Global commons

🇺🇳 definition of the global commons

• Resources/areas that lie outside the political reach of any one nation-state

% of total 🌍 carbon emissions produced by 🇨🇳 and 🇺🇸

40%

Impact of 🇨🇳’s emissions

• More ⛈ in the Pacific 🌊

4 components of the global commons

1. High seas 🌊

2. Atmosphere ☁

3. Polar regions 🐻‍❄❄

4. Outer space 🪐 ⭐☄

🌊 — event that impacted them

1. 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill

km² of 🌊 affected by Deepwater Horizon in Gulf of 🇲🇽

176,000 km²

🌊 — number of tonnes of plastic waste that reaches 🌍 🌊/year

8 million

🌊 — by 2050…

Weight of plastic in 🌊 > weight of 🐟 in 🌊

☁ — 3 main causes of air pollution

1. Industrial burning of fossil fuels

2. Car exhaust emissions

3. Household fuel cooking

☁ — UNEP — number of deaths/year from air pollution

3.5 million

☁ — 3 issues caused by air pollution

1. Changing weather patterns

2. Rising sea levels

3. Threat to food production

🐻‍❄❄ — % of undiscovered oil reserves under Artic

15%

🐻‍❄❄ — Antarctic Treaty

• Signed by 12 states in 1959

• Protects Antartic as region for scientific research, not military activity or resource extraction

🐻‍❄❄ — 2007

• 🇷🇺 flag planted on sea bed below N.Pole

🪐 ⭐☄ — crowding

• More crowded with more active space stations and satellites

🪐⭐☄ — NASA 2013 estimate of number of human-generated pieces of waste orbiting 🌍

500,000+

3 laws to protect the global commons

1. UNCLOS

2. Antarctic Treaty System

3. UNFCCC

3 aspects of UNCLOS

1. Prevention of 🌊 pollution

2. Protection of own waters to protect international waters

3. Limits to state’s territorial waters

Antarctic Treaty System

• Antarctic protected to be only for scientific research

UNFCCC

• Established porcess through which international treaties are agreed to protect ☁

Tragedy of the Commons

• Global commons are doomed to be competed over by self-interested states and therefore harmed and doomed

3 reasons for the Tragedy of the Commons

• National and international interest rarely align!

1. Realism — self-interest

2. Competition

3. More realism — gains

Self-interest

• States won’t sign up to e.g. international emissions targets if seen as expensive as will make their economic output uncompetitive

Competition

• States compete for economic power and resources and natural resources

Gains

• States don’t act in isolation

  • Realist states don’t want to slow economic development by switching from reliable fossil fuels that produce relative gains to unreliable renewables which might only produce absolute gains

3 changes made by international community

1. Increasing importance of pollution on national and local levels

2. LICs taking equal steps to change

3. Increasing acceptance that CC → natural disasters

Pollution — number of 🇨🇳 deaths/year due to air pollution

500,000

Pollution — 🇨🇳 PA

• ‘Airpocolypse’ 🔑 in PA

Pollution — WHO

• Some cities have pollution more than 56x that of safe levels

  • Visibility can be 100m>

LICs — PA

• Gave LICs £ to help increase use of renewables

Natural disasters — 🇮🇳

• Ratified PA in 2016