Skewed State Priorities thwarting Climate Action

A deeply-rooted modus operandi of how the world has so far attempted to deal with the climate crisis overbearingly involves a discussion amongst the States as stakeholders. Quite naturally, whilst dealing with a transnational issue, countries emerge as an immediately relevant stakeholders. Assumptively, these countries will be better placed to align their domestic and international commitments to resolve the problem. However, this model has consistently failed, given that climate change has attained tags indicative of an exacerbated form: climate crisis, climate emergency and climate breakdown. And this argument does not merely rest on narratives but on events where State Institutions have averred a pernicious tendency of thwarting progress in pursuance of mitigating the crisis. The past month saw reporting on two events which strengthens the proposition that state machineries may often become a hindrance in achieving key international cooperation for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

First, the Swiss Council of States superseded perhaps one of the constituent cases of progressive rights-based climate litigation, Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland. Tagging the court’s decision on holding the State accountable for threatening impact of climate change-induced heatwaves on vulnerable groups, particularly old women, as “inadmissible and disproportionate judicial activism”, the Parliament disapproved of the ruling. Second, a paper assessed the impact of post-war reconstruction in Gaza on the climate crisis and forecasted carbon emissions of around 60 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent. This is distinctive from the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions that have already been released as a result of the ongoing war. More glaringly, the scales of share in emissions disproportionately inclines towards the Israeli onslaught vis-à-vis Gaza’s retaliation.

At a slight glance, the background of these events distinguishes them significantly. In Switzerland, the Parliament responded to a judicial pronouncement which would have had the effect of asserting State responsibility to mitigate the climate crisis for at least the vulnerable sections of citizenry (such as old-aged people and women, among others). In Gaza, however, perhaps a larger nationalism-based principle has been fuelling the war for the last nine months. In this regard, it will not be shocking to assume that no actor involved in the Gaza war considered aggravation of climate change as a deterring factor.

But there is an undercurrent of subordinating climate crisis in both the events by contestably prioritising other principles and concerns. In the Swiss case, preserving separation of powers and keeping a vigil on judicial activism trumped the need for developing a combination of rights which would significantly make the State responsible for protecting its people from the worsening impacts of the climate crisis. In Gaza, war based on nationalism and “State-preservation” seems to have easily justified all the other repercussions. Hierarchisation of State priorities has unjustifiably always placed climate action at the bottom of the pile. Paradoxically, this emerges as an unsurprising but equally shocking manner of reacting to the climate crisis because while these countries are already reeling under the deadly exhibitions of the climate crisis, there seems to be no awakening from the slumber of ignorance and short-sightedness.

And this points to the larger pattern of State action when it comes to climate change mitigation and adaptation. CoPs to the UNFCCC often fail to create State obligations which at least meet the pace (outdoing is already out of the window) of exacerbating climate change because of sheer reluctance to commit to overhauling the lucrative and deeply entrenched fossil-fuel based system, and assuming the forum as an opportune platform to exchange rhetorical blames. Consistency in this pattern of non-ambitious State effort leads to the conclusion that the manner of not switching our priorities has been skewed and wrong all along. And when there are some actors intervening to correct that course, such as the ECtHR in the Swiss case, our conventional priorities may take unjustifiable precedence over transformation and change.