Legal Construction Of The International Carbon Emission Allocation

In recent years,global warming and its environmental impact have become an important issue that can not be ignored by mankind.Facing this global dilemma,in order to ensure survival and development,countries frequently hold international climate conferences,trying to divide the rights and responsibilities of carbon emissions of each country,and discuss carbon allocation and emission reduction plans.However,due to the relationship between carbon emission and social development,coupled with the ’collective action problem’ of climate and environmental issues,the international community has not yet formed a fair distribution scheme acceptable to most countries.At the same time,in the theoretical circle,compared with the allocation of carbon emission,scholars studying climate issues focus more on the sharing of emission reduction responsibilities,and the former can better represent the voice of developing countries.Therefore,from the perspective of the distribution of international carbon emission rights,this paper proposes a legal construction scheme for the distribution of international carbon emission rights based on distributive justice in view of the existing problems in the distribution.This paper is divided into five parts.The first one analyzes the legal basis of international carbon emission rights.International carbon emission rights takes greenhouse gas capacity resources as the object,which determines the exclusivity of the rights and the competition of distribution.Taking mankind as the main body determines the equality of distribution.The attributes of survival rights and development rights determine the necessity of equitable distribution of carbon emission rights.The characteristics and attributes of international carbon emission rights require that their distribution should be based on fairness and justice.Meanwhile,a just distribution of international carbon emission rights is also an inevitable requirement for achieving the target of addressing climate change,the only way to promote climate negotiations and international cooperation,improve the international law on climate.The second part analyzes the rationality and limitations of the four basic principles guiding the allocation of international carbon emission,concluding that neither the grandfather principle and the utilitarian principle which favored by developed countries,nor the historical responsibility principle and the egalitarianism principle supported by developing countries can be used as a single principle guiding the allocation of carbon emission.Therefore,it is necessary to establish the distribution principle of fairness and justice for the fair and just distribution of carbon emission rights.The third part summarizes the international carbon emission allocation mechanism established from the Convention to the Paris Agreement.The international carbon emission allocation has undergone a change from the top-down compulsory emission reduction to the bottom-up allocation scheme of intended contribution.Formed two carbon emission allocation routes dominated by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention and the Conference of the United Nations specialized agencies.In terms of compliance mechanism,there have changes from compulsory compliance to voluntary compliance,and from developed countries as the main body,to developed countries and developing countries jointly undertaking compliance obligations.The fourth part summarizes the existing problems in the distribution of international carbon emission,including the difficulty for countries to reach a consensus on the distribution principle,the serious inequality of discourse power between developed and developing countries in environmental decision-making issues,the lack of compensation mechanism for developing countries,and the lack of legal authority of the existing compliance mechanism.Various factors lead to the international carbon emission allocation scheme is not effective implementation of climate change mitigation targets also face numerous obstacles.The fifth part puts forward suggestions on the legal construction of the international carbon emission right distribution on the basis of distributive justice,analyzing the value importance of security,equality and freedom for the distribution of carbon emission.And on this basis we can put forward the distribution principle of integrated egalitarianism and historical responsibility principle,and regulatory suggestions on improving procedural justice including ethnic participation mechanism and compliance mechanism,to building a fair and just international carbon emission rights distribution model.