ABSTRACT
Global climate change is an inconvenient environmental outcome of modern times. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), through its Fourth Technical Assessment Report (AR4), makes a clear scientific warning that “warming of the global climate system is unequivocal,” its impacts are observable, and time is running out to control the upward warming trajectory (IPCC 2007). The certainty of this warning has become even stronger in the latest Fifth AR (AR5), which maintains that it is mainly human action that is responsible for the climate change (IPCC 2013a). Excessive use of fossil-based energy has resulted in the accelerated accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs)—a key determinant for global warming and climate change-in the environment at a level of 400 ppm CO2* at the time this chapter was drafted. Equivalent figures could be much bigger if all of the GHG types were added to that value. By 2010, the world had already exceeded 44 Gigatons (Gt)
11.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 331 11.2 Climate Change Negotiations in General ..................................................... 333 11.3 International Environmental Negotiations Related to Water........................ 336 11.4 Links between Climate Change and Water-Related Negotiations ............... 342 11.5 Bottlenecks of International Negotiations ....................................................344 11.6 Recent Developments and Emerging Paradigms
in International Negotiations ........................................................................ 347 11.6.1 COP Discussions and Post-Kyoto Regime ........................................ 347 11.6.2 Rio+20 and Post-MDGs Development ............................................. 349 11.6.3 New Paradigms in Water Management ............................................ 351
11.7 Conclusions ................................................................................................... 353 References .............................................................................................................. 354
of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emission, which is considered crucial for pegging global temperatures to 2°C or below over the twenty-first century, by a gap of 5 GtCO2e (UNEP 2012).
