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1.
Whereas the US President signed the Kyoto Protocol, the failure of the US Congress to ratify it seriously hampered subsequent international climate cooperation. This recent US trend, of signing environmental treaties but failing to ratify them, could thwart attempts to come to a future climate agreement. Two complementary explanations of this trend are proposed. First, the political system of the US has distinct institutional features that make it difficult for presidents to predict whether the Senate will give its advice and consent to multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and whether Congress will pass the required enabling legislation. Second, elected for a fixed term, US presidents might benefit politically from supporting MEAs even when knowing that legislative support is not forthcoming. Four policy implications are explored, concerning the scope for unilateral presidential action, the potential for bipartisan congressional support, the effectiveness of a treaty without the US, and the prospects for a deep, new climate treaty.

Policy relevance

Why does the failure of US ratification of multilateral environmental treaties occur? This article analyses the domestic political mechanisms involved in cases of failed US ratification. US non-participation in global environmental institutions often has serious ramifications. For example, it sharply limited Kyoto's effectiveness and seriously hampered international climate negotiations for years. Although at COP 17 in Durban the parties agreed to negotiate a new agreement by 2015, a new global climate treaty may well trigger a situation resembling the one President Clinton faced in 1997 when he signed Kyoto but never obtained support for it in the Senate. US failure to ratify could thwart future climate agreements.  相似文献   

2.
In order to alleviate the threat of global climate change, coordinated international action is needed. This cooperation should include multilateral agreements and new economic initiatives to help implement measures that will slow the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere due to tropical deforestation and fossil-fuel use. An international market in environmental services can help to safeguard the Earth's climate and foster economic development through a North-South transfer of financial resources.We suggest international carbon-emission offsets (ICEOs) as a means by which international markets, under a policy umbrella such as a multilateral climate-protection treaty, could trade carbon-saving services. Such a market would provide a currency for rewarding actions that reduce global carbon emissions, allowing carbon emitters to seek the least expensive ways to reduce emissions. This currency would transfer cash and/or debt relief from industrialized nations to developing nations, allowing the developing nations to profit from the use of clean energy technologies and the protection, rather than depletion, of tropical forests.  相似文献   

3.
Global sustainability governance is marked by a highly fragmented system of distinct clusters of international organizations, along with states and other actors. Enhancing inter-organizational coordination and cooperation is thus often recognized as an important reform challenge in global sustainability governance. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by the United Nations in 2015, thus explicitly aim at advancing policy coherence and institutional integration among the myriad international institutions. Yet, have these goals been effective in this regard? We assess here the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on the network structure of 276 international organizations in the period 2012–2019, that is, four years before and four years after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals. The network structure was approximated by analyzing data from the websites of these 276 international organizations that were joined by more than 1.5 million hyperlinks, which we collected using a custom-made web crawler. Our findings are contrary to what is widely expected from the Sustainable Development Goals: we find that fragmentation has in fact increased after the Sustainable Development Goals came into effect. In addition, silos are increasing around the 17 SDGs as well as around the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.  相似文献   

4.
The post-agreement period typically is characterized by negotiations between various stakeholders to reach mutually beneficial and acceptable means to achieve national implementation of, and compliance with, treaty provisions. National ratification of international environmental agreements is often the first subprocess of these ‘postagreement negotiations’. This article places ratification negotiations within the larger conceptual context of postagreement negotiations, with the goal of understanding and explaining problems of treaty Implementation. An empirical analysis reveals that delay in national ratification of environmental agreements is a chronic problem, but is worse for complex, multi-issue treaties. Strong public concern over local environmental issues, low quality of life, low national wealth, and low public research and development expenditures for environmental protection contribute to ratification delay. Ultimately, the authors are interested in identifying ways of improving the international negotiation process that initiated these later problems in implementation. Recommendations are offered in this regard.  相似文献   

5.
Joseph E. Aldy 《Climatic change》2014,126(3-4):279-292
An extensive literature shows that information-creating mechanisms enhance the transparency of and can support participation and compliance in international agreements. This paper draws from game theory, international relations, and legal scholarship to make the case for how transparency through policy surveillance can facilitate more effective international climate change policy architecture. I draw lessons from policy surveillance in multilateral economic, environmental, and national security contexts to inform a critical evaluation of the historic practice of monitoring and reporting under the global climate regime. This assessment focuses on how surveillance produces evidence to inform policy design, enables comparisons of mitigation effort, and illustrates the adequacy of the global effort in climate agreements. I also describe how the institution of policy surveillance can facilitate a variety of climate policy architectures. This evaluation of policy surveillance suggests that transparency is necessary for global climate policy architecture.  相似文献   

6.
Remote sensing data have been proposed as a potential tool for monitoring environmental treaties. However, to date, satellite images have been used primarily for visualization, but not for systematic monitoring of treaty compliance. In this paper, we present a methodology to operationalize the use of satellite imagery to assess the impact of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. The approach uses time series analysis of landscape pattern metrics to assess land cover conditions before and after designation of Ramsar status to monitor compliance with the Convention. We apply the methodology to two case studies in Vietnam and evaluate the success of Ramsar using four metrics: (1) total mangrove extent; (2) mangrove fragmentation; (3) mangrove density; and (4) aquaculture extent. Results indicate that the Ramsar Convention did not slow the development of aquaculture in the region, but total mangrove extent has remained relatively constant, primarily due to replanting efforts. Yet despite these restoration efforts, the mangroves have become fragmented and survival rates for replanting efforts are low. The methodology is cost effective and especially useful to evaluate Ramsar sites that rely mainly on self-reporting methods and where third parties are not actively involved in the monitoring process. Finally, the case study presented in this paper demonstrates that with the appropriate satellite record, in situ measurements and field observations, remote sensing is a promising technology that can help monitor compliance with international environmental agreements.  相似文献   

7.
Luke Kemp 《Climate Policy》2016,16(8):1011-1028
The issue of US ratification of international environmental treaties is a recurring obstacle for environmental multilateralism, including the climate regime. Despite the perceived importance of the role of the US to the success of any future international climate agreement, there has been little direct coverage in terms of how an effective agreement can specifically address US legal participation. This article explores potential ways of allowing for US legal participation in an effective climate treaty. Possible routes forward include the use of domestic legislation such as section 115 (S115) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) and the use of sole–executive agreements, instead of Senate ratification. Legal participation from the US through sole–executive agreements is possible if the international architecture is designed to allow for their use. Architectural elements such as varying legality and participation across an agreement (variable geometry) could allow for the use of sole–executive agreements. Two broader models for a 2015 agreement with legal participation through sole–executive agreements are constructed based upon these options: a modified pledge and review system and a form of variable geometry composed of number of opt-out, voting-based protocols on specific issues accompanied by bilateral agreements on mitigation commitments with other major emitters through the use of S115 and sole–executive agreements under the Montreal Protocol and Chicago Convention (‘Critical Mass Governance'). While there is no single solution, Critical Mass Governance appears to provide the optimum combination of tools to effectively allow for US legal participation whilst ensuring an effective treaty.

Policy relevance

This article provides some recommendations on how to create an effective, legally binding treaty that allow for US legal participation without Senate approval. Given the recent election of a Republican majority in the US Senate and Congress, increasing willingness of the President to utilize his executive powers, as well as a strong shift in negotiations to appease US interests, the insights of this research are timely and relevant to delegations and other United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) actors. It will also be of use to domestic US actors involved with climate policy by illustrating how to allow for effective and sustainable US multilateral engagement that bypasses domestic political gridlock.  相似文献   


8.
What are the guiding principles of contemporary international governance of climate change and to what extent do they represent neoliberal forms? We document five main political and institutional shifts within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and outline core governance practices for each phase. In discussing the current phase since the Paris Agreement, we offer to the emerging literature on international neoliberal environmental governance an analytical framework by which the extent of international neoliberal governance can be assessed. We conceptualize international neoliberal environmentalism as characterized by four main processes: the prominence of libertarian ideals of justice, in which justice is defined as the rational pursuit of sovereign self-interest between unequal parties; marketization, in which market mechanisms, private sector engagement and purportedly ‘objective’ considerations are viewed as the most effective and efficient forms of governance; governance by disclosure, in which the primary obstacles to sustainability are understood as ‘imperfect information’ and onerous regulatory structures that inhibit innovation; and exclusivity, in which multilateral decision-making is shifted from consensus to minilateralism. Against this framework, we argue that the contemporary UNFCCC regime has institutionalized neoliberal reforms in climate governance, although not without resistance, in a configuration which is starkly different than that of earlier eras. We conclude by describing four crucial gaps left by this transition, which include the ability of the regime to drive adequate ambition, and gaps in transparency, equity and representation.  相似文献   

9.
With the publication of the IPCC Special Report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS), CCS has emerged as a focal issue in international climate diplomacy and energy collaboration. This paper has two goals. The first goal is to map CCS activities in and among various types of intergovernmental organisations; the second goal is to apply International Relations (IR) theories to explain the growing diversity, overlap and fragmentation of international organisations dealing with CCS. Which international organisations embrace CCS, and which refrain from discussing it at all? What role do these institutions play in bringing CCS forward? Why is international collaboration on CCS so fragmented and weak? We utilise realism, liberal institutionalism and constructivism to provide three different interpretations of the complex global landscape of CCS governance in the context of the similarly complicated architecture of global climate policy. A realist account of CCS's fragmented international politics is power driven. International fossil fuel and energy organisations, dominated by major emitter states, take an active role in CCS. An interest-based approach, such as liberal institutionalism, claims that CCS is part of a “regime complex” rather than an integrated, hierarchical, comprehensive and international regime. Such a regime complex is exemplified by the plethora of international organisations with a role in CCS. Finally, constructivism moves beyond material and interest-based interpretations of the evolution of the institutionally fragmented architecture of global CCS governance. The 2005 IPCC Special Report on CCS demonstrates the pivotal role that ideas, norms and scientific knowledge have played in transforming the preferences of the international climate-change policy community.  相似文献   

10.
后京都国际气候协定的谈判趋势与对策思考   总被引:4,自引:1,他引:3       下载免费PDF全文
国际气候制度的谈判错综复杂。然而,2012年以后国际气候承诺的基础,仍将取决于各国的政治意愿、经济利益和科学认知。谈判的平台不仅限于缔约方会议,也可能是缔约方会议体制外的双边、多边乃至单边形式,而且,协议内容将涉及减排、适应、技术、低碳发展等,最终将可能形成在可持续发展框架下适应与减缓气候变化的综合性一揽子协议。中国在未来20 a或更长时间仍将处于快速工业化和城市化的进程,对协议内容的选择只能是弱化各种风险,规避刚性约束,需要积极参与国际规制的制定,保障并强化中国的可持续发展。  相似文献   

11.
Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the international legal implications of a sector-based approach to long-term climate policy. Sector-based approaches have emerged as a possible way of engaging all the major emitters of greenhouse gases into the system. The article divides sectoral approaches into two main categories based on their legal relevance. Substantive sectoral models focus on ways of defining emission levels for global industry sectors. From the point of view of international law, substantive sectoral models could be integrated into the existing climate change regime if the Parties so agree. Procedural sectoral models focus on actors. Some procedural sectoral models envisage treaty regimes involving non-State actors, such as organizations representing global industry sectors undertaking to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The main focus of the article is on these models.  相似文献   

12.
This essay proposes an innovative institutional strategy for global climate protection, quite distinct from but ultimately complementary to the UNFCCC climate treaty negotiations. Our “building block” strategy relies on a variety of smaller-scale transnational cooperative arrangements, involving not only states, but also subnational jurisdictions, firms, and civil society organizations, to undertake activities whose primary goal is not climate mitigation but which will achieve greenhouse gas reductions as a byproduct. This strategy avoids the problems inherent in developing an enforceable, comprehensive treaty regime by mobilizing other incentives—including economic self-interest, energy security, cleaner air, and furtherance of international development— to motivate a range of actors to cooperate on actions that will also produce climate benefits. The strategy uses three specific models of regime formation (club, linkage, and dominant actor models) which emerge from economics, international relations, and organizational behavior, to develop a variety of transnational regimes that are generally self-enforcing and sustainable, avoiding the free rider and compliance problems endemic in collective action to provide public goods. These regimes will contribute to global climate action not only by achieving emissions reductions in the short term, but also by creating global webs of cooperation and trust, and by linking the building block regimes to the UNFCCC system through greenhouse gas monitoring and reporting systems. We argue that the building blocks regimes would thereby help secure eventual agreement on a comprehensive climate treaty.  相似文献   

13.
One of the major current global environmental challenges is the conservation of forest biodiversity. Deforestation and forest degradation continue despite international governmental agreements on forest conservation. In recent years private regulation in the international forest governance system has increased. Numerous partnerships between governments, business and/or civil society have been developed. Most of them focus on a single threat to forest biodiversity. This private regulation has had a limited positive impact. The most valuable contribution has been filling the gap of lack of implementation by governments. The forest governance system can become more effective if metagovernance is strengthened.  相似文献   

14.
The United States’ decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement (pending possible re-engagement under different terms) may have significant ramifications for international climate policy, but the implications of this decision remain contested. This commentary illustrates how comparative analysis of US participation in multilateral environmental agreements can inform predictions and future assessments of the decision. We compare and contrast US non-participation in the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, focusing on four key areas that may condition the influence of US treaty decisions on international climate policy: (i) global momentum on climate change mitigation; (ii) the possibility of US non-participation giving rise to alternative forms of international collaboration on climate policy; (iii) the timing and circumstances of the US decision to exit; and (iv) the influence of treaty design on countries’ incentives to participate and comply. We find that differences across the two treaties relating to the first three factors are more likely to reduce the negative ramifications of US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement compared to the Kyoto Protocol. However, the increased urgency of deep decarbonization renders US non-participation a major concern despite its declining share of global emissions. Moreover, key design features of the Paris Agreement suggest that other countries may react to the US decision by scaling back their levels of ambition and compliance, even if they remain in the Agreement.

Key policy insights

  • Increasing global momentum on mitigation since 1997 means that US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is potentially less damaging than its non-participation in the Kyoto Protocol

  • Despite the declining US share of global emissions, greater urgency of deep decarbonization means that the non-participation of a major player, such as the US, remains problematic for global cooperation and achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals

  • Differences in the design of the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement suggest that US non-participation is more likely to prompt reluctant countries to stay within the Paris framework but reduce levels of ambition and compliance, rather than exit the Agreement altogether

  相似文献   

15.
以信息报告和审评为主要内容的透明度体系是《巴黎协定》有效实施的重要保障。《巴黎协定》建立了“强化的透明度框架”,并在2018年底达成了实施细则,形成了强化的透明度体系。这一体系建立在既往透明度履约实践基础上,针对缔约方在《巴黎协定》下所承担“共同但有区别”的义务,在为发展中国家提供履约灵活性和支持的情况下,遵循通用的模式、程序和指南。该规则体系有利于提高缔约方履约报告质量和可比性,督促各方履行条约义务,增进全球气候治理多边机制互信。然而这一体系相比既往实践,给发展中国家提出强化要求的同时尚未落实强化的支持,且体系本身的运行效率还有待观察。为此,各国应当做好充分的国内体制机制建设准备,国际社会应当落实对发展中国家履约的支持,强化相应能力建设。  相似文献   

16.
《Climate Policy》2001,1(1):75-83
Additionality of greenhouse gas emission reduction achieved through projects in developing countries has been a matter of heated debate for quite some time. Michael Grubb succintly summarized the inborn paradox of the additionality concept. It reads: “the most ‘cost-effective’ projects may be the least ‘additional’ and strict project additionality would give perverse policy incentives”. The authors begin with elaborating this notion. The dilemma for policy makers is that, despite the paradox, Kyoto regime desperately needs flexibility to reconcile its ambitious target with difficulties in implementing domestic policies and measures. The solution to it is to give a certain degree of discretionary elements to each party in designing criteria for clean development mechanism (CDM) projects. Such institutional design works because parties do not behave like an economic man but do have propensity to faithfully comply in a tightly woven international interdependence structure as the experience of past multilateral international agreements suggest. Transparency and responsibility will be a prerequisite for such an institutional design to be effective and attain public support. In contrast, a catch-all institutional design that depends heavily on bureaucratic and technological elements will be plagued by Grubb’s paradox and fail eventually. Elaborated methodologies for additionality determination will increase importance in the long run and universal rules may be available in future. But we have to begin with learning how the flexibility of Kyoto regime works by doing.  相似文献   

17.
Climate change is a serious threat to all nations. This raises the question of why continuous treaty negotiations for more than two decades have failed to create a viable or adequate international climate regime. The current strategy of addressing climate change misdiagnoses the issue as a pollution problem by focusing on symptoms (emissions) and not on underlying causes (unsustainable development). In short, the wrong treaty is being negotiated. Drawing on negotiation analysis, it is argued that the existing and proposed climate treaties fail to meet the national interests of any party. An alternative strategy for addressing climate change is proposed that reframes the overall approach to reflect all countries’ development needs and links climate protection goals to the development structure of the treaty. The current deadlock over emissions reductions might be overcome and a mutual gains agreement reached by directing international cooperation towards promoting the provision of clean energy services for development and ensuring universal access to those services as part of an ‘early action’ agenda that will complement efforts to utilize forests and reduce other GHGs from multiple sectors.  相似文献   

18.
Although many economic studies suggest that China would reap significant benefits from participating in a global cap-and-trade regime, China has consistently refused to participate in international negotiations on this issue. Understanding China's underlying concerns is a key to explaining why China has not embraced an international greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme. This is explored as a potential basis for including China in future negotiations and schemes. This issue is considered from the following perspectives that impact upon China: (a) fairness: how do developing countries perceive emissions caps? (b) why have China and India been sceptical about international emissions trading? (c) what would China's political perceptions be of an inflow of CDM investment in comparison with the exports of emissions permits to the USA? (d) what are the implications of ‘lock in’ to an emissions cap, particularly when no rules and principles exist for setting emissions targets for post-2012? (e) the complex question of establishing future emissions caps for developing countries.  相似文献   

19.
Critical to improving environmental governance is understanding the fit (alignment) between institutional arrangements and key ecological processes. This is particularly true for biodiversity hotpots and ecologically sensitive areas that are subject to significant impacts from human activities. Here, we have developed an innovative approach to quantify ecological-institutional alignment across an environmentally and politically complex large-scale marine social-ecological system. We mapped the trans-boundary networks of marine population dispersal corridors, and intersected these with estimates of cross-country institutional linkages related to marine management and conservation. In integrating large-scale ecological-institutional networks, we identify geopolitical fit and misfit between a region's ecological processes and its governance. We have demonstrated this approach in the Indo-West Pacific region, a global marine biodiversity hotpot in the Indo-West Pacific. We present region-specific institutional and ecological networks, highlight current challenges, and suggest future directions to refine the proposed approach to quantify alignment between ecological processes and governance arrangements. Ultimately, our method has the potential to assist management efforts in prioritizing and strengthening governance to effectively safeguard ecological processes across multiple jurisdictions.  相似文献   

20.
Land-use activities that affect the global balance of greenhouse gases have been a topic of intense discussion during ongoing climate change treaty negotiations. Policy mechanisms that reward countries for implementing climatically beneficial land-use practices have been included in the Bonn and Marrakech agreements on implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. However some still fear that land-use projects focused narrowly on carbon gain will result in socioeconomic and environmental harm, and thus conflict with the explicit sustainable development objectives of the agreement. We propose a policy tool, in the form of a multi-attribute decision matrix, which can be used to evaluate potential and completed land-use projects for their climate, environmental and socioeconomic impacts simultaneously. Project evaluation using this tool makes tradeoffs explicit and allows identification of projects with multiple co-benefits for promotion ahead of others. Combined with appropriate public participation, accounting, and verification policies, a land-use activity decision matrix can help ensure that progressive land management practices are an effective part of the solution to global climate change.  相似文献   

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