The Conferences of Parties – better known as the COP meetings – is led by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was established by the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in June 1992. With 28 meetings held to date and another scheduled for November 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan, these annual conferences hope to mitigate the impending climate crisis. However, these meetings are regularly criticised for taking too long to be effective at mitigating the climate disaster.

A main contributor to the snail pace of climate mitigation meetings, is the ongoing ethical dilemma of differentiated responsibility. This term refers to the debate over whether we should expect countries who had their resources extracted for Western profit to now minimise their growth for the environment – a problem they did not cause and is instead a result of Western industrialisation and colonialism in underdeveloped nations. This debate was raised during the Stockholm Conference in 1972, which was the very first COP meeting. “Developing countries were considering boycotting the conference. They thought this new concern of 'environment' was one for the rich and would distract from their main concerns, which were the relief of poverty and continuing development” said Maurice Strong, chair of the Stockholm summit. Discussing the environmental challenge in an unequal world brings up many questions, for instance how we negotiate responsibility, costs of adjustments in a world where some have benefited from ecocide. Many of these countries were still trying to catch up with the living standards of the richer countries.

The Brundtland Commission in 1984, COP 1, attempted to address this issue. It was set up by the UN precisely to find a way to manage this tension between developed and developing economies. The reason why the commission is famous is because it coined this notion of sustainable development. Suddenly, the problem between developed and developing economies did not exist anymore. Now there was sustainable development, which accounted for the ‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ The Brutland Report, 1984. Growth and industrialisation could continue in developing nations, but in a manner that did not damage the environment. But as the years go by, we become much more aware of one particular aspect of environmental degradation which is climate change.

COP 2, also known as The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 attempted to address this issue. The main principle of this summit was this notion that there is a common responsibility to do something about climate change. However, this also raised the concern of differentiated responsibility. You cannot expect the rich and the poor to make the same efforts to address climate change. Some nations started the process of industrialisation much earlier and had much more time to pollute their way to wealth while others now have to pay the consequence. The Rio Earth summit tried to set a framework for thinking about sustainable development in the context of climate change.

COP 3, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, also tried to put into practice the common but differentiated responsibility. This was the first-time leader tried to find a framework of tackling climate change which shifted the greatest share of the burden towards rich countries. Their plan to achieve this was by dividing the signatory parties into the annex B and non-annex B countries. The Annex B countries were those that had binding targets, they had to reduce emissions by a given amount because they were a rich and developed country. The Non-Annex B were developing economies, which did not have any targets. They signed the protocols but had no legal obligation to reduce their emissions. Sure, they reduced emissions by 5%, however this was due largely to the dissolving of the USSR. The absence of major emitters like the US, coupled with non-binding agreements for developing countries, who would later become significant emitters themselves, made this Protocol a disappointment.

The Paris Agreement, COP21, signed in 2016 on Earth Day, took the opposite approach. The agreement, adopted by 197 parties, prioritised broad participation through non-binding nationally determined contributions. Both developed and developing countries were not legally bound to accomplish anything. While this inclusivity was positive, this lack of mechanisms for enforcing pledges, led to major emitters like the US and China to continue polluting. This is the approach that the COPs have generally continued to adopt. This approach bypasses the issue of differentiated responsibility by asserting everyone has the same responsibility to mitigate the climate, but nobody is legally obligated to do it.

So, what is the best approach? Should we enforce legal accountability for everyone to fulfil their obligations, make only wealthier nations responsible for climate mitigation, or hold everyone accountable while allowing each nation to determine its own level of responsibility?

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