This workshop was hosted by Climate Strategies and Konrad Andenauer Stiftung on March 2nd in Brussels.
Historical responsibility has always been a difficult element within climate negotiations and this could intensify as climate impacts become more severe, developing countries face mounting pressure to take mitigation action, and the UNFCCC workstream on loss and damage is reviewed in 2016. Although the Paris agreement formalized a flexible approach to differentiation, these underlying tensions remain. The challenge is to find ways of recognizing historical responsibility, while increasing solidarity in the face of climate impacts and facilitating ambitious climate action globally. This challenge is not easy. Tensions about historical responsibility are deeply rooted and can be highly divisive. How might the international community recognize historical responsibility while facilitating forward-oriented and country-driven climate action by all parties? This project explores one possible set of tools developed specifically for managing this kind of conflict – transitional justice processes. Read here our first paper on Transitional Justice in the Climate Context?
Despite differences in context, transitional justice processes offer a wealth of experience and practical tools for productively managing tensions between historical responsibility and future-oriented desires for deeper mitigation. This workshop was part of a larger Climate Strategies project that aims to a) identify which if any tools and insights that have been developed for transitional justice could be applied to the climate context, b) develop policy-relevant proposals for the application of the tools judged as appropriate and useful. Read CDKN’s Ari huhtala’s blog here.
Presentations from the Workshop
Sonja Klinsky_Support Institutions
Following the First scoping workshop in September, this second one-day workshop aimed to develop politically oriented, concrete proposals relevant to the international climate context based on lessons and tools from transitional justice. This second workshop was integral to the development of a politically relevant and theoretically sound proposal that will explicitly engage with the ongoing debates about the relationship between historical responsibility and future-oriented climate policy.
This workshop is part of a Climate Strategies project funded by the KR Foundation.
