Ethics & International Affairs
Fall 2016 (Issue 30.3)
https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2016/fall-2016-issue-30-3/

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ESSAYS
Climate Contributions and the Paris Agreement: Fairness and Equity in a Bottom-Up Architecture
Nicholas Chan
[Initial text]
Ethical questions of fairness, responsibility, and burden-sharing have always been central to the international politics of climate change and efforts to construct an effective intergovernmental response to this problem. The conclusion of the Paris Agreement last December, lauded by the media, governments, and civil society around the world, is the most recent such effort, following the collapse of negotiations six years prior at the 2009 Copenhagen conference. The shape and form of the Paris Agreement, however, represents a radically different governance structure to its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, reorienting the international regime toward a “bottom-up” structure, emphasizing national flexibility in order to ensure broader participation. In doing so, the Paris Agreement also provides a different answer to the question of what constitutes a fair and equitable response to climate change…

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Features
Self-Interest and the Distant Vulnerable
Luke Glanville | September 15, 2016
[Initial text]
What interests do states have in assisting and protecting vulnerable populations beyond their borders? Today, confronted as we are with civil wars, mass atrocities, and humanitarian catastrophes that have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians and generated the displacement of sixty million more, this question is as urgent as it has ever been. It is also one that is answered in a variety of ways.
Narrow interpretations of nationalism and realism tend to insist that states have no interests in assisting the distant vulnerable. A narrow nationalism claims that a state should never risk blood and treasure for the sake of vulnerable outsiders…