GLOB.IDEALIZATION MOND.IDÉALISATION - Faculty of Social ...

Phoebe Stephens | Equity Norms in Global Environmental Governance
Convinced that climate change affects humanity as a whole and
should be confronted within a global framework so as to take into
account the vital interests of all mankind, 1. Recognizes that climate
change is a common concern of mankind, since climate is an
essential condition which sustains life on earth; (UN General
Assembly, “Protection of Global Climate”)
Northern countries generally opposed the CHM because of its
contradictions with free-market principles and, as is detailed below, the
Southern countries also came to oppose it due to sovereignty concerns
(Bernstein 472). Compared to the Stockholm conference twenty years earlier,
the CHM was on its last legs by time of the Rio Earth Summit. Whereas the
CHM principle clearly served developing country interests with respect to
international or global commons, such as the deep seabed, it did not hold for
transboundary externalities such as biodiversity and carbon sequestration.
By the 1990s tropical deforestation was of major global concern. This
was due to the realization about the essential ecosystem services that tropical
rainforests perform for the world and the alarming rates of deforestation that
were occurring in vital tropical rainforests like the Amazon (Dietz and Henry
13189). The rhetoric momentarily shifted as developed countries pointed to
forests’ roles as carbon sinks and their unique biodiversity and aesthetic to
emphasize their global value, leading to the conceptualization of forests as
CHM (Davenport 107). Although this position may appear to contradict the
North’s traditional stance, it must also be noted that tropical rainforests are
abundant in often profitable genetic resources and the North may have had
ulterior motives in promoting tropical rainforests forests as CHM. Of course,
Glob.Idealization |32