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Cullet, Philippe --- "Common but Differentiated Responsibilities" [2010] ELECD 596; in Fitzmaurice, Malgosia; Ong, M. David; Merkouris, Panos (eds), "Research Handbook on International Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Environmental Law

Editor(s): Fitzmaurice, Malgosia; Ong, M. David; Merkouris, Panos

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201249

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Common but Differentiated Responsibilities

Author(s): Cullet, Philippe

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

8 Common but differentiated responsibilities
Philippe Cullet



Introduction
Equity has been one of the central concerns in international environmental law over the past
couple of decades. Debates have largely focused on the North­South dimension of a number
of international environmental problems and on the need to adopt legal frameworks that foster
substantive equality between developed and developing countries. In particular, attention has
been given to the different contributions that states have made to the degradation of the envi-
ronment and the different capacities that they have to address environmental degradation. In
the case of global warming, for instance, one of the quintessential global environmental prob-
lems, there is a relatively clear link between the contribution to the build-up of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere and the capacity to introduce environmentally friendly technologies.
Debates over equity in the context of global environmental problems are reflected in the
development of an array of measures designed to take into account the special position of
developing countries. These can take the form of differential treatment where different groups
of countries take different commitments or where the implementation of developing coun-
tries' commitments is conditioned upon the implementation by developed countries of their
financial and technology transfer commitments. This can also take the form of softer differ-
ential measures, such as the introduction of contextualisation in commitments that apply to
all countries in the same way, but allow countries a level of flexibility in their implementa-
tion, depending on their specific situation. Differential ...