International relation policies and climate change Research Paper

International relation policies and climate change - Research Paper Example The paper "International relation policies and climate change" concerns international relation policies and climate change. The department further warned that the situation is likely to worsen in the years to come, if not attended to immediately. The figures also show a decline in the level of emissions in developed economies such as United States and Russia. This decline apparently is a reflection of economic weakness, environmental consciousness (e.g. use of renewable power sources), and transfer of manufacturing industries to developing countries. Unfortunately, the decline in the industrial emissions from the advanced economies significantly falls below the increasing rate of emissions in the developing countries, which care less for their contribution to the global warming. Low-income countries whose low-income population heavily depends on carbon-intensive fuels such as coal increasingly pollutes the environment. Emissions from low-income countries alone accounts for about 80% of the greenhouse gases. Since 1945, the United Nations has been on the fore-front fighting for the restoration and conservation of the global environment. The UN has organized for a number of conferences focusing on climate change. The fifteenth conference was held in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Like the earlier conferences, the 15th Climate Change Conference failed to produce desirable, legally binding and equitable agreements. Though the conference discussed ways of reducing ambitious emissions., technological advancements to the problem, and methods of financing the policies, it was in vain. In the end, The Copenhagen Accord was neither a comprehensive framework which demands effective, responsible participation from all the leading stakeholders (governments, financial institutions, and the civil society groups) nor was it a collective effort aimed at combating climate crisis in a more integrated manner. The CoP15 (The 15th Conference of the Parties) to the United Nati ons Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was therefore described as a failed policy as no binding agreement was arrived at. The aim objective of the conference was to discuss and propose polices which would be essential in keeping the average world temperature rise slightly below 2oC. Partisanship and self-interest resulted into two groups of the UNFCCC: Annex I and Non-Annex I countries which represented different interests. Annex I was composed of the 40 industrialized and transitional countries non-Annex I countries was made up of developing economies (Mazo 245). As claimed by members of the non-Annex I, a twenty six â€Å"representative group of leaders† from Annex I developed the Accord in their favor through un-transparent, restrictive, and top-down had developed the policies aimed at conserving the environment with little consideration to the minor countries. The â€Å"bottom-up pledge and review† approach to reducing global emission as described in t he Accord was perceived as unpractical and unfair mechanism of reducing reaching the desired goal of less than 2 percent annual increase in global temperature. So far, the ledges made under the Accord falls short of the delegates and representative call of ‘ambitious’