Catastrophes - Acts of God

Description:

It is evident that man-made catastrophes or natural "Acts of Gods" have always been instrumental in charting the roadmap of life on earth. Negotiations too are affected by catastrophes. Acts of God could either motivate mutual cooperation in negotiations and sometimes even strain the relationships between members.

On 11 September 2001, by 1000AM New York time there were two huge mounds of rubble and the world had changed forever. Within one month "Operation Enduring Freedom" was initiated in Afghanistan by US and the attention of the world was entirely on the "Global War on Terror". This war still continues! In the year 2003, Iraq was invaded to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. The recent pull out of the Dutch troops from NATO's Iraq operation was potent enough to cause the collapse of Dutch government and add some strain to Dutch ties with USA. The recent sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008 again changed the world by challenging the inherent structure and operations of global financial institutions. The more recent 2010 European sovereign debt crisis threatened the disintegration of the European Union. As the Greece economy sunk further into recession, the EU economic forum remained undecided on the aid package. On one hand German and French government faced wrath of local public for sharing wealth in times of recession and on the other hand they risked isolation within the EU block. Similarly a global Swine-flu pandemic could have also altered the future of the negotiations.

All the aforesaid catastrophes not only effect the power balance in the world but they also alter the individual commitment and concern for concluding them. Thus would certainly affect the climate change negotiation.

Enablers:

-Major natural disaster in China and/or US and/or India causing severe damage
-A new technology to reduce carbon emissions available at low cost
-New and cheap means of harnessing renewable sources of energy
-Depletion of oil
-Major increase in sea level
-

Inhibitors:

- Discovery of a huge oil field (say the size of Saudi fields)
- Another financial crisis
- Another major/world war
- An act of terrorism
- A global pandemic
- Nuclear disaster

Experts:

N/A

Web Resources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/21/dutch-troops-to-pull-out_n_470708.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_attack_on_Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11
http://across.co.nz/WorldsWorstDisasters.html