Marie Pla

Qui est responsable du changement climatique ? Il existe plusieurs manières de calculer la responsabilité des Etats dans le changement climatique : les émissions actuelles de gaz à effets de serre (GES), mais l’on peut également rapporter ces émissions à la population du pays. En effet, un pays comme la Chine est l’un des plus gros émetteur de GES, mais un Chinois émet moins qu’un Australien si l’on répartit les émissions par habitant . On peut également calculer les émissions en fonction de la consommation du pays, et non de sa production : ainsi, si les émissions en France ont décliné sur les 20 dernières années, elles ont en revanche bondi de 15% si l’on regarde la consommation des Français sur la seule période 2000 et 2001 . Enfin, l’on peut regarder les émissions historiques ou bien leurs variations depuis 1990, ce qui est le choix fait par le Protocole de Kyoto.

Ces différents calculs jouent un rôle clef dans la définition du rôle à jouer ensuite dans les efforts de lutte contre le changement climatique selon le Principe du Pollueur Payeur (PPP). Si l’on prend l’exemple de la consommation, cette approche rend l’acheteur responsable des émissions de GES liées à sa consommation : par conséquent, un Anglais achetant un produit chinois coûteux en termes d’émissions devrait supporter ce coût.

Parmi ces options, l’une fait particulièrement débat : il s’agit de la notion de responsabilité historique, présente très tôt dans les débats liés au climat. Celle-ci n’est consacrée par aucun texte, mais fut proposée par le Brésil aux cours des discussions d’élaboration du Protocole de Kyoto en 1997. Il s’agirait que « les réductions d’émissions au sein des pays de l’OCDE soient réparties au prorata de leurs émissions accumulées de GES depuis 18 » . Bien que l’idée de responsabilité historique soit antérieure à cette date, elle deviendra rapidement connue comme la « proposition brésilienne ».

Ce concept va susciter de nombreuses controverses. A partir de quand commence-t-on à calculer l’émission de gaz à effets de serre ? Cette question pose un nombre de problèmes, à commencer par celui des données et de l’élaboration d’un modèle de calcul adéquat. Les problèmes techniques soulevés vont permettre d’enfermer un temps celle-ci dans des considérations scientifiques.

Afin d’analyser la notion de responsabilité historique, nous suivrons une approche chronologique pour comprendre l’évolution de son rôle dans les négociations climatiques. Nous verrons que le débat autour de la proposition brésilienne est d’abord limité à la sphère scientifique avant de se politiser (I). La définition de l’équité dans lutte contre le réchauffement climatique, et par conséquent la place qu’y occupe la responsabilité historique redéfinit progressivement l’échiquier des négociations climatiques (II).

Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) refers to the activities involved in removing waste from cities (street sweeping, household waste, etc.) and treating it in order to prevent it from harming citizens’ health and the environment. Though historically provided by local governments, a number of public services – including MSWM – were delegated to private companies. It is particularly true in the case of Latin America during the 1980s, where Structural Adjustment Plans (SAPs) pushed for privatization.

Meanwhile, urban poverty in Latin America increased by 50% between 1980 and 1986 according to ILO research , and it is argued that “the main single cause of increases in poverty and inequality during the 1980s and 1990s was the retreat of the state”  pushed by SAPs. In any case, this surge combined with employment scarcity implies that a significant number of citizens had to resort to the informal realm to make a living. Scavenging or waste picking is an activity usually performed by very underprivileged populations; hence we can infer that a percentage of the new urban poor turned to this profession to survive.

The story is often told as follows: the privatization of municipal solid waste management lead to social conflicts between public actors, informal recyclers and private companies over the contentious issue of who owns waste, as exemplified by the Bogota 2012 waste crisis – which we will analyse later on.
Indeed, while private companies’ performance is assessed based on their collection rates, waste pickers make a living off finding and selling waste; therefore their diversion of waste reduces the quality of the company’s service delivery. However waste pickers have long been denied access to waste, and often point to this being a difficulty even when the service is being delivered by public authorities.

Therefore this struggle does not begin with the privatization of waste management (though it might worsen it) but I believe that it gives otherwise scattered workers a cause to unite against. Labor activist Vinod Shetty indeed stated that waste pickers in Bombay were very individualistic and were competing against one another in their search for valuable waste rather than trying to organise.
I thus argue that the privatization of public services is not the cause of the social conflicts, but rather that it was the external shock that provided a window of opportunity for informal waste pickers to organize and demand policy change. The literature on informal waste management is dominated by pro-labour advocacy and anti-neoliberal transformations: it is therefore necessary to acknowledge this considerable influence on the way the issue is framed if we wish to analyse it.

The challenges China has to face with regards to waste management are massive: the increase in municipal solid waste management throughout the country is the fastest ever seen in history (Bouanini, 2013), growing at a pace of 10% per year. China now produces about 30% of the world’s municipal solid waste (Yi Xiao et al., 2007). Beijing produced 20,000 tons of garbage a day in 2009 and was on track to exceed its twenty-three waste treatment plants’ capacity within the coming years (Shapiro, 2012).

Waste is an insightful topic, as it illustrates societal evolutions and lifestyle transitions, as well as the governance capacities that the latter demand. This paper aims at accounting for Beijing’s municipal solid waste management at each step: generation, collection and transport, and disposal. This paper combines data from a month-long field research in Beijing with the existing literature on municipal solid waste management issues. Though literature on China’s environmental issues is plentiful, data remains scarce: the Beijing Solid Waste Administration Department does carry out investigations on the composition of municipal solid waste but it is rarely shared with the public (Yi Xiao et al., 2007). I here use a restrictive definition of municipal solid waste by focusing on waste generated exclusively by households, which allows me to reflect upon a unique waste stream.

Congo is undeniably a leading country in the production of music in Africa. The ties between politics and music in Kinshasa have long been studied (Bob White, 2008), and yet too often dissociated with the politics of the everyday (Biaya, 1996). This paper is an attempt at bridging this gap by adopting a thematic approach to the production of music between 1950 and 1970, analysing how the everyday is portrayed in Congolese rumba, the specific attention given to women in the music, and finally the complex relationship between music and politics.