300065 Tracing Inequalities in Climate Change: Vulnarabilities and Ways forward (S) (SoSe 2013)

Global warming is a huge challenge for societies worldwide. However, it is an irony of fate that those who contribute(d) less to man-made climate change, often suffer most from it. Indeed, there exist grave social inequalities between (national / macro-level) and within societies (group and household / micro-level). These inequalities can be traced on several level, reaching from the degree of suffering from climate change (vulnerability), the capacities to cope with and to adapt to climate change, and the power to influence climate policies. It is thereby those who are poor and who face discriminatory inequalities already in their daily lives, who are the most disadvantaged also with regard to climate change – in developing, but also in industrialised countries.

The seminar goes on to investigate whether international human rights are a way forward to mitigate the social inequalities that make some people more vulnerable to climate change and climate policies than others. For example, in 2005 the Inuits of the US and Canada issued a petition against the US to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to blame them for their poor mitigation efforts (reducing CO2 emissions) to combat dangerous climate change, thus threatening their lives and livelihoods. Indeed, this petition triggered a whole new debate on human rights and climate change – something new for the policy field of climate change, which is dominated by carbon counting and market-based approaches.

Requirements for participation, required level

Knowledge in at least one of the following fields is strongly recommended: development studies, climate policies, human rights.

Bibliography

J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley Parks (2006) A Climate Of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy; MIT Press