Boyle, Alan --- "Foreword" [2013] ELECD 713; in Brown, E.L. Abbe (ed), "Environmental Technologies, Intellectual Property and Climate Change" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) x

Book Title: Environmental Technologies, Intellectual Property and Climate Change

Editor(s): Brown, E.L. Abbe

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857934178

Section Title: Foreword

Author(s): Boyle, Alan

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Foreword
Alan Boyle

Climate change represents one of the greatest challenges to international
cooperation the United Nations has ever faced. It is par excellence a
global problem ­ the `common concern' of humanity to use the language
of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),
potentially affecting all states. Negotiations on climate change have
always been difficult because of the complexity of the issues and the
diversity of the interests at stake. Developed states want to keep the costs
down and the timescales long. The newly industrialized economies, such
as China, India and Brazil, want the developed states to show that they
will live up to their commitment to shoulder most of the burden, but the
statistics indicate that the developed states cannot constrain increases in
global temperature on their own.
At best, international regulation based on the UNFCCC and the Kyoto
Protocol provides only a foundation for coordinated action by some
governments and the private sector: the fundamental problem is to secure
a stronger commitment from all parties to take additional measures, and
therein lies the core of the problem. A global solution requires near
global consensus, and that has only come slowly and reluctantly on the
part of some key states. There is some movement by developing
industrialized states, but the developed states are still unable to agree on
a common vision of the way forward. The Durban consensus arrived at in
2012 represents only what is politically feasible, not what is scientifically
necessary or technologically possible. It ...