The absence of great power responsibility in global environmental politics
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066119859642 |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
research-article2019
EJ R
I
Article
European Journal of
International Relations
The absence of great power
2020, Vol. 26(1) 8 –32
© The Author(s) 2019
responsibility in global
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119859642
DOI: 10.1177/1354066119859642
environmental politics
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Steven Bernstein
University of Toronto, Canada
Abstract
Great powers routinely face demands to take on special responsibilities to address major
concerns in global affairs, and often gain special rights for doing so. These areas include peace
and security, global economic management, development, and egregious violations of human
rights. Despite the rise in the importance and centrality of global environmental concerns,
especially climate change and issues covered by the new Sustainable Development Goals,
norms or institutions that demand or recognize great power responsibility are notably
absent. This absence is puzzling given expectations in several major strands of International
Relations theory, including the English School, realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Drawing
on the reasoning behind these expectations, the absence of great power responsibility can
be explained by a lack of congruence between systemic and environmental “great powers,”
weak empirical links between action on the environment and the maintenance of international
order, and no link to special rights. Instead, the institutionalized distribution of environmental
responsibilities arose out of North–South conflict and has eroded over time, becoming more
diffuse and decentered from ideas of state responsibility. These findings suggest a need to
rethink the relationship among great powers and special rights and responsibilities regarding
the environment, as well as other new issues of systemic importance.
Keywords
Climate change, environment, global governance, great powers, norms, responsibility
Introduction
Norms or institutional arrangements that demand or recognize great power responsibility
for the global environment do not exist. This absence comes despite great powers routinely
Corresponding author:
Steven Bernstein, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada.
Email: steven.bernstein@utoronto.ca
Bernstein
9
facing demands for, gaining special rights or status in recognition of, and taking on special
responsibilities for other prominent concerns in global affairs. These areas include peace
and security, global economic management, and human rights, at least in the protection of
populations from the most heinous abuses such as genocide or crimes against humanity
(Bellamy, 2016; Bukovansky et al., 2012; Bull, 1977). If, as in these other areas, one
expects great power responsibilities to follow from the importance or centrality of an issue
in global affairs, their absence in the environmental area is especially puzzling. This article
aims to address why.
Evidence for the importance of the environment in global affairs is overwhelming. Its
formal recognition as a global concern, including the institutionalization of environmen-
tal norms in numerous United Nations (UN) and regional declarations and well over 500
multilateral legal instruments (Mitchell, 2018), has led English School (ES) scholars to
argue that “environmental stewardship” is a “primary institution” in international society
(Falkner and Buzan, 2019).1 Climate change in particular has risen to the highest levels
of the international agenda by almost any measure of prominence in diplomatic and
institutional activity, or societal attention. Global markets and transnational corporate
actors are also increasingly pressured to incorporate environmental concerns into their
regulatory structures and business practices through domestic and transnational hard and
soft mechanisms. Such mechanisms include the proliferation of carbon markets (IETA,
2018), transnational sustainability standard setting in areas like forestry, fisheries, and
coffee (Auld and Gulbrandsen, 2013), and corporate reporting, benchmarking, and rank-
ings that include environmental components, such as the CDP (formerly known as the
Carbon Disclosure Project) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI, no date; Janzwood,
2017). In addition, the European Union (EU) and US have sought to internationalize
their environmental standards directly and indirectly through voluntary cooperative
agreements, writing standards into trade agreements, or using trade and standard-setting
bodies to promote environmental goals (e.g. DeSombre 2002; Jinnah and Lindsay, 2016).
Furthermore, environmental concerns are arguably central to the broader global develop-
ment agenda, now framed around Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, 2015).
Yet, even informal recognition or acceptance of great powers’ individual and collec-
tive responsibility is weak and, if anything, on the decline. While some of this shirking
can be attributed to the politics of the current US administration, it is not alone. The final
communiqué of the 2018 G7 summit offers just one stark example of this more general
decline (G7, 2018; see also Banda, 2018). Even without the US’s disavowal shortly after
its release, the final communiqué contained separate paragraphs on the US and the
remaining “G6” positions on climate change. The former (G7, 2018: para. 26) included
a pledge to support access to “all energy sources” and to “endeavor to work with other
countries” to “use fossil fuels more cleanly.” This, and subsequent, wording makes clear
the US retreat from any serious commitment to decarbonization. While other G7 mem-
bers reaffirmed their “strong commitment” to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate
change and a “just transition,” their statement (G7, 2018: para. 24) backed away from
specific pledges made in earlier communiqués that set 2050 as a target for ambitious
emission reductions and “a transformation of the energy sectors,” or to end fossil fuel
subsidies (G7, 2015). Even more significant for the argument here is the shift in the lan-
guage of responsibility. In 2015, “The G7 feels a special responsibility for shaping our
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European Journal of International Relations 26(1)
planet’s future” in reference to the then expected Paris Agreement and just agreed SDGs
(G7, 2015). The 2018 communiqué makes no mention of environmental responsibility,
even though it explicitly states that “we share the responsibility” to stimulate sustainable
economic growth (G7, 2018: para. 2) and “a responsibility to build a more peaceful and
secure world,” foregrounding recognition of respect for human rights as necessary for
that goal (G7, 2018: para. 13). Thus, even in the current diplomatic context, acknowledg-
ment of great power responsibility is alive and well, but nowhere in the two environmen-
tal paragraphs.
This article will explain the failure to entrench great power responsibility and identify
the weaker and more diffuse ideas of responsibility that prevail instead. The failure, I
argue, has resulted for the following reasons: a lack of congruence between systemic and
environmental “great powers”; weak empirical links between action on the environment
and the maintenance of international order; and no link to special rights. The hypothe-
sized links between great powers and special responsibilities are drawn from not only ES
scholars, but also constructivists, liberals, and realists, who might expect great powers to
take on responsibilities for normative, self-interested, or stability reasons, respectively.
Absent these links, institutional and normative developments have framed responsibility
as a function of capacity and historical culpability, as opposed to great power responsi-
bility for management, as in other issue areas.
For evidence of these links or their absence and of how responsibilities have been
assigned in practice, I rely on the following: official documents from major UN confer-
ences on the environment and sustainable development; treaty and other legal texts and
negotiating histories, especially focusing on arguably the most central systemic environ-
mental concern — climate change; collective statements of great powers such as G7
communiqués; and secondary sources on these processes, as well as comparative schol-
arship on great power responsibility in other issue areas.
The article proceeds as follows. The next section discusses why great power accept-
ance of special responsibilities for ensuring planetary environmental integrity would be
useful and what it might entail given concerns over irresponsible and self-interested
behavior to date. The second section reviews the theoretical debate on great power
responsibility to identify the hypothesized links between great power status and special
rights and responsibilities from a variety of theoretical traditions. The third section
explains why those links failed to develop in the case of the environment. The fourth
section examines the assignment and erosion of global environmental responsibilities in
practice. The fifth section identifies trajectories that point to the further erosion of great
power responsibility and the diffusion of environmental responsibility. Finally, the con-
clusion discusses the implications of these arguments for the prospects of great power
responsibility more broadly to address new issues of...
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