International Practice of Climate Responsibility

“Responsibility” is a highly vague concept, and it is not always very clear what it means in world politics. What is responsibility? To whom states are responsible, and for what? What states have to do, or refrain from doing, in order to be, and be seen, as responsible members of international society? This paper joins so-called practice turn in IR and proposes that responsibility is a social practice: Responsibilities are always socially constructed in the context of particular historic events and practices. Because the allocation of responsibility has been a central issue in international climate negotiations, where “Common But Differentiated Responsibilities” (CDBR) has been agreed as a guiding principle, the paper problematizes how “responsibility” is being negotiated, distributed and contested in the context of international climate politics. It begins with a brief outline of practice approach to responsibility. The rest of the paper explores the evolution of international practice of climate responsibility. Because it defines the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as an anchoring practice that bridges the gap between abstract international practice of climate responsibility and a real life experience, the paper is particularly interested in how states have debated and distributed responsibilities within the UNFCCC framework. How is “responsibility” defined within the UNFCCC and who is appointed to be responsible for what, when, and how? In addition, the paper studies how power politics have shaped the evolution of climate responsibility. How have certain powerful actors, such as the U.S and China, influenced international notions of climate responsibility? Finally, the paper looks at how other established practices of international society constrain and/or enable climate responsibility and discusses international justice.