithic “South” and “North.” It is not that the diversity in both groups is not recognized; indeed, the entire exercise of regression analysis acknowledges the reality of diversity that needs to be explained. Yet fundamentally, the book frames “the problem” of climate change as the failure of “the North” to provide the background conditions that would enable “the South” to engage in cooperative problem solving. And, while there is a large and even obvious truth to that claim, it nonetheless obscures two crucial points.
First, the bigger “impasse” in the climate regime—especially in the time frame the book addresses—has been between the United States and the Annex I countries (primarily Europe) about appropriate actions; second, inasmuch as “southern” cooperation is increasingly key to global action, it really is the few large developing countries, and especially India and China, that are important, and they are qualitatively different from “average” developing countries.
The “North-South impasse” framing—particularly identifying the problem as “the South's non-cooperation”—implies that there is some negotiated “solution” that would be welfare-improving for all parties but is out of reach because of the South's negotiating position. Indeed, the argument of the book is that this position of “non-cooperation” is in some sense justified by a history of “callous and opportunistic” (p. 13) behavior by developed country governments in the past few decades, to say nothing of the history of colonialism itself. However, a more appropriate interpretation of the same evidence might be that the North is not actually—as a whole—interested in global cooperation on climate change. It's important to recall that this book was written during the period of the Bush Administration in the United States, during which US policy was to shamelessly free-ride on the Kyoto regime—a regime to which in fact most developing countries were willing participants. Thus to suggest that the problem is a lack of a willing negotiating partner for the North, based in a failure to recognize the South's legitimate grievances, is, I think, a significant misinterpretation of the history of the Kyoto and overall UNFCCC regimes.
It's also important to remember that the data for the year 2000 to which Roberts and Parks had access (shown in their figure 5.1) has China with only half the US level of emissions, and per capita emissions well under world average levels. That has changed dramatically, with China now exceeding total US emissions and world average per capita emissions. The economic status of China has changed dramatically as well, as has that of India. It's not that generalized trust-building activities will not be important to engage the majority of developing countries in a serious global mitigation regime; it's rather that the most important developing countries are quite capable of calculating and pursuing their own self-interest in the climate negotiations and elsewhere.
This matters because—in the short to medium run—“cooperation” from the vast majority of developing countries is not important to the success of global emissions reductions. And, arguably, for the large developing countries that matter the most, the general patterns of global structural inequality matter less than their specific histories and institutional arrangements, and of course their direct economic interests. Put differently, knowing that “diversity of exports” (used as a proxy for “insertion in the world economy”) is an important predictor of the behavior of “average” developing countries doesn't necessarily give much help in understanding any particular economy—after all, any given country may be an exception to the rule. (The exact data set used for the export diversity index wasn't included in the book, but downloading the 2003 values from UNCTAD's data set today identifies China, Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, and South Korea all among the thirty most diversified exporters.)
To return to the quantitative sections: In Chapter 5, “Fueling Injustice,” the authors set themselves to answer questions about responsibility for climate change, identifying ways of accounting for responsibility and allocating obligations. They link this to an analysis of factors contributing to emissions, including wealth, export base, and other national characteristics. Their conclusions here are unsurprising; per capita income has the largest effect on emissions, and exporters of fuels and manufactured goods have the highest emissions. The chapter begins to explore questions about the “offshoring” of emissions and concludes that “trading more products increases emissions by poorer nations while lowering them for wealthy nations” (p. 184). This further buttresses the authors' case for northern initiatives to redress global inequality.
Chapter 6 is similarly structured to Chapter 4, looking at countries' roles in the global division of labor (proxied by export diversity) as a causal mechanism, acting through indirect pathways to influence nations' ratification of environmental treaties. The analysis looks at both two overlapping lists of international treaties and at the Kyoto Protocol in particular, and finds that civil society pressure (proxied by total NGOs in 2000) is a strong predictor of treaty participation, and that export diversification is in turn a strong predictor of total NGOs. However, while the chapter raises very interesting questions about nations' environmental policies in general, the fact that almost all developing countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol (which demands little of them and offers potential funds) leaves very little to be “explained.”
The final chapter lays out much of the authors' view of a way forward. They call for “a large-scale, multinational and multi-disciplinary effort” “with the integral participation and guidance of scholars and policymakers from the global South” as “a starting point for building a North South consensus on how different types of countries should go about reducing their current or future greenhouse gas emissions” (p. 233). Yet they acknowledge that the process of “industrial transformation” to a low-carbon development path is profoundly political; thus it is hard to see how such an effort might actually gain traction.
Indeed, this raises an important question: What is it that is supposed to motivate northern countries, and the United States in particular, to make the dramatic and expensive political gestures necessary to engender southern cooperation? The authors seem to conclude that an equitable solution is both necessary and possible, and in the final chapter, they address some plausibly analogous regimes in which important international policy changes have been made. However, they conclude on a much more pessimistic note: If “an equitable solution may cut deeply into Western taxpayers' pocketbooks” (p. 241), how will it come to pass? Will it take a clear climate change–related disaster affecting the United States? The authors hope not, but seem to fear the worst, and seek to have “proposals ready for that day.” Unfortunately, their prescriptions for trust building are likely not of a sort that can be left on the shelf until a crisis hits, and their analysis thus offers few grounds for optimism.
