Some early discussions have raised concerns that decisions made outside the UNFCCC process may have negative consequences on the legitimacy or credibility of the regime. However, it must be recognized that negotiations in smaller groups could lead to a more positive outcome which can then complement the multilateral process. Smaller group discussions can help in raising mutual awareness for specific regional problems, disseminating best practices and strengthening networking. Equally important, it can help to keep climate change concerns and cooperative frameworks on the agenda. Available for some time is the plentiful academic literature on possible ways to move forward to build the climate change regime. While several institutions such as the World Resources Institute have attempted to survey and capture the diverse interests and views, there have been limited attempts for a similar review within institutions of the ASEAN member countries. As such, there is a lack of discussion on bottom—up approaches or alternatives such as the ‘Contraction & Convergence’ principle to provide a realistic way to improve the UNFCCC approach. What can be observed is that some advanced ASEAN member countries have conducted assessments, but of national interest, and subsequently made voluntary pledges—independently of ASEAN. Moving forward, there has yet to be an assessment on what an individual member country does within ASEAN and what ASEAN as a regional organization is hoping to achieve. The pledges are serious national political commitments indicating a significant shift from business-as-usual. Post 2020 Climate Change regime Formation Suh Yong Chung
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In some respects it should riot be surprising that there are no inter national agreements regarding the distribution of material resources, and that even agreement over common property resources such as fisheries, oceans, and the atmosphere is the subject of fraught negotiation. Nonetheless, principles of equity, vulnerability, and capability are frequently cited and often incorporated to some degree in international relations. But the dominant international institutions - that is the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank are dominated by neo-classical economic ideologies of distribution, thus leaving consideration of justice at the margins. In considering intergenerational distribution, Rawls (ibid.) suggests that each generation should put itself in the place of the next and ask what it could re nab’ expect TO receive_ He presents [his thought experiment so as to identify ‘just savings! Sustainability theorists have suggested that sustainable or fair rates of use of finite resources could be calculated in relation to the rate at which alternative ways of meeting the same needs are created. For example, it might be sustainable and just for one generation to use fossil fuels in the creation of a renewable energy infrastructure able to meet the needs of following generations. This example, of course, is made more complex by the implications of fossil fuel use on climate change, and it is here that consideration of large-scale environmental justice has been developed most. Here, consideration of justice and distributional issues has led to the development of a number of proposals for climate justice, such as Meyer’s (2001) ’Contraction and Convergence’ which is the idea that emissions should not only gradually contract to an overall sustainable level, but also eventually converge upon equal pet- capita levels in all countries.. Despite its apparent simplicity, this concept has yet to win widespread support even from poorer nations, perhaps because it effectively postpones equity to a future date and does not include any compensation for past inequality. Some such as McLaren (2003), have termed these past inequalities ‘climatic or ‘ecological debt’.