Abstract
The international community decided at Paris in December 2015 to take some action to combat climate change. Given that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and prior to Paris there were 20 Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the Convention with little of substance achieved, one is entitled to ask whether the actions decided upon in 2015 are too little and too late. The twin pivots around which climate change policy revolves are mitigation and adaptation. To mitigate it is necessary to keep global warming by the end of this century to less than 1.5 °C and even then there will be adverse consequences, the increase in sea levels being particularly pertinent to small island states. If mitigation is not successful adaptation will have to do all the work. The consequences of climate change fall unevenly upon nations; some will fare better than others. Few will be worse affected than the small island states of the Pacific.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Pacific Islands Development Forum (2015a): This new grouping led by Fiji was formed because changing global and regional environment required new approaches to problem solving.
- 3.
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (2015b).
- 4.
Toribiong (2011).
- 5.
Ki-moon (2015).
- 6.
Little (2015).
- 7.
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (2015b).
- 8.
Palmer (1990), p. 70.
- 9.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014a), p. 4.
- 10.
Hansen et al. (2013), p. 1.
- 11.
Hansen et al. (2016).
- 12.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2013), p. 1139.
- 13.
Ibid; Hansen et al. (2015), p. 20059.
- 14.
- 15.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014b), pp. 1613–1642: Note that these problems are generalised here and that natural systems are complex and there are some naturally occurring processes that mitigate some of these events. However, the processes that mitigate these impacts are generally outstripped by the climate change effects that create these effects so that the overall effect is clearly negative.
- 16.
- 17.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014b), s 29.3.1.1.
- 18.
Barnett and Adger (2003).
- 19.
- 20.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014b), s 29.3.1.2.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014b), s 29.3.3.2.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Foster (2014).
- 25.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014b), s 29.3.3.2.
- 26.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014b), Chap. 29.
- 27.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014b), Chap. 21.
- 28.
Park (2011), p. 2.
- 29.
Warner et al. (2009), s 3.7.
- 30.
Gerrard and Wannier (2015).
- 31.
Office of the President of Kiribati (2016).
- 32.
Costi (2014), p. 145.
- 33.
Meduna (2015), pp. 34–35.
- 34.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015), art 21.
- 35.
United Nations Treaty Series (1969), art 2.
- 36.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015), art 14(2).
- 37.
Ibid, art 4(13).
- 38.
Ibid, art 5.
- 39.
United Nations Human Rights Council (2009).
- 40.
United Nations (2015).
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Palmer, G. (2017). Small Pacific Island States and the Catastrophe of Climate Change. In: Butler, P., Morris, C. (eds) Small States in a Legal World. The World of Small States, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39366-7_1
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