Latest News
Mediation and Tackling 'Heated Arguments'
Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear – This is the best line to explain climate change in the year 2020. It has been almost more than a year since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rolled out its report ‘Global Warming of 1.5°C’ which empirically estimated that we have only 12 years as a collective global society to stop this menace we created. The world as of now is currently 1.0°C of global warming above the pre-industrial levels, which is the required level. At the current growth rate, it is likely to reach the devastating 1.5°C that has been warned by the IPCC by the end of the year 2030. Climate change is currently taking over the work of the topographers. It is redrawing the map of our world – extending our ocean lines, realigning deserts and even changing the location of rainfall.
The primary cause of global warming are industries and the effluents that flow out of them. On the contrary, the world in the past wanted so much urbanisation that what our forefather created is what is destroying us today! Yet we cannot live in a world without these industries, as industrialisation is the key to evolution. As Charles Darwin rightly said man must not be stagnant but must always be in a state of evolution. Thus, when two contrary forces strike against each other, what do we do? Likewise, when two sovereign countries fight for territory, they eventually establish a neutral buffer zone.
The legal buffer zone for industrialisation and climate change is mediation. Now what is mediation? Mediation is the process of negotiating a certain dispute with the assistance of a neutral and impartial third party. Unlike arbitration, where the arbitrator makes a decision, in mediation both the parties do not resolve the dispute until and unless both the parties agree to it. The key highlight is that both parties amicably come to a middle ground in which both parties are satisfied. Now, connect this to climate change. One side would be any environmental activist group or non-governmental organisation advocating against climate change and the other side would be the industries who have causation effects of climate change. When parties of such calibre clash, it results in “heated” arguments (sometimes even 1.5°C above the required level). When these two parties entering into mediation, both sides can build flexible agreements that will help tackle climate change by reduction of pollutants from these industries. These agreements have to be carefully crafted so that there is sufficient room for manoeuvring to ensure that the industries are viable even as climate changes. In this way both parties benefit from the settlement and does not leave room for anyone to be the aggrieved party. The mediators for such mediation must have extensive environmental and geographical knowledge to tackle such problems on both technicality and rationality. They must ensure peace negotiations and sustainable mediated agreements in light of climate change. In this way we can effectively cool down both the infuriated parties as well as the global temperature.
This solution must also be enforced on a global scale. The United Nations Convention on International Settlement Resulting from Mediation, also known as the Singapore Convention on Mediation is one of the missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of global activism against climate change. This 2019 convention addresses the international dispute resolution system which enhances cross-border enforceability of mediated settlements. It can effectively put a check on large multi-million-dollar industries that affect our earth through the process of international mediation.
Mediation, therefore is one of the many keys to our road to a sustainable future. It eliminates all the lengthy legal nuances, cuts straight to the point and doesn’t waste the precious time we are running out of. At the end of such mediation both parties get what they want and all 7.5 billion people on this earth also get what they want – reversing the effects of climate change.
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rolled out its report ‘Global Warming of 1.5°C'
- Mediation is the process of negotiating a certain dispute with the assistance of a neutral and impartial third party.
- At the end of such mediation both parties get what they want and all 7.5 billion people on this earth also get what they want – reversing the effects of climate change.
