Stefano Nespor

Il «Paris Outcome», approvato a Parigi nel dicembre del 2015 dalla Conferenza delle Parti che hanno ratificato la Convenzione quadro sul cambiamento climatico del 1992, e costituito da due documenti separati: un accordo e una decisione. Il primo ė l’unico documento vincolante per le parti e sostituisce il Protocollo di Kyoto, rivelatosi per molte ragioni fallimentare gia nel corso del suo primo (e ultimo) periodo di impegno. Il contributo, dopo aver brevemente ricostruito la storia dei negoziati che hanno posto le basi del Paris Outcome, espone gli aspetti piu importanti e innovativi dell’Accordo e si sofferma sulle modalita prescelte per raggiungere gli obiettivi fissati, basate sulla volontaria assunzione di impegni ambiziosi da parte degli Stati, il cui rispetto viene garantito non da sanzioni in caso di inadempienza, ma dal rispetto di obblighi di trasparenza e informazione.

I. INTRODUCTION Thinking about the third generation of international environmental law means trying to forecast the future. Many assume that this is an impossible task and that the rule "no prophecy, especially for the future" is to be strictly observed.(1) But it is an activity which many groups love: economists, political scientists, and social researchers on the one hand; environmentalists and environmental lawyers, on the other. However there is a difference between the two groups. For the expert of the first group, the future is not necessarily worse than the present: it could even be better. On the contrary, environmentalists and environmental lawyers constantly imagine the future ranging from bad to very bad. This attitude is not a new development. It is deeply rooted in environmental thinking. Beginning with the prediction of Malthus in 1798 that starvation in Great Britain was imminent, there has been an endless chain of predictions of catastrophe concerning irrev...

... Introduzione: il Protocollo di Kyoto è intrato in vigore. Autores: Stefano Nespor; Localización: Rivista giuridica dell' ambiente, ISSN 0394-2287, Nº 1, 2005 , págs. 1-6. Fundación Dialnet. Acceso de usuarios registrados. Acceso de usuarios registrados Usuario. Contraseña. Entrar ...

In the words of the editors of the book, today’s world is ‘‘more complex, more diffuse and at first sight more chaotic’’ (p. 267). At first sight, one might observe that there is no need to write a book to reach this conclusion: in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire (but we might go back even farther in time) this is a constantly returning thought (like the other one that ‘‘we live in a time of crisis’’). I don’t know any time in the past where you would find someone joyfully observing that he is living in a simpler and more orderly world. I must also admit that I am slightly annoyed when somebody adopts the recurring topos about the ‘‘complexity’’ of the present world. My usual reply is that the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, studying the discoveries at the Burgess Shale at the beginning of last century (in his superb Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History), showed that there is a path of evolution going from complexity to simplicity. To put it simply: are we sure that today’s world is more complex than the feudal world of the twelfth century? These considerations might suggest that I disliked the book. That is not the case; I liked it. The aim of the book—the outcome of a ten-year European research program, the Global Governance Project, involving many important institutions and more than forty researchers—is to clarify what is global environmental governance—it being far from certain, after many years, the meaning of both governance and of global governance.