Common but Differentiated Responsibilities

Common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) is a principle of international environmental law establishing that all states are responsible in the face of global environmental destruction, yet not equally responsible. It balances out, on the one hand, the need for all states to take responsibility in the face of global environmental problems, with, on the other hand, the necessity to recognize the wide differences in the levels of economic development; for these, in turn, are linked to the states' contribution to, as well as their ability to address, these problems. It was formalized into international law at the 1992 United Nations (UN) Environment and Development Conference in Rio de Janeiro.

CBDR resolves a tension between two older notions of environmental governance. On the one hand, the idea of a “common responsibility” spoke directly to the notion of “common heritage of mankind,” acknowledged by a 1967 UN resolution that had first emerged as an expression of concern for the loss of natural resources belonging to all (especially maritime, such as whales and tuna). The 1992 UN negotiations were organized around the four key themes of climate change, deforestation, desertification, and biodiversity degradation. All were environmental problems whose global repercussions brought home the need for a collective response, which needed, in turn, to be grounded in a common responsibility. In legal terms, CBDR describes the shared obligation of two or more states toward the protection of a particular environmental resource. On the other hand, the need to establish variegated levels at which different states can effectively enter into a collective response, according to both their capacities and their levels of contribution to the problem, was recognized since the first UN conference on the environment in 1972 (it was featured explicitly in the Stockholm Declaration).

At the practical level, CBDR emerged at the 1992 conference as a compromise between the positions of developed and developing countries with regard to [Page 116]environmental protection. It aimed at bringing about the conditions of environmental governance that, to be effective, needed to be as inclusive as possible. At the ethical level, it is an expression of general principles of equity in international law. It recognizes the historic correlation between higher levels of development and a greater contribution to the degradation of global environmental resources, such as water and air, and enables the sharing of responsibility accordingly. It establishes that developed countries that have been able to develop for longer, unimpeded by environmental restrictions, now need to take a greater share of responsibility.

The various occurrences of the CBDR in international legal texts include the Rio Declaration, where it is enunciated as “Principle 7,” and the Climate Change Convention, together with its 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It was retroactively incorporated into the Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocols on substances that destroy the ozone layer. Practically, it entails the deferral of developing countries' compliance with the objectives of these environmental conventions.

CBDR is not unanimously accepted among developed countries. At the Rio negotiations it was rejected by the United States, who have since conditioned its participation in any restrictive scheme on a specific commitment from developing countries to participate as well (the 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution). As a result of this lack of consensus, CBDR has been relatively sidelined in environmental governance debates.

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