by Fernando Iglesias

August 2009

The effects on the planetary climate and geography – such as the increase of medium temperatures, melting of the polar caps, desertification, increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes and other devastating climatic phenomena – have carried the issue of global warming to the top of the global agenda. It is possible to observe a strengthening of the scientific consensus on the causal importance of the present civilisatory model and the existent energetic matrix in the phenomenon. The planetary awareness of the gravity of the threat increases. The granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown the growing importance of the issue on the world stage.

Although the 2007 UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, (take notice of the name: it doesn’t even mention the global warming issue) has closed with an agreement to negotiate a future agreement – it was actually another failure dressed up as a success. A roadmap whose objectives are either abstract or consigned to footnotes, a budget of 307 million euros to assist the technological change of the underdeveloped world which actually would need billions, and the paradoxical promise of a “Kyoto II” are a poor result in the face of the huge menace climate change poses to humanity. While debates on the climate causes of global warming increase, the failure of the inter-governmental agencies unveils a deeper political root.

Let’s look at the situation: a global public good that belongs to the whole of humanity (the ecosystem) is in deep danger due to irresponsible energy policies carried out – with a different degree of irresponsibility – by most of the nation-states of the world. The reason is obvious: the emission of gases that cause the greenhouse effect is an excellent deal for companies and corporations since negative effects of oil, coal and gas consumption are divided among all human beings while the benefits are entirely taken over by them. Moreover, if we move from the economic to the political actors, the result does not differ: it is convenient for each nation, separately, to maintain a permissive environmental legislation within its frontiers because the emission costs are paid by all countries while the benefits are exclusively taken over by the companies of the pollutant country.

The result of the asynchronic conflict between current world problems and a restricted and territorial notion of national sovereignty has been the clear inability of the nation states, the inter-national organizations and the inter-governmental panels to provide suitable and efficient answers. The consequence of this global asynchronic development may be symbolized by radically different paces: a technological system that advances at the velocity of light, manifested by the internet and in the electromagnetic waves of the global mass-media, an economic system that moves at the velocity of sound, symbolized by global managers that cross the world in subsonic planes, and then a political system that progresses at the velocity of a train, the emblematic device from the early modernity.

It is no accident that in the resulting system which is technologically and economically integrated (global) but politically fragmented (national/inter-national) an agreement on modest objectives such as the Kyoto Protocol (1997) was rejected by the two countries that are the ones mainly responsible for the global emissions: China and the United States. That is why a hypothetical Kyoto II not only lacks a true basis but it is disappointingly insufficient in face of the magnitude of the challenge. Obviously, any single state participating in a hypothetical Kyoto-like agreement would find itself in a disadvantegeous situation in the world market compared with competitors who decide not to opt in. This would reinforce the actual tendency to establish a system of global ecological dumping since within an inter-nationally fragmented system it has its rewards to be the worst of the classroom. Regrettably, at the same time as the global warming keeps advancing, inefficient agreements such as Kyoto’s and inconclusive conferences such as that in Bali calm the global conscience with a false message: the nation states and their rulers are doing something to solve the problem.

One could say that it is the democratic deficit of the current world order which is mainly responsible that we continue to overheat the planet’s climate. The global warming calls into question the elemental rule of representative democracy whose principle it is that all those who are affected by a political decision have the right to participate in it through representatives chosen for that purpose. Who can uphold that this is the case in issues such as global warming and other matters where the future of the world is at stake, such as nuclear proliferation, the international financial system, fight against global terrorism or the increasing global socio-economic inequality? Who can still believe that national governments and leaders, who had been chosen to defend the interests of their country and to respond to their national political and economic clients, can solve these problems in the interest of the global common good? Without changing the inter-national treatment of the global crises no breakthrough will be possible. Who will persuade a delegate from the United States government that it is necessary to reduce the dimensions of cars, a Brazilian that the Amazon forest must be preserved at all costs, or the countries from OPEC that it is intelligent to apply a global tax to the fossil fuels, to name just a few examples? Which delegate of a national executive power would endorse this kind of agreements in the clear knowledge that upon return to his country he would be fired?

In a world where, as George Monbiot wrote, everything has been globalised but democracy, the point is: If democracy is not globalised, civilisation will cease to exist. In this virtual impossibility to achieve effective inter-national agreements, the apocalyptical words from UN’s Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon sounds indeed real: “One path leads to a broad agreement on climate change and the other leads to our extinction”. The impending global crisis caused by global warming indicates that there will be no future for humanity on a planet which is technologically and economically integrated but politically divided in more than two hundred states. Particularly, there will be no future for humanity if nation states continue to defend their ghostly national sovereignty while within their frontiers destructive global phenomena keep going on.

The crisis caused by global warming and the insufficiency of the solutions provided by the inter-governmental agencies so far show that it is overdue to transform the United Nations in order to achieve the objectives the organization was created for. The moment has come for the construction of democratic world institutions that care for the common interests of the world’s citizens and not only for those of the world’s governments. I am talking about a World Parliament. A World Parliament, part of the best dreams of humanity, at least from Tennyson and Victor Hugo, has now revealed to be a vital and urgent need to stop the oppressive mixture of chaos and tyranny that have been brought about by the domination of nationalism and presidentialism over global issues.

Beyond question, the most advanced initiative in the field of the construction of a world parliamentary body with legislative powers on global issues is the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA), launched in April 2007 by the Committee for a Democratic U.N., the World Federalist Movement and a large net of NGOs and members of parliaments from all over the world.

The campaign’s call for a UNPA has been endorsed by over 600 members of parliaments from more than 90 countries. The campaign promises to repeat the great work developed in the 1990’s by the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has lead to the establishment of the ICC in 2002, constituting an important step towards the globalisation of justice.

However, the question is this: What could a UN Parliamentary Assembly do in the field of global warming, once established, if it is initially composed by members of national parliaments and if its capacities are merely consultative? How could it make a contribution that “makes the difference” in relation to – say – the one provided by the UN Conference on Climate Change or the UN Environmental Agency proposed by former French President Jacques Chirac or any other different inter-national proposals given?

What the UNPA can offer is no less than democracy. Since the inability to cope with global warming derives from the democratic deficit of the world order, only a global parliamentary assembly can focus the attention on the political factor that causes the crisis and make a decisive contribution to its solution through a program of successive steps.

Firstly, a UN Parliamentary Assembly wich could be created by a majority resolution of the UN General Assembly according to Article 22 UN Charter, could call for a World Environmental Assembly as Mr. Chirac proposed. This would give the proposal democratic legitimacy and thus make a plan against global warming aimed at replacing the dying Kyoto Protocol by 2012 politically more viable. It should be a global plan (neither inter-national nor inter-governmental) with objectives much more ambitious than those fixed in Bali and that provides for specific punitive measures (in terms of international trade, cash flow, etc.) for the nations (and the companies belonging to those nations) that try to gain competitive advantages by violating its rules. A global political principle gets quite obvious here: to participate in the economic world market you have to respect ecological world regulations. The nations that choose not to participate, invoking their sovereignty, can continue to sell their goods within their sovereign frontiers but they will find protectionist barriers if they try to sell abroad. If the plan of a World Environmental Assembly was supervised by the UNPA and approved by the UN General Assembly, only the veto of one of the five countries permanent members of the Security Council could avoid its global application. What democratic government would face the enormous pressures that would give rise to oppose a plan which was globally elaborated and democratically legitimate? Would a U.S. government face an unpredictable electoral impact on its voters who have a greater sensitivity towards environmental issues than their national government?

If the worst comes to the worst, the resulting protocol could be approved by the rest of the countries with a legitimacy incomparably greater than Kyoto ever had or which would stem from any inter-governmental conference such as that in Bali. The matter of sanctions raised against “rebel states” could be put into the World Trade Organization’s hands under the charge of ecological dumping and violation of fair trade.

Of course, regarding the gradual establishment of a World Parliament and the challenge of global warming, this is not to suggest that a magical solution exists. However, the potential of involving a global body of elected representatives with more democratic methods to deal with conflicts that are unavoidably generated by an increasingly globalized world is not yet sufficiently recognized. The mere existence of a UNPA, its capacity to deal with the global warming issue and its purpose to develop recommendations on such global issues in a democratic, peaceful and consensual way would mean an extraordinary step forward. Probably it would open the way to apply to the resolution of global issues the same recipe that we consider today as irreplaceable in reaching national political decisions: Democracy.

Finally, should the UNPA have success in facilitating a satisfying global reaction to the problem of global warming, it would be easier to turn it into a true World Parliament with permanent operations, direct election of representatives and legislative competences regarding important global issues.Will national governments understand, based on the experience of the European Union, that when they consign competences they cannot perform appropriately themselves to a supranational democratic entity, they actually do not lose power but gain it? Will we move towards a UN Parliamentary Assembly and then to a World Parliament or do we really have to wait for a crisis similar in proportions and consequences to that of the Second World War, a future “world civil war caused by global warming” as it is feared by the UN Secretary-General?