Transnational Climate Change Governance and the Global South

Alongside intergovernmental climate change negotiations, a groundswell of climate actions by cities, regions, businesses, investors, and civil society groups has emerged. These transnational actors seek to address mitigation and adaptation to climate change; independently, with each other and with governments and international organizations. Many have welcomed transnational climate initiatives as a crucial addition to the formal climate regime, contributing to a growing momentum to act on climate change. However, critics have raised concerns about whether transnational actors are genuinely interested in mitigation and adaptation, or whether they are they are representing business-as-usual as clean and green. Moreover, are transnational climate initiatives appropriately targeted to address needs of both developed and developing countries; do they exacerbate imbalances in global climate governance between the global North and South? This paper explores the multifaceted relation between developing countries and transnational climate governance. It discusses developing country engagement on the basis of their political support for transnational initiatives, their leadership of, and participation in transnational climate initiatives, and the implementation and performance of such initiatives from the perspective of the global South

consequences, causes and policy options

Seeking to contribute to the governance stream of this year’s Berlin Conference, the paper addresses an emerging phenomenon of global environmental governance: the increasing overlap and interplay among institutions that touch upon related subject matters. Presenting one of the first outcomes of the Earth System Governance project, the paper focuses on one specific case of institutional interplay, namely the overlap between the United Nations climate regime and the World Trade Organization (WTO). While parties of the UN climate regime discuss trade-related measures for a post-2012 agreement, WTO parties debate climate-related trade measures. This duplication of debates entails a lack of legal clarity, which may have detrimental implications for the further negotiation and implementation of both regimes. Drawing on neoliberal institutionalism and cognitivism, we identify two reasons for these interplay effects: the constellation of preferences and the lack of consensual knowledge on overlapping issues. Based on a workshop organized jointly with the UN Environment Programme, we developed suggestions to tackle these reasons. Policies could accommodate the lack of knowledge by means of flexible approaches, e.g. default values for border cost adjustments and ‘living lists’ of sustainability criteria for lifting trade barriers. With regard to the constellation of country preferences, a careful linkage of debates across arenas can produce additional trade-offs and break some of the deadlocks in which these discussions have ended up. On the other hand, the paper attends to the caveats and limits of such linkages

Connect the Dots: Managing the Fragmentation of Global Climate Governance

The debate about post-2012 global climate governance has been framed largely by proponents and opponents of the policymaking process established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In light of the proliferation of institutions governing some aspects of climate change, analysts have asked whether a centralized or a polycentric climate governance architecture will be more effective, efficient, equitable, or viable. While these are valid questions, they obscure the fact that global climate governance is already polycentric, or rather: fragmented. This article argues that the more pertinent questions are how to sensibly link the different elements of global climate governance, and what the role of the UNFCCC could be in this regard. We examine these two questions for three aspects of global climate governance: international climate technology initiatives, emerging emissions trading systems, and unilateral trade measures. The article shows that there are strong arguments for coordination in all of these cases, and illustrates the possible role of the UNFCCC. It concludes, however, that possibilities for coordination will eventually be limited by underlying tensions that will plague any future climate governance architecture

Transparency in multilateral climate politics: Furthering (or distracting from) accountability?

This article analyzes the interplay between transparency and accountability in multilateral climate politics. The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for a “pledge-and-review” approach to collective climate action with an “enhanced transparency framework” as a key pillar of the Agreement. By making visible who is doing what, transparency is widely assumed to be vital to holding countries to account and building trust. We explore whether transparency is generating such effects in this context, by developing and applying an analytical framework to examine the link between transparency and accountability. We find that the scope and practices of climate transparency reflect (rather than necessarily reduce) broader conflicts over who should be held to account to whom and about what, with regard to responsibility and burden sharing for ambitious climate action. We conclude that the relationship between transparency and accountability is less straightforward than assumed, and that the transformative promise of transparency needs to be reconsidered in this light

The SDGs and fossil fuel subsidy reform

This short perspective asks what is the role—and added value—of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their associated institutional structures in the international governance of fossil fuel subsidies and their reform? It argues that whilst some progress has been made, notably through developing a methodology to define and measure fossil fuel subsidies, countries have only to a very limited extent followed up through indicator reporting and through their Voluntary National Reviews. Nevertheless, the SDGs can help highlight the various sustainable development dimensions of fossil fuel subsidies and support ongoing efforts to strengthen transparency, thereby indirectly helping to drive reform at the national level

The EU Proposal for a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM): An Analysis under WTO and Climate Change Law

This paper scrutinizes the European Union’s proposal for a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) under the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and climate change law. It first examines the logic behind the CBAM as a border carbon adjustment measure, having due regard to the complex interplay between its stated carbon leakage rationale and its fair competition mechanics. It then dissects the main anticipated features of the CBAM and discusses how they may fare under both WTO law and climate change law. Finally, it identifies the most critical proposed design elements from a legal perspective and discusses possible alternatives or variations that could better align the CBAM with its climate change purpose