Ethics, Policy & Environment (Routledge Publishers) will devote a special section of our Fall 2012 issue to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Durban Platform for Enhanced Action and next steps for the climate treaty intended to result from that process.  In addition to publishing these commentaries prior to the next UN climate summit in Qatar, we will also arrange to highlight selected contributions at a side event at the meeting.

As you may know, the Durban Platform was adopted at the last UN climate summit in South Africa in December 2011.  It has started a new working group in the UN’s international climate negotiations process with the mandate of producing a new global climate agreement by 2015 to replace both the Kyoto Protocol and the Cancun Agreements for all 194 parties to the convention.  For this special section we are soliciting 1500 word commentaries on the normative aspects of any part of this endeavor in international policy making, including the new treaty process, its relationship with other existing climate treaties, or the directions it should take in attempting to forge a new agreement which could better take on the significant issues in climate adaptation and mitigation now before us.  For example, while specific reference to issues of equity in the appropriate distribution of mitigation efforts was taken out of the Durban Platform in the last hours of the 2011 meeting, a case could be made for creating a new “equity track” in Qatar.

To ensure quality and balance, we will conduct a preliminary vetting phase.  Short proposals of 500 words for a commentary are invited by June 1, 2012.  Selected commentaries will be due by  July 15, 2012.  Please submit your proposal to our managing editor, Michael Fortini at ethicspolicyenvironment@gmail.com and to our editorial assistant, Elizabeth Hall, at elizabeth.hall@colorado.edu, designating in your e-mail that you wish to contribute a commentary piece to issue 15(3).

If you are not familiar with the unique format of our journal, feel free to read more about us here: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cepe.  In particular you may find of interest the collection of commentaries in issues 14(3) and 15(1) on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please e-mail me at alight1@gmu.edu.  Please feel free to redistribute this.  As usual, please consider us for submitting other work as well.  EPE publishes Feature articles, Target articles, Commentaries, Symposia, and Book reviews.

Andrew Light and Ben Hale

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Andrew Light
Associate Director
Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy
George Mason University
http://ippp.gmu.edu/

Senior Fellow
International Climate Policy
Center for American Progress
Washington, D.C.
phone:  703-993-6530
e-mail:  alight1@gmu.edu

Co-Editor:  Ethics, Policy, and Environment
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=2155-0085&linktype=145