You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 10 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
Spec mapping (AQA 7037): Paper 2, §3.2.1 Global Systems and Global Governance — the governance of the oceans and the atmosphere as global commons; the role of UNCLOS and international agreements; the management of the atmosphere including the Montreal Protocol and climate-change agreements (UNFCCC/Paris); the effectiveness of global governance and issues of sovereignty and equity. Synoptic links: the commons and the free-rider problem (Lesson 7), sovereignty and great-power non-compliance (Lesson 10), climate migration (Lesson 5) and climate finance (Lesson 4). This lesson is AO1-rich (UNCLOS zones; the Montreal vs Paris comparison; CBDR) with AO2 (applying commons theory to governance effectiveness) and AO3 (emissions-share and ratification data).
The oceans and atmosphere are the two fluid global commons — flows that respect no border — and therefore the ultimate test of whether sovereign states can cooperate to protect shared life-support systems. This lesson runs a single analytical thread: why has the governance of the ozone layer succeeded spectacularly while the governance of climate change has largely failed? The answer illuminates the conditions under which global environmental governance works.
Key Definition: Ocean and atmosphere governance is the body of international law, agreements and institutions regulating human activity in the seas and air to prevent over-exploitation and environmental degradation. Because there is no world government, it relies on regimes — sets of rules, norms and decision procedures around which state expectations converge (Krasner).
UNCLOS (the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982; in force 1994) is the foundational framework for ocean governance. Its genius is to partition the ocean into zones that balance coastal-state sovereignty against the freedom of the seas.
| Zone | Limit from baseline | Coastal-state rights |
|---|---|---|
| Territorial Sea | 0–12 nm | Full sovereignty; foreign ships have innocent passage |
| Contiguous Zone | 12–24 nm | Enforce customs, immigration, sanitary law |
| Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) | 0–200 nm | Sovereign rights over resources (fish, energy, minerals); others retain navigation freedom |
| Continental Shelf | up to 350 nm if geologically justified | Rights to seabed resources beyond the EEZ |
| High Seas | beyond 200 nm | Open to all — navigation, fishing, research |
| "The Area" | deep seabed beyond jurisdiction | Common heritage of mankind; governed by the ISA |
UNCLOS enshrines freedom of navigation, innocent passage, the common heritage of mankind for the deep seabed (managed by the International Seabed Authority, ISA, in Kingston, Jamaica), an obligation to protect the marine environment, and dispute settlement via the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg.
Yet its weaknesses are instructive: the USA has signed but never ratified UNCLOS (blocked in the Senate), undermining its universality even as Washington invokes it against China; overlapping EEZ claims generate disputes (the South China Sea — Lesson 10); enforcement on the high seas is weak; and it was drafted before the modern challenges of deep-sea mining, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss — gaps the 2023 High Seas Treaty began to fill.
EEZs cover roughly 38% of the ocean — an area comparable to all the Earth's land — and contain perhaps 90% of commercially exploited fish stocks plus major hydrocarbon reserves. France holds the largest EEZ globally because of its scattered overseas territories. Crucially, a single uninhabited rock can generate a 200 nm EEZ, which is why control of tiny features drives outsized disputes (the Spratlys, Senkaku/Diaoyu, Falklands/Malvinas) and why China's artificial-island building (Lesson 10) is so consequential.
The high seas — ~64% of the ocean surface, ~43% of the planet — are the marine commons par excellence, governed by freedom of the seas and therefore acutely vulnerable to Hardin's tragedy (Lesson 7). Threats include overfishing (around a third of stocks over-exploited; bottom trawling wrecking deep-sea habitat), IUU (illegal, unreported, unregulated) fishing worth an estimated tens of billions of dollars annually, plastic pollution (~8 million tonnes entering the oceans each year; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch), and biodiversity loss in barely-explored ecosystems.
The landmark response is the High Seas Treaty (2023) — the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement — adopted after nearly two decades of negotiation. It enables Marine Protected Areas on the high seas, mandates Environmental Impact Assessments, sets rules for sharing the benefits of marine genetic resources (an equity question between rich bio-prospectors and poorer states), and underpins the "30 by 30" goal of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. It is a genuine advance — but only as effective as ratification and enforcement allow.
The deep seabed holds polymetallic nodules rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper — minerals demanded by the energy transition. The ISA has issued exploration contracts over ~1.5 million km². The debate pits green-transition demand and reduced reliance on unstable land suppliers (e.g. DRC cobalt) against the risk of irreversible damage to poorly understood ecosystems via habitat destruction and sediment plumes. Over 20 states (including the UK, France, Germany, New Zealand) now back a moratorium or precautionary pause — a live test of whether the "common heritage" principle will protect or exploit the commons.
The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) is widely judged the most successful international environmental agreement in history — the essential contrast case for understanding climate failure.
Background: In 1985 scientists confirmed an ozone "hole" over Antarctica, caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from refrigeration, aerosols and air-conditioning; ozone loss admits harmful UV-B radiation, raising skin-cancer and cataract rates and damaging ecosystems.
Design: Montreal achieved universal ratification (all 198 UN parties — uniquely), phased out CFCs (by 1996 in developed, 2010 in developing countries), created the Multilateral Fund to finance the transition in poorer countries, and built in regular scientific review that allows tightening (the 2016 Kigali Amendment now phases down HFCs).
Outcome: CFC production has fallen by over 99%; the ozone layer is projected to recover to 1980 levels around 2066; and because CFCs are potent greenhouse gases, the Protocol has also avoided an estimated ~0.5°C of warming — a climate co-benefit.
The Montreal Protocol also has a crucial design feature: it is a "start and strengthen" treaty that evolves with the science. Its Kigali Amendment (2016) went beyond the original ozone purpose to phase down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) — the very substitutes introduced to replace CFCs, which turned out to be potent greenhouse gases. This shows the Protocol functioning as a living regime that corrects its own side-effects and even contributes to climate mitigation (the Kigali Amendment alone could avoid up to ~0.4°C of warming by 2100). It is the gold standard precisely because it combines bindingness, universality, equity finance and adaptive science-based revision — the exact combination climate governance has struggled to assemble.
Climate governance shares the form of Montreal but lacks almost every enabling condition above — which is why it has underperformed.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (Rio Earth Summit, 1992; in force 1994) aims to stabilise greenhouse-gas concentrations to prevent "dangerous anthropogenic interference." Its foundational equity principle is Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR): because developed countries caused most historical emissions, they should lead. Annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs) bring ~200 states together — but the consensus decision rule gives every state, including fossil-fuel exporters, a brake.
The Kyoto Protocol (1997) imposed binding targets on developed countries only — but the USA never ratified it, Canada withdrew, and it excluded fast-growing emitters like China, so it failed. The Paris Agreement (2015, in force 2016) switched to a universal but voluntary model:
Worked AO3 — the "emissions gap": the UNEP Emissions Gap Report quantifies the shortfall between pledged and needed emissions. If keeping to 1.5°C requires global emissions of ~25 GtCO₂e by 2030, but current policies imply ~57 GtCO₂e, the gap is 57−25=32 GtCO₂e — meaning emissions must be more than halved (5732≈56% cut) relative to the current trajectory in just a few years. This single calculation captures why Paris is judged to be falling short: the direction is right (universal pledges) but the magnitude is far too small, and a 56% cut on a business-as-usual path in under a decade is, on current trends, implausible — the quantitative heart of any effectiveness judgement.
graph LR
subgraph SUCCESS["MONTREAL PROTOCOL — succeeded"]
M1["Clear, settled science"] --> M5["Effective regime"]
M2["Few emitters; cheap substitutes"] --> M5
M3["Industry backed the switch"] --> M5
M4["Equity: Multilateral Fund"] --> M5
end
subgraph FAILURE["CLIMATE / PARIS — underperformed"]
C1["Diffuse, every-sector emissions"] --> C5["Weak, voluntary regime"]
C2["Fossil fuels central to economies"] --> C5
C3["Powerful industry resistance"] --> C5
C4["Contested finance & CBDR equity"] --> C5
end
The spec stresses equity, and climate change is profoundly unjust: those who caused least suffer most.
| Country/region | Share of cumulative CO₂ since 1850 (approx.) | Share of current global population (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| USA | ~25% | ~4% |
| EU-27 | ~22% | ~6% |
| Africa (whole continent) | ~3% | ~18% |
Describe / manipulate: The USA's cumulative-emissions share (~25%) is over six times its population share (~4%), giving a "responsibility-to-population ratio" of roughly 425≈6.3. Africa's ratio is 183≈0.17 — it has emitted less than one-fifth of its "population share" of CO₂.
Explain: This quantifies the historical responsibility principle behind CBDR: a handful of early industrialisers caused the bulk of warming, while populous, low-emitting regions (Africa, Small Island Developing States) face the gravest impacts — droughts, floods, sea-level rise — with the fewest resources to adapt.
Evaluate: Cumulative measures embed a value judgement (should historical emissions, some pre-dating knowledge of harm, count?); per-capita current emissions tell a different story (some Gulf states exceed the USA); and consumption-based accounting reassigns China's "export emissions" to Western consumers. The choice of metric is itself political — which is exactly why CBDR and the Loss and Damage Fund are so contested.
Examples of injustice: SIDS (Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Maldives) contribute negligibly yet face existential sea-level threat (Lesson 5's climate migration); Sub-Saharan Africa (~3–4% of emissions) faces severe drought, flood and food insecurity; Arctic indigenous peoples lose traditional livelihoods as the ice retreats (Lesson 7).
Tracing the trajectory of climate diplomacy reveals both the system's persistence and its limits — essential for any effectiveness judgement.
| Milestone | Year | What it did | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rio Earth Summit / UNFCCC | 1992 | Established the framework and CBDR principle | Foundational but no binding targets |
| Kyoto Protocol | 1997 | Binding targets for developed countries only | Failed: US non-ratification, Canada withdrawal, excluded China |
| Copenhagen (COP15) | 2009 | Aimed for a successor to Kyoto | Widely seen as a failure — no binding deal |
| Paris Agreement (COP21) | 2015 | Universal but voluntary NDC model; 1.5–2°C goal | Landmark in scope, but no enforcement |
| Glasgow (COP26) | 2021 | "Phase-down" of unabated coal; methane pledge | Incremental; coal language watered down |
| Sharm el-Sheikh (COP27) | 2022 | Agreed a Loss and Damage Fund in principle | Historic on equity; details unresolved |
| Dubai (COP28) | 2023 | First Global Stocktake; called to "transition away from fossil fuels" | First-ever fossil-fuel mention, but non-binding and hosted by an oil producer |
The arc from Kyoto to Paris is a deliberate shift from "top-down binding" to "bottom-up voluntary" governance. Kyoto's binding-but-narrow model failed because it could not bring the largest emitters inside; Paris's voluntary-but-universal model succeeded in scope (nearly every country participates) at the cost of enforcement. This is the central trade-off in climate governance: legitimacy/participation versus effectiveness/bindingness (Lesson 10). The result is a system that is broad but shallow — universal participation but pledges that still imply ~2.5–2.8°C, far above the goal. The Global Stocktake and five-year "ratchet" are designed to tighten ambition over time, betting that peer pressure and transparency can substitute for enforcement — a wager whose success is not yet proven.
The ocean and atmosphere are not separate commons but a coupled system, and the ocean's role in regulating climate is a crucial, often-overlooked, dimension.
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 10 lessons in this course.