The regulation of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) is widely seen as an important dimension of global atmospheric pollution control and climate change governance. SLCPs emitted outside the Arctic influence the Arctic atmosphere, Arctic communities, and the rate of ice melt. As an intergovernmental forum that brings together three of the world’s major petroleum producers (Russia, the United States, and Canada), the Arctic Council has a pivotal role in reducing the rate of Arctic warming through SLCP mitigation. This article explores the Arctic Council’s approach to SLCP mitigation. It begins by addressing the current status of black carbon and methane in international legal instruments, and goes on to explore the important regime linkages that are set in place through the Arctic Council’s Framework for Action on Enhanced Black Carbon and Methane Emission Reductions. The article suggests that the Arctic Council provides an experimental platform that may catalyze SLCP regulation not only in Arctic jurisdictions but also in Arctic Council observer states, such as China and India. The transnational and inclusive character of the Arctic Council’s constitutional framework and knowledge-generating mechanisms enables new pathways for global action on climate change and air pollution governance.

This commentary is an update to an article in an earlier issue of Transnational Environmental Law (E. Couzens, ‘Size Matters, Although It Shouldn’t: The IWC and Small Cetaceans. A Reply to Stephenson, Mooers and Attaran’ (2014) 3(2) Transnational Environmental Law, pp. 265–78) on the treatment of small cetaceans by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). That article discussed an unsuccessful proposal submitted by Monaco, at the 64th meeting of the IWC in 2012, for a resolution on highly migratory cetaceans. Monaco renewed its proposal in 2014 and, on that occasion, did generate sufficient support for a resolution to give contracting parties to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling a mandate to initiate debate over small cetaceans in other fora. Following this IWC Resolution, in December 2015, the United Nations General Assembly included a clause proposed by Monaco in its Resolution on Oceans and the Law of the Sea. The nature of international law is such that it is difficult to force change without upsetting a delicate equilibrium. Monaco’s initiative, however, may provide significant momentum towards a solution for what remains the real and under-acknowledged problem that there is virtually no international law applicable to small and/or highly migratory cetaceans.

One question left unanswered by the 2015 Paris Agreement is exactly how the world will meet the daunting technological challenges that lie ahead. This article proposes a global strategy to build up human capital oriented towards two bodies of knowledge: alternative, non-fossil systems of energy generation, delivery and consumption; and a deeper understanding of climate systems that might be geoengineered to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Simply committing funding to climate technology is insufficient; a global climate technology policy must take into account the unique growth properties of human capital, and the conditions under which it can grow.

Human capital should be the focus of an international climate agreement for three reasons. Firstly, the wrong kind of human capital (attached to fossil fuel-related methods of energy generation and consumption) has helped to create an unfavourable political economy for climate policy. Secondly, the right kind of human capital (broader, and building on fundamental understandings of energy systems and climate systems) can create a more favourable political economy for climate policy. Thirdly, the technological changes needed for both mitigation and geoengineering technologies are so profound that a human capital stock must be developed with a conscious focus on radical technological change that can be delivered quickly. While individual countries may pursue an enlightened human capital policy on their own, cooperation at the international level would maximize the scale economies of inventive effort.