Climate Change Action Plan

International Group 4

Introduction

hybrid model: supplements the polluter pays principle with the ability to pay principle. By doing so they attempt to produce a solution that has the strengths of both principles: a principle with the strong appeal to justice and fairness of the polluter pays principle with the practicality of the ability to pay principle

Action Plan

1. Codify allowances of carbon levels based on the hybrid model, this will be done under an international treaty

2. Each nation under the United Nations gets a limit of what they are allowed to emit, based on the hybrid model

3. This codification needs to be enforced, consider making another branch under the ICJC, which deals specifically with climate change, and this branch would check in with individual countries to see if they are under their quota or over the quota, if countries are under their quota they are able to sell the remainder of their quota (an incentive to ratify the international treaty), if a country goes over their quota, sanctions can be used .. if a country goes over their allowance, personnel who work at the international level, with expertise on lowering carbon emissions will be sent to that country the next year to rework their policies and ensure mandates are being fulfilled, they will check in with the UN regarding progress

4. A mentor country (a country not using all of their quota) is allowed to sell their extra quotas only if they are willing to mentor a country struggling to make policy to lower carbon emissions (a focus on cooperation needs to be implied in order to ensure that member states will sign agreement in the first place)

the focus needs to be ensuring as many countries want to sign on to the treaty as possible
please note under our hybrid approach quotas will be different according to their ability to pay and responsibility for current climate change

Implications

Political

1. Encourage cooperation between nations at the global level

2. Increase of focus on sustainability in politics, shift from more neoliberal policies

3. Empowerment of countries not privileged in current system, because they will be awarded for less carbon emissions that are usually associated with higher industrialization.

Economic

1. Countries that are successful in reaching the emission target, to a certain extent have efficient or effective technology to enable them to be successful, this may result in a business incentive or national economic incentive for these countries to sell their technology or knowledge to other countries.

2. National economic incentive, if they are under their emission target they can trade their extra emissions, which will likely benefit them economically.

Social

1. awareness at all levels (individual, national and international), international publication of yearly levels to raise awareness

2. benefit for health of the general population and especially poorer areas already impacted by environmental impacts of climate change

3. lead to more concern for the livelihood of future generations

Remaining Challenges

1. We can not guarantee that member states of the UN will sign on to the treaty, this will be hard to predict, in order to mitigate this potential problem we need to ensure there are incentives to join the international treaty, as well as international prestige awarded to countries who run under their allowed quota (release a public list yearly of how countries do on reducing their carbon emissions, and then review every 5 years if the reduction can increased or decreased based on progress and realistic expectations).

2.The US would need to sign on to this treaty because they are in a position to pay, as well a contributor to the problem. They have been resistant to climate change treaties in the past. In order to mitigate this, we could conduct more research at the international level in order to raise awareness of the problem and clear any doubt of previous research or regarding the magnitude of the problem. The research needs to be conducted by an international body at the level of the IGO.