Historical responsibility for climate change: science and the science–policy interface

Abstract

Since 1990, the academic literature on historical responsibility (HR) for climate change has grown considerably. Over these years, the approaches to defining this responsibility have varied considerably. This article demonstrates how this variation can be explained by combining various defining aspects of historical contribution and responsibility. Scientific knowledge that takes for granted choices among defining aspects will likely become a basis for distrust within science, among negotiators under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and elsewhere. On the other hand, for various reasons, not all choices can be explicated at all times. This article guides those who need to evaluate the assumptions underlying specific claims regarding HR. This article examines the full breadth of complexities involved in scientifically defining HR and discusses how these complexities have consequences for the science-policy interface concerning HR. To this end, this article maps, reviews, and classifies the academic literature on historical contributions to and responsibility for climate change into categories of defining aspects. One immediately policy-relevant conclusion emerges from this exercise: Coupled with negotiators' highly divergent understandings of historical responsibility, the sheer number of defining aspects makes it virtually impossible to offer scientific advice without creating distrust in certain parts of the policy circle. This conclusion suggests that scientific attempts to narrow the options for policymakers will have little chance of succeeding unless policymakers first negotiate a clearer framework for their establishment.Historical responsibility (HR) for climate change has become one of the thorniest issues in negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In its most abstract form, HR entails explicating the moral significance of history when distributing the responsibility to act on climate change. Although many agree that history does have moral significance, the political struggle over how this should influence the responsibility to act is marked by highly divergent understandings.At the initial stage of negotiating the draft Convention, in early 1991, the degree to which countries had contributed to climate change was proposed as a measure of responsibility to act. Other proposals stressed that historical emissions and the responsibilities they might trigger should prompt developed countries to take the lead in dealing with climate change, although not necessarily in proportion to their contributions.1, 2 At the time the UNFCCC was adopted in 1992, some argued that the division between Annex 1 and 2 countries, with differing specific commitments, and Parties not included in Annex 1 (non-Annex 1 Parties) corresponded to the acceptance and resulting operationalization of HR. However, in the process of specifying the UNFCCC in a protocol, the dispute between what we will term the 'conceptual' versus 'proportional' views of the moral s...

Agreement, significance, and understandings of historical responsibility in climate change negotiations

“…This finding reflects a wellestablished pattern in the negotiations reported elsewhere (Najam et al, 2003;Ikeme, 2003;Heyward, 2007;Friman, 2013a, Friman & Strandberg 2014 Third, the weights attached to the significance of the COP-16 decision on historical responsibility for future agreements differ between governmental respondents. Respondents favoring a proportional understanding of historical responsibility ascribed greater significance to the decision than did respondents favoring a conceptual version.…”

“…This overall development trajectory of the climate regime is reconciled with a conceptual understanding of historical responsibility. Promoting a proportional view therefore becomes much more an act in opposition to, rather than in reconciliation with, the contemporary context to historical responsibility in the negotiations (Friman & Strandberg, 2014). Oppositely, however, the data suggest that an increasing share, a majority, of climate change negotiators adhere to a proportional understanding of historical responsibility.…”

“…Under the SBSTA mandate, historical responsibility became understood mainly in a technical and scientific sense (Friman & Linnér, 2008;Müller et al, 2009) Two prominent understandings of historical responsibility have been visible in both the negotiating (Friman, 2013a), and the scientific communities (Friman & Strandberg, 2014): one 'proportional' and one 'conceptual'. The COP-16 decision does not clearly indicate which understanding is favored.…”

“…Various climate change indicators have been used to measure contribution, and various methodologies have been used to attribute climate change contributions to individual countries (den Elzen et al, 2005;Höhne & Blok, 2005;Trudinger & Enting, 2005;Friman & Strandberg, 2014). A proportional understanding of historical responsibility, however, is often underpinned by an interpretation of Article 3.1 on differentiated responsibilities in light of the UNFCCC preamble noting that most historical emissions originated in developed countries (UN, 1992).…”

“…Conceptual understandings focus on the moral importance of colonial and imperial history, arguing, again in view of Article 3.1, that developed countries are morally responsible to take the lead in combating climate change (Rajamani, 2000), but not necessarily in proportion to their contributions (Caney, 2006;Halme, 2007;Friman & Strandberg, 2014). These definitions of historical responsibility typically understand Article 3.1 as fully operationalized through differentiating responsibilities by attaching different commitments to different categories of Parties specified in the Annexes and elsewhere.…”