Contemporary Global Issues (Edexcel A Level Politics): Revision Note

Human rights and environmental institutions and poverty

• Climate change greatly impacts the poorest and most vulnerable 

  • It intensifies competition for land and water as droughts and floods are making land in many areas of the world less productive

  • Less productive land means less food is produced and poverty increases

  • Climate change forces people to move and these displaced people face food insecurity and instability and women are particularly vulnerable to violence as displaced people

  • Conflict is intensified as vulnerable people compete for limited resources

  • Conflict brings about further environmental damage, poverty and human rights abuses

• There is a deeply interconnected relationship between conflict, poverty, human rights and the environment 

• Environmental institutions such as the  UNFCCC and IPCC were developed by the UN to work toward slowing down climate change and decrease the probability of conflict

Measuring effectiveness

• An interconnected approach provided by these institutions is considered by many to be the best option

State sovereignty and international law enforcement

• It can be argued that state sovereignty supports international law enforcement

  • The state is the most capable actor to protect and enforce human rights laws

    • The mechanisms of enforcement, including judicial and policing forces, are all under the control of the state  

  • Only the state can take international human rights laws and codify them into national law

  • Member states of global governance institutions have the choice to ratify international human rights laws

    • Although soft power may be used to try to persuade them, they are more likely to protect human rights laws that they have supported

  • The state has control over its borders

    • International human rights laws regarding refugees are best enforced by the state

  • Recent global norms about state sovereignty require that the state has a responsibility to protect its citizens

• However, state sovereignty may be considered an obstacle to international law enforcement

  • All of the arguments that state sovereignty supports international law enforcement are subjected to the basic principle that states control what happens within their borders 

  • States are the greatest abusers of human rights

    • State sovereignty limits international laws from being enforced by any other actors

  • Multiple states have ratified human rights laws proposed by global governance and done nothing to enforce them

    • This has often been due to politicisation (using human rights for political gain)

  • Governments may change and attitudes toward the enforcement of international laws can change with them

  • The necessity for global governance to develop Responsibility to Protect (R2P) demonstrates that sovereignty is an obstacle to international law enforcement

Performance of international courts

• International courts are designed to apply international laws in order to provide justice at the global/international level

• The United Nations courts are:

  • The International Court of Justice

  • The International Criminal Court 

• The performance of international courts is assessed in terms of their ability to provide justice, and this is a hotly debated issue

Tackling environmental issues

• Global governance institutions have a role in finding solutions to environmental challenges by acknowledging the complex and interconnected nature of environmental issues

• There are competing views on how best to achieve this

  • The United Nations addresses the complexity of the environment and firmly links it to poverty and conflict. 

  • It established the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) to specifically tackle

    • Climate change

    • Threats to biodiversity 

    • Pollution

    • Other threats to environmental stability 

  • The World Bank takes a slightly different approach and claims it tackles environmental issues by promoting

    • Climate change resilience

    • Natural resource management 

    • Sustainable development practices 

    • Pollution reduction

  • The World Health Organisation tackles environmental issues by focusing on the impact they have on human health. They tackle

    • Access to clean water 

    • Clean air

    • Stable natural environment, including a stable food supply

• There are also competing views by multiple actors and stakeholders regarding these approaches

  • Shallow green ecology vs deep-green ecology

    • Many of the approaches taken by global governance fall into the shallow green ecology approach, meaning the purpose is to benefit humanity rather than fostering a deep respect for the environment where all life is equal

  • Many question the true sustainability of approaches taken by financial global governance

    • Economic growth and consumerism lead to a greater strain on natural resources and the environment in general

• The tragedy of the commons is relevant

  • Economic development is often prioritised by global governance, particularly in less developed states

  • This negatively impacts the shared global environment.

International agreements

• The United Nations Convention Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has organised several global environmental governance agreements with varying degrees of success