South–South approaches to international environmental negotiations: the case of climate change

Climate change has become one of the most crucial global challenges of the 21st century. It was in the 1960s when discussions about global warming found their way to – at first – small groups of physical scientists. The question then was if global warming could scientifically be proven, and if so, what exactly were its causes, and how could it be prevented from reaching dangerous levels. Once human-made global warming became an accepted paradigm, scientific efforts concentrated on mitigation, on necessary steps to check climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, and to slow down deforestation destroying sinks of carbon dioxide (CO2). The Kyoto Protocol (1997) became the major instrument of the mitigation paradigm. Today’s paradigm acknowledges that mitigation, even if complete and immediate, can no longer prevent climate change. In its latest reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlights that climate change is already happening (IPCC 2014). Emphasis has to be given to effective global climate protection, in order to minimise changes to the Earth’s climate and to find ways to adapt to the impacts of climate change