The politicization of the climate: How and why has the Annex I – non-Annex I division affectednegotiations under the climate change regime?

Abstract

Many multilateral environmental agreements include differentiated rules for groups of countries, based on the recognition of their different circumstances or contribution to the problem addressed. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), such differential treatment was operationalized as a rigid division of the world between the Annex I countries with emission reduction targets and the non-Annex I countries without them. This article has two aims. First, it measures to what extent the institutional split of UNFCCC parties into these two groups leads to broadening polarization in the negotiations, beyond the countries’ actual preferences. Second, it elucidates whether interest-based or rather socialization-related causal mechanisms lead to such division. We draw on a new dyadic dataset recording agreements and disagreements in positions of country pairs over time, coded from summaries of the climate negotiations between 1995 and 2013. By using a Relational Events Model, which combines survival analysis with social network analysis, we show that the institutional division of UNFCCC parties into Annex I and non-Annex I has indeed led to a polarization between these two groups in the negotiations. Given that the effect is stronger for discussions about critical topics, such as mitigation, the results are consistent with an interest-based explanation for such division. The socialization hypothesis - that group identity becomes stronger over time – is not really supported by our analysis so far.