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The Bali Roadmap and Beyond: Opportunities for Australia
(forthcoming in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2008)
Professor Robyn Eckersley
Introduction
The thirteenth conference of the parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Nusa Dua, Bali on 3-15 December, 2007 marked a geopolitical realignment in the global politics of climate change. However, whether this will turn out to be a subtle or seismic shift remains to be seen. For Australia, the Rudd government’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol will serve as the defining moment between ‘before’ and ‘after’ in Australia’s international stance on climate change. The Howard years (1996-2007) represent the ‘before’, marked by unapologetic nationalist bargaining at Kyoto in 1997 followed by a loyal alignment with the Bush administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The ‘after’ under a Rudd Labor government spells the end of the US-Australian ‘coalition of the unwilling’ and Australia’s re-engagement with environmental multilateralism.
The Labor Party had chosen climate change as one of the small handful of policies on which it distinguished itself from the Coalition during the 2007 election campaign. This policy stance capitalised on growing public concern and media interest in climate change ...........
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