By Anshu Kumar
Introduction
The world is 'sleepwalking into a planetary crisis’. With rising sea levels, owing to increased global temperature, multiple coastal cities around the world are headed towards submersion. Small island states in the Pacific and elsewhere are apprehensive about losing their complete existence. The climate crisis is expected to cause more than 100 million people to plunge into extreme poverty and displace more than 200 million people by 2030.
Barring Iran and Poland, all the top 20 carbon-emitting countries in the world are members of the G20 grouping. The G20 grouping, comprising 80 per cent of the global GDP, 75 per cent of international trade and 60 per cent of the global population, has the financial wherewithal and material paraphernalia to pioneer a response to climate change.
India, which is currently holding the G20 presidency, has the opportunity to shape global climate governance in a manner to address the issues essential for climate action. Being a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), BRICS grouping and the QUAD, India can champion Global North-South cooperation on the issues of climate change.
Climate justice and equity are insufficiently incorporated into the global climate governance process at present. India can change this in its presidency. Rationally, none of the G20 members can fight the climate crisis on its own. Each member needs to capitalise on their strengths and cooperate and share the wherewithal and paraphernalia to fight the climate monster.
The Majesty of International Groupings
‘International organizations do not exist in a political vacuum’. International organisations are constituted to address the fears and challenges that states face within the international system and reflect the hopes and aspirations of the state.
Multilateral fora are instituted on the belief that sovereign states cannot address the crises transcending the political boundaries of the states. In an interdependent and globalised world, the role of interstate forums has been crucial. Over one century, the growth in the number of international organisations— including a journey from traditional security-based international organisations to all sorts of non-traditional organisations— is an indication of how sovereign states have become comfortable with involving a myriad of actors from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), private individuals, civil societies, Multinational Corporations (MNCs), to business groups to address a labyrinth of crises faced globally.
Even when there is no overarching world government, there is a ‘society of states' which, being conscious of certain common interests and common values, 'form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions'.
The idea of international society goes against the realpolitik vantage point, which either believes that international organisations are an extension of the hegemonic power or repudiates the working of such international organisations in its entirety.
Hedley Bull argues that the idea of international society had always been there in the working of interstate interactions, and at no point in history did it completely disappear.
Even at the height of World War II, the Allied powers continued to pay homage to the international institutional fabric to steer their relations between themselves and with other neutral countries. Even when the two superpowers were head-to-head with each other during the Cold War crises, they never broke their diplomatic relations with each other, refuted the idea of working within the ambit of common international law or withdrew recognition of each other's sovereignty.
Aaron Friedberg argues that even if political relations between democracies and illiberal regimes go into disarray, there is a ‘genuine convergence of interests’ on discrete issues like climate change. It is equally pressing to assert that there are ‘issue-specific’ areas and no single state, not even the most powerful one, can entirely dominate in every area. Thus, interstate cooperation is required to deal with various issues in a myriad of domains.
The idea of ‘Club Goods’
Hathaway and Shapiro recommend the idea of producing 'club goods' instead of bothering to form a universal consensus to address crises transcending political boundaries.
‘Club Goods' are non-rivalrous (like public goods) but excludable (like private goods).
Consider a swimming club. Club members can enjoy swimming in their pool at the same time (non-rivalry) and can use a gate to keep non-members out (excludability)’.
Global clubs are based on the idea that actors (for instance, states) choose to join a club/alliance to benefit from it and in return, they agree to comply with the condition of denying the benefits to non-members. [However, they can also deny benefits to non-compliant members in order to discipline them.] This idea of moving to clubs from decentralising global governance dates back to history.
There is a long history of success in harnessing the power of numbers through a global club.
In connection with the global crisis of ozone layer depletion, every state was interested in a ban on the use of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that included everyone but them. A global treaty would have been a fiasco with every non-compliant free riding on the compliance of honest states.
The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) assiduously created a global club. The first condition put forth for aspiring members was to reduce and ultimately phase out their consumption of CFCs. The other and most crucial condition was to trade CFCs-producing ingredients only to club members. It inferred that non-members could not buy ingredients, and thus, the cost of being left out was high.
‘The benefits of membership, and the costs of being a non-member, increased as the club got bigger’. The enforcement mechanism of global clubs requires members to report their data on compliance, and members are also able to report concerns about other members.
When members fall short of complying with the conditions, there is an effort to make the pariah state return to compliance. In case of a fiasco, members issue collective sanctions and even terminate the membership of that state. Thus, the pariah state becomes bereft of privileges associated with membership.
The G20 grouping, comprised of a small number of economically and politically powerful states, can create a global club to enforce measures to deal with the rising global temperature. The high cost of not being part of such clubs would compel other states to join the club and agree on the conditions to ensure measures that reduce activities, paraphernalia and processes akin to global warming.
Since most of the G20 members are the top carbon-emitting countries of the world [The G20 countries alone account for more than 75 per cent of global greenhouse emissions], the most crucial decisions on climate change need to be taken among the G20 members rather than worldwide. Contrary to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) [In the UNFCCC, discarding the criteria of size, all 194 parties have an equal voice and consensus is required for decisions], the G20’s exclusive membership allows for more efficient decision-making. Any action by the G20 grouping could keep the global temperature from increasing by 2 degrees Celsius for several decades.
From neorealist parlance, it is the most powerful countries that shape the course of international systems. Thus, once the G20 members, including states from almost every region, set the course of action related to climate change, the rest countries would follow suit.
It has become a trend for international organisations to be used as a forum for politicising world events by great powers. India’s G20 presidency has, too, faced such push and pull on the Ukraine crisis. However, it is crucial for the state actors to depoliticise the G20 groupings, at least on matters of 'planetary concerns.' It should be equally pressing for the world powers to look into the non-traditional issues of the day that are slowly eating the natural fabric of the planet Earth.
Originally Contributed for the SIS Blog.
Anshu Kumar is a Master’s student at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interest lie in India’s relations with great powers, the rise of China in the international system, strategic studies, and Indian foreign policy.
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