Climate Change Negotiations Research Articles

Global progress in climate change adaptation policies and its implication for China

This paper reviews the progress in climate change adaptation (CCA) policies both under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and in major regions and countries, including the EU and its major member countries, the influential developed countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the emerging economies and the least developed countries (LDCs). The progress made in China in CCA policies is also reviewed and compared with that in other countries. Finally, good international practices are proposed for China’s policy development. It is found that adaptation has been given the same priority as mitigation since the twenty-first century with regard to climate change-related actions. The topics related to adaptation in the international climate change negotiations under the UNFCCC have evolved from mechanisms for finance and technology development and transfer exclusively in the early stages to implementation of practical adaptation programs and actions. Since 2006, major developed and devel...

Sourcing Women's Ecological Knowledge: The Worry of Epistemic Objectification

In this paper, I argue that although it is important to attend to injustices surrounding women's epistemic exclusions, it is equally important to attend to injustices surrounding women's epistemic inclusions. Partly in response to the historical exclusion of women's knowledge, there has been increasing effort among first‐world actors to seek out women's knowledge. This trend is apparent in efforts to mainstream gender in climate change negotiation. Here, one is told that women's superior knowledge about how to adapt to climate change makes them “poised to help solve and overcome this daunting challenge.” Pulling from the work of Miranda Fricker, I argue that such claims risk epistemically objectifying women. To illuminate the risk of women's epistemic objectification in climate change discourse, I offer a feminist analysis of current efforts to seek women's environmental knowledge, cautioning throughout that such efforts must reflect just epistemic relations.

The Papal Encyclical & The Role of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities in the International Climate Change Negotiations

A fundamental theme running through the remarkable 192-page Papal Encyclical on Climate Change is the notion of solidarity—;between nations and peoples, and between and within generations. In the words of the Encyclical, “[w]e require a new and universal solidarity.”. This translates, in the Encyclical’s vision, into principled cooperation between states and peoples, because “[a]ll of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents.”. In the international climate change regime this vision takes the form of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC), a principle that the Encyclical explicitly endorses. The CBDRRC principle, however, lends itself to varying interpretations and has thus proven deeply contentious as the basis for climate cooperation. This is in particular in relation to the 2015 climate agreement that is due to be finalized in Paris in December 2015. This short essay explores the extent to which the Encyclical supports one or the other interpretation of this principle, and how closely aligned (or not) the Encyclical’s vision is to the emerging 2015 climate change agreement.

Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America by Christopher F. Jones, and: Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest by Andrew Needham

Reviewed by: Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America by Christopher F. Jones, and: Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest by Andrew Needham Paul W. Hirt Christopher F. Jones. Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. 320pp. ISBN 0674728890, $39.95 (cloth). Andrew Needham. Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. 336pp. ISBN 0691139067, $35.00 (cloth). For good reason, scholars are paying attention to energy systems recently. International climate change negotiations along with rapid advances in renewable energy technology and game-changing reductions in the cost of solar and wind energy have brought transformative changes and challenges to the fossil-fuel based energy regime that has reined supreme for the last century. It is a good time to reassess where we are, how we got here, and where we might be heading in the near future regarding the energy systems that undergird industrialism and modern life. These two monographs by Christopher Jones and Andrew Needham are among a growing body of historical studies that critically examine the evolution, structure, and consequences of our modern energy systems penned at a time when energy technologies and institutions are undergoing fundamental reinvention. Jones sets the stage in Routes of Power by examining how the fossil fuel (“mineral”) energy regime established its hegemony in the 19th century. His key argument, reflected in the book’s title, is that “large energy transport systems”—canals for barging coal, oil pipelines, and high-voltage electric transmission lines—created the infrastructure for the fossil fuel regime, which cast the die, so to speak, for how our energy system would evolve (p. 2). Early innovations and investments gained momentum through economies of scale, political support, cutthroat competition, and what Jones calls reinforcing or synergistic “feedback loops” in which technologies for creating [End Page 210] or using energy were designed to be compatible with the prevailing energy infrastructure. Jones tells the story of how these routes of power for the mineral energy regime developed over time, providing rich and convincing material evidence for his arguments. He also provides a clear and compelling conceptual framework to organize and interpret this history. Each chapter reiterates a set of repeating themes starting with the relatively rapid advance of fossil fuel energy following development of effective transport infrastructures for moving coal or oil or electricity from sites of production to sites of consumption. This transition generated and was, in turn, accelerated by what Jones calls “landscapes of intensification” where industrial organization and mass production created economies of scale, which the above-mentioned feedback loops further reinforced. These landscapes of intensified energy production, however, also created extensive and largely unregulated environmental impacts and labor exploitation leading to a parallel landscape of inequitably distributed costs, harms, and benefits. Jones identifies both winners and losers in the shift to a mineral energy regime. A final recurring theme of Jones’s study is that supply drives demand just as often as the reverse. Repeatedly, he describes how economies of scale led to a surfeit of supply, which drove the suppliers of coal and oil and electricity to invent marketing campaigns to encourage greater consumption. Profligate and wasteful energy use resulted. As he notes in the introduction, the creation of the fossil fuel world was “neither natural nor inevitable” (p. 2), but instead a result of conscious decisions, policies, and choices that have left us today with a set of troubling legacies as we seek to create a cleaner, more renewable, non-carbon based energy system with a more equitable distribution of costs and benefits. Routes of Power is an admirably well-organized and well-written monograph, deftly balancing empirical data with story-driven interpretation. The book is a pleasure to read from start to finish. For those considering assigning the book for a course, it offers several virtues. Each chapter helpfully starts with a succinct introduction of the material, the organization is clear and consistent throughout the monograph, and the concluding chapter offers a collection of concise takeaway messages about energy and society. I would offer only a small quibble about some of the concluding points. Jones...

Reflections on small island states and the international climate change negotiations (COP21, Paris, 2015)

The latest and most significant round of multilateral climate negotiations (COP21) takes place in Paris (30/11 to 11/12/2015). Like other participants and signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, small island states have submitted contributions (INDCs) towards reducing emissions as a precursor to the creation of a post-Kyoto global emissions framework. This reflection outlines their contributions and examines the underlying dynamics of small island INDCs as they attempt to engage with the process of international negotiation. Preliminary findings confirm the need for small island states to be supported financially and technically by global institutional mechanisms in order to develop the capacity to deal with climate change.

Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ Call to Ecological Conversion: Responding to the Cry of the Earth and the Poor—Towards an Integral Ecology

The recent Encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On Care for our Common Home, is a remarkable document, both original and continuous within the tradition of Catholic social doctrine. Emerging from and grounded in a very specific religious tradition and constrained by the peculiar encyclical literary form, the document nonetheless seeks to open a dialogue with “every person living on this planet,” about care for our common home. Using the urgency of addressing global climate change as its point of departure, the Encyclical does a superb job summarizing the scope of the present environmental crisis and the disproportionate harms suffered by vulnerable populations of the poor and excluded. It also provides a careful analysis of the root causes of environmental degradation, mapping out the complex linkages and tensions between globalization, economic growth, liberalized trade, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, environmental degradation, involuntary migration, immiseration and growing inequality. In this respect, the Encyclical, may well come to serve as a useful position paper for the upcoming Paris climate change negotiations or as a background text for a course on climate change or sustainable development. Yet, properly understood, this is not its true purpose. Rather, in its deepest sense, the Encyclical is an appeal to all of humanity to listen to “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” to reject the “throwaway” culture of consumerism, and to embrace a culture of care and a commitment to pursue integral ecology. It is, in other words, a call to ecological conversion: a call addressed not only to individuals but also to individuals-in-community.

Assessing the risk of loss and damage: exposure, vulnerability and risk to climate-related hazards for different country classifications

Preventing and reducing loss and damage due to extreme events is an important topic for the international community, especially in the context of climate change negotiations and disaster risk reduction. The paper outlines the latest state-of-the-art approaches to assess loss and damage and the risk of loss and damage. Against this background, a more in-depth analysis is provided on how to assess the risk of loss and damage in different country groups (i.e., World Bank income groups) focusing on selected slow- and sudden-onset climate-related hazards using the concept of the WorldRiskIndex. The results underscore that the risks of loss and damage for low- and high-income countries are significantly different, but also that global risk patterns differ significantly regarding sudden-onset versus slow-onset hazards. In the first step of analysis, the results show that not only does exposure to extreme events influence the risk of loss and damage, but equally important are the vulnerability and adaptive capacities of societies. The second step of analysis shows that target-oriented adaptive strategies to the various impacts of climate-related hazards are crucial in reducing the respective risk of loss and damage.

Agriculture Under UNFCCC and Its Policy Implications

Agriculture is a vulnerable sector to climate change because it is a primary industry directly exposed to climate. At the same time, it is a sector emitting greenhouse gases during agricultural activities, thereby affecting climate change. However, agriculture is a nascent subject under the UNFCCC. The agriculture sector needs both adaptation and mitigation. Currently, co-benefit of adaptation and mitigation is emphasized during climate change negotiation. Developing country parties are in a position to focus on adaptation rather than mitigation. As a result, mitigation is not being addressed enough during climate negotiation. Agriculture has been addressed through Nairobi Work Programme and NAPA. Since current efforts for greenhouse gas reduction are not sufficient for stabilizing the atmospheric system of the Earth to prevent climate change, the agriculture sector should also be considered for greenhouse gas reduction. For this, MRV for small farmers in developing countries and incentives for their mitigation efforts should be developed in agriculture sector. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen international cooperation for developing capacities for vulnerable countries and people to climate change.

The multifaceted nature of global climate change negotiations

International climate change negotiations primarily occur during annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and currently involve virtually every country in the world. What effect does such a large and heterogeneous group of states have on the complexity of climate change negotiations? Would a smaller, more homogenous, assortment of countries produce a more efficient negotiation space? To begin to answer these questions, I apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation to a corpus of High-level climate change conference speeches, covering the formal statements made by country-representatives at the 16th-to-19th COPs. This exercise yields a very large and coherent set of latent topics and many, but not all, of these topics correspond to the negotiating positions presumed by extant research. Analysis of the resultant topics reveals that the dominant dimensions of climate change negotiation favor developing country concerns over cooperation, though reducing negotiations to a smaller core group of countries may lessen this disparity. Together these findings indicate that unsupervised topic models can substantially expand our understandings of climate change negotiations, and international cooperation more generally.

Climate of Consensus: Managing Decision Making in the UN Climate Change Negotiations

The United Nations climate change negotiations have been constantly hampered by procedural disputes and unclear decision making. This article explores ideas for reforming the decision making of the Conference of the Parties (COP) and the importance of COP decisions. It argues that scholars have tended to overlook the importance of COP decisions in global climate governance as a whole, on the one hand, and the weak practices of the COP's decision‐making process, on the other. The article underscores that while majority voting is not politically viable – although voting on a limited set of issues is potentially useful – decision making can be significantly improved by enhancing the current practices of consensus building. The article calls for the strategic leadership role of the COP Presidency to be recognized and its best practices institutionalized. The primary goal of this article is to contribute to the wider ongoing debate on the possibilities and limitations of the regime established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Lima climate accord: positive steps on the road to Paris

Pledges made at the United Nations climate-change negotiations in Lima suggested a higher degree of commitment to agreeing crucial emissions reductions than has been previously on display. There is a chance that a substantive deal may yet be reached in Paris.

Climate Change Negotiations and Doha, Qatar

Climate Change Negotiations and Doha, Qatar

Climate change leaders and followers: Leadership recognition and selection in the UNFCCC negotiations

Past research has posited that effective leadership is an essential ingredient in reaching international agreements and overcoming the collective action problems associated with responding to climate change. Despite its fundamental importance for leadership relationships, the demand side of the leadership equation has been comparatively neglected in the literature. In this study, we answer several related questions that are vital for understanding the leadership dynamics that impact the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations. Are there any leaders in the field of climate change and, if so, who are they? How do followers select climate leaders? What factors are important to them? Using unique survey data collected at four consecutive United Nations (UN) climate summits, Conference of Parties (COP) 14–17, this article investigates which actors are actually recognized as playing a leadership role in the UNFCCC negotiations and probes how followers select leadership candidates in this issue area. The survey findings reveal a fragmented leadership landscape, with no one clear-cut leader, and spotlight that if an actor seeks to be recognized as a leader, it is crucial to be perceived as being devoted to promoting the common good.

The limits of climate change agreements: from past to present

Purpose– This paper aims to show why very little progress was made in arresting climate change. Managing climate change is one of the greatest challenges humanity has encountered in the 21st century. Responding to this greatest challenge, the United Nations has organized numerous climate change conferences. Four agreements (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], Kyoto, Copenhagen and Doha) have emerged in the process of developing a potential international climate change policy but failed to produce any ambitious agreement to arrest climate change.Design/methodology/approach– The pledges made by Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to reduce the greenhouse gases (GHGs) are contextualized with the ever increasing emissions of GHGs by exploring the databases of UNFCCC, International Energy Agency (IEA), Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Netherlands Energy Assessment Agency (NEAA) for this study.Findings– However, GHGs have continued to rise and no globally binding agreement is seen to be forthcoming. Quantified targets to address the problem have yet to be agreed while major emitters remain free riders. This paper argues that the state-centric negotiating framework and the principles of the climate change negotiations were the main reasons for the inadequate outcomes leading to the continuing rise in emissions.Originality/value– This is an original research. It has presented the overview of climate change agreements, finds the problems and presents a way forward. The research is useful for governments of the world, climate negotiators, students of climate change, researchers, NGO communities and every single human being who understands that managing climate change is not only complex but also extensive.

To Link or Not to Link? Agenda Change in International Bargaining

Agendas shape the strategies states adopt in international bargaining and, therefore, the substantive nature of the resulting outcomes. They are also a dynamic feature of the process, as states add and subtract issues in order to shift the bargaining outcome in their favor. This article analyzes when and why states will use these different ‘issue-linkage’ strategies. Focusing on the effects of a successful agreement and the costs of failure, it highlights conditions under which states are likely to add or subtract issues from the bargaining agenda. It tests these arguments using an original dataset of the bargaining strategies states have adopted in climate-change negotiations. It concludes by highlighting the implications the argument has for understanding the outcomes of international negotiations.

The global carbon market-mechanism landscape: pre and post 2020 perspectives

With market-mechanisms likely to achieve emission reductions at lower cost than alternative approaches, there is a presumption that they will be embraced by those who are serious about achieving ambitious reductions. Two broad messages exist; there is already considerable activity and some ambition in many parts of the world – a fragmented but embryonic ‘global’ trading landscape is emerging – and there are efforts at UN level to provide a unifying framework for these bottom-up developments. The topography of interest and response varies considerably across groups of countries, and there have been delays in making progress on a unifying framework. This article analyses the current carbon market landscape in terms of market dynamics and market-mechanism developments whilst undertaking an examination of how climate change negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is shaping the future carbon market landscape. This work shows that the combination of existing, emerging, and potential carbon market-mechanisms can be regarded as an emerging pre-2020 fragmented ‘global’ carbon market landscape based on differing bottom-up market based approaches. One outcome of a 2015 Climate Agreement could be a post-2020 global carbon market which would include new domestic and international market initiatives such as the Framework for Various Approaches and New Market Mechanism, together with reformed Kyoto mechanisms.Policy relevanceWith the 2015 Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) expected to see Parties commit to ambitious mitigation commitments, post-2020 could see significant Party (& industry) investment in market-mechanisms and associated emissions units in an effort to achieve some of the abatement cost minimization offered by market approaches. This article is written for those who have an interest in understanding what is happening – and what is not happening – as regards the emergence of market-related approaches to GHG mitigation globally in the run up to the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC which meets in Paris in December 2015, and what could be the shape of things to come post-2020.

Christian Downie: the politics of climate change negotiations: strategies and variables in prolonged international negotiations

Christian Downie: the politics of climate change negotiations: strategies and variables in prolonged international negotiations

China’s Evolving Development Dilemma in the Context of the North-South Climate Governance Debate

This paper examines China’s policy and position in relation to the evolving climate change negotiations in order to explain how China is dealing with the dilemma of meeting its growing development needs while reducing ghg emissions. It argues that global climate governance requires steering and leadership to deal with the interlocked political process; that the developing countries (dcs) right to develop is challenged by the need for ecosystemic standards especially as climate change is seen as a zero-sum game as the more one country emits the less another one can. This is especially problematic as Industrialized countries (ics) appear to be both unwilling and unable to increase growth without increasing emissions. This explains China’s policy of insisting on its right to develop, of demanding that ics reduce their emissions and that they fulfil their obligations under the fccc, while expressing its willingness to take on a voluntary target. The paper argues that China’s state-led transition has eight unique characteristics that may allow it to lead as it moves beyond a no-regrets policy to a circular and green economy, cooperating with other dcs and mobilizing conscious green values in citizens. The question remains—will the initial success and scale of state-led transition lead the global green transition to a sustainable world?

Competition gives way to cooperation: rethinking Sino-Indian relations in climate change negotiations

In global climate change politics, China and India have worked closely with each other, representing two big emitters from the developing world. This article reviews Sino-Indian cooperation during four UN climate change negotiations from 2009 to 2012. Their collaboration echoed the perception of neorealism in international relations (IR) studies that states will seek “external balancing” for maximizing national “relative gains”. China and India are expected to continue their cooperation on climate change issues when sharing the same structural position as big economies and big emitters, the same pressure in carbon emission reductions, and the same goal of improving living standards for their citizens. Encountering the devastating impacts of climate change and the deadlock in responsibility division in current global climate change governance, this work seeks to shed light on the evolving multilateral governance environment and its complex implications for Sino-Indian relations from an IR perspective.

Climate finance in an age of uncertainty

There was a great deal of uncertainty in the discussions held in Bonn, Germany, 4–14 June in preparation for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations later this year in Lima, and in Paris in 2015. This hinged upon what will be contained in the new institutional arrangements for reducing emissions, to be developed in the second commitment period, which replaces the Kyoto Protocol. At the time of writing, it is not yet clear exactly what mechanisms will be put in place. The old architecture favoured market-driven mechanisms, but an ongoing alternative viewpoint that favours non-market-based approaches gained some traction, notably in discussions relating to REDD+. What is not clear is whether this is because developing countries object philosophically to the use of capital markets to stimulate emission reduction through forests, or because the current price of carbon is so low at present. There was also a considerable degree of jockeying for power regarding future funding mechanisms within the next commitment period. The Global Environment Facility has previously played a key role in managing, channelling, and disbursing developed country donor contributions via a multitude of funds, to developing countries. The Green Climate Fund, a product of the Conference of Parties 16 in Cancun (2010), is now likely to be the lead fund for climate action. It is difficult to tell if these developments will contribute anything substantive enough to reduce emissions by the necessary amount required to avoid dangerous human-induced climate change.