Danube Youth Conference

The modern climate regime emerged from the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which enshrined the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities," acknowledging that industrialized states bear greater historical responsibility for cumulative emissions. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol assigned binding targets only to developed economies, but its limited reach and the rapid growth of emerging economies exposed the difficulty of translating that principle into enforceable obligations. The 2015 Paris Agreement shifted the architecture to nationally determined contributions, asking every state to act while leaving the question of who pays — and how much — largely unresolved. That unresolved question has dominated COP negotiations ever since. At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, parties agreed to establish a Loss and Damage Fund, formally operationalized at COP28 in Dubai, where states also adopted the first Global Stocktake and language on "transitioning away" from fossil fuels. COP29 in Baku produced a contested New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance, with developing states arguing the pledged figure fell far short of need. Meanwhile, the 2024 ICJ advisory proceedings on states' climate obligations and the 2022 General Assembly recognition of the right to a healthy environment (Resolution 76/300) have pulled climate squarely into the human rights and state-responsibility domain. Today the debate centers on how to distribute the burden fairly: whether wealthy historical emitters owe reparative finance, how to bring large current emitters into more ambitious commitments, how to protect vulnerable and displaced populations, and how to reconcile fossil-fuel-dependent economies with the 1.5°C target. "Power" and "responsibility" cut multiple ways — historical, per capita, capability-based, and vulnerability-based — and committee members must weigh competing definitions of climate justice against the geopolitical realities of energy security and economic transition.