Towards a global plastics treaty: emerging questions of human rights and global ethics in the Net Zero transition

The second of our annual Human Rights Lectures with speaker Joshua Lincoln.

Ahead of the final round of negotiations in Busan on an international legally binding treaty on plastic pollution, what are the key human rights issues of the plastics crisis? This lecture will review questions of human rights and global ethics including around pollution, health, affected populations and the polluter pays principle emerging in the negotiations. These questions tie in to a wider set of issues associated with the accelerating Net Zero pivot, for example the shift away from fossil fuels to minerals-intensive clean energy, climate finance, and the evolving concept of a just transition. Taken together, they may, it is suggested, impact the direction of human rights itself in the coming decades.

About the speaker

Joshua Lincoln (PhD) is currently a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Law and Governance (CILG) at the Fletcher School of global affairs, Tufts University, where he focuses on global governance, sustainability and the Net Zero transition. Drawing on twenty-five years of experience across four continents, he is an advisor to heads of government and organizations, sits on the board of directors of the Global Governance Forum and the advisory board of the Cambrian Futures Group, and is a member of the New Carbon Economy Consortium.

At CILG, Joshua is pursuing several research and writing projects on pluralism in multilateralism, global governance, sustainability and the Net Zero transition. He is co-investigator with Ian Johnstone of a project on the 2022-2025 intergovernmental negotiations for a global plastics treaty. He is also researching the governance implications of the global decarbonization shift for a book project under a small grant from the Global Challenges Foundation and works more generally on multilateralism, geopolitics, and treaty-making in the context of the Net Zero transition.

His recent publications include “Carbon, Confusion and Conflict – Global Governance Implications of the Net-Zero Energy Transition,” in Global Governance and International Cooperation – Managing Global Catastrophic Risks in the 21st Century, Eds Richard Falk, Augusto Lopez-Claros (Routledge, 2024), ‘Abdu’l-Bahā ‘Abbās, A Life in Social and Regional Context (Idra, 2023); and “Global Governance in an Era of Pluralism,” Global Policy, Vol 13 no 4 (2022). He also writes periodically for World Politics Review.

From 2013 to 2019 he served as Secretary-General of the Bahá’í International Community. Based at the Bahá’í World Centre, he represented the international governing council of the Bahá’í community in its external affairs. Between 2000 and 2013, he worked at the United Nations, including as Chief of Staff to the Director-General of the UN Office at Geneva and as Senior Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General in New York. He also worked for eight years in mediation and preventive diplomacy with the UN Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission and in UN peacekeeping and peacemaking field missions in Ethiopia/Eritrea and North/South Sudan. Earlier, as an academic/policy researcher, he carried out projects for universities, think tanks and institutions including the World Bank. He holds a BSFS from Georgetown University in International Politics, and both a MALD and a PhD in International Relations from Tufts University.

About the respondents

The respondents to the talk are Professor Myles Allen (Head of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Department of Physics, and Professor of Geosystem Science, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford) and Professor Kate O’Regan (Director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights in Oxford)

Myles Allen has served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, most recently as a Coordinating Lead Author on the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C. He was awarded the Appleton Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics “for his important contributions to the detection and attribution of human influence on climate and quantifying uncertainty in climate predictions”, featured on the BBC’s “Life Scientific” as “the physicist behind net zero”, was awarded a CBE “for services to climate change attribution, prediction and net zero” and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

His research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to climate change and risks of extreme weather. In 2005, Allen introduced the notion of a finite carbon budget, implying net zero emissions of carbon dioxide are necessary to halt global warming. He has been working on the implications ever since, most recently on the case for Geological Net Zero, or a balance between ongoing production of carbon dioxide from geological sources with carbon dioxide capture and geological storage.

Kate O’Regan is the inaugural Director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and a former judge of the South African Constitutional Court (1994 – 2009). In the mid-1980s she practiced as a lawyer in Johannesburg in a variety of fields, but especially labour law and land law, representing many of the emerging trade unions and their members, as well as communities threatened with eviction under apartheid land laws.  In 1990, she joined the Faculty of Law at UCT where she taught a range of courses including race, gender and the law, labour law, civil procedure and evidence. Since her fifteen-year term at the South African Constitutional Court ended in 2009,  she has amongst other things served as an ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court of Namibia (from 2010 – 2016), Chairperson of the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry into allegations of police inefficiency and a breakdown in trust between the police and the community of Khayelitsha (2012 – 2014), and as a member of the boards or advisory bodies of many NGOs working in the fields of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and equality.

Professor Nazila Ghanea will chair the event.

This event is open to the public.

If you wish to attend in person please book here.

Human Rights Lecture Tickets, Wed 13 Nov 2024 at 17:30 | Eventbrite

If you wish to attend online please use the link below:

Human Rights Lecture Tickets, Wed 13 Nov 2024 at 17:30 | Eventbrite

Refreshments will be served from 5 pm; the lecture will begin at 5.30 pm. Post-event drinks will be served in the Hub from 6.30 pm.

This event will be photographed and filmed. If you do not wish to appear in the photographs/footage, please let the photographer/videographer know.

Should you have any further queries, or be unable to attend after booking, please contact events@kellogg.ox.ac.uk

Open to: the public,