The promissory note: COP 21 and the Paris Climate Agreement

The 2015 UN climate negotiations in Paris resulted in an inclusive, binding treaty that succeeds the Kyoto Protocol. In contrast to the failure at Copenhagen in 2009, the Paris negotiations are therefore seen as a major diplomatic success that has regenerated faith in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as a forum for dynamic multilateralism. The Paris Agreement provides a robust framework for ratcheting up efforts to combat global warming. However, the Agreement’s value will remain unclear for some time. The historical path to the Paris accord is outlined, and a preliminary assessment is offered of its key elements and outcomes.     

Follow the leader? Conceptualising the relationship between leaders and followers in polycentric climate governance

ABSTRACT

Existing scholarship on climate governance has not sufficiently considered the relationship between climate leaders/pioneers and followers. Because of the global commons nature of climate change, unilateral leadership or pioneership by one or a small number of actors will be insufficient to combat climate change effectively. The need to take seriously the relationship between leaders and followers is all the greater in the wake of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which emphasises diffuse, bottom–up action. The relationship between leaders and followers in polycentric climate governance is unpacked in this contribution. What types of actors can be climate followers? Through what pathways can followership emerge and how can we capture the essential characteristics of leader–follower relationships? What conditions facilitate (or hinder) followership? The utility of the approach is illustrated using cases of EU climate leadership and (non-) followership of other actors.     

Climate justice,adaptation and the Paris Agreement: a recipe for disasters?

A Capability Approach is adopted to critically analyse, in the interests of Climate Justice, whether the Paris Agreement is likely to adequately protect human and non-human Capabilities from the worst impacts of climate disasters. The mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage provisions of the Paris Agreement are not convincing. Adaptation offers only a modest response to climate change, compared with mitigation, and current financial commitments to fund adaptation in developing countries are far too low. Consequently, the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have a long way to go in their negotiations before they have any hope of meeting their agreed temperature goals, and protecting human and non-human Capabilities from climate disasters.     

Leadership and lesson-drawing in the European Union’s multilevel climate governance system

ABSTRACT

The important role that climate leaders and leadership play at different levels of the European Union (EU) multilevel governance system is exemplified. Initially, climate leader states set the pace with ambitious policy measures that were adopted largely on an ad hoc basis. Since the mid-1980s, the EU has developed a multilevel climate governance system that has facilitated leadership and lesson-drawing at all governance levels including the local level. The EU has become a global climate policy leader by example although it had been set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’. The resulting ‘leadership without leader’ paradox cannot be sufficiently explained merely by reference to top-level EU climate policies. Local-level climate innovations and lesson-drawing have increasingly been encouraged by the EU’s multilevel climate governance system which has become more polycentric. The recognition of economic co-benefits of climate policy measures has helped to further the EU’s climate leadership role.     

The European Council,the Council and the Member States: changing environmental leadership dynamics in the European Union

ABSTRACT

The leadership dynamics between the European Council, the Council and the Member States in European Union (EU) environmental policy since the 1970s are analysed. The puzzle is that, although the EU was set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’, it is widely seen as an environmental leader, albeit sometimes as a one-eyed leader amongst the blind. While differentiating between leadership types, it is argued that the European Council has the largest structural, the Council the most significant entrepreneurial, and the Member States the most important cognitive and exemplary leadership capacities. Most day-to-day environmental policy measures are negotiated by the Environment Council (in collaboration with the European Parliament). The European Council’s increased interest in high politics climate change issues is largely due to the EU’s global leadership ambitions. Member States have traditionally formed environmental leadership alliances on an ad hoc basis although this may be changing.     

Climate pushers or symbolic leaders? The limits to corporate climate leadership by food retailers

ABSTRACT

Corporate climate leadership and its relationship with state regulations are discussed. First, a typology defining corporate climate leadership is introduced and distinguished from the other strategic behaviours corporations may adopt in response to climate change. A conceptual framework to explore the mechanisms enabling corporate climate leadership within a given policy system is then presented. This framework is applied to two big Swiss food retailers, considered as typical of corporate climate leaders, firms that showed an early interest in climate protection, as a result of ecological values, third actors’ lobbying and particular market incentives. Most importantly, the two companies were set in motion by a regulatory framework that featured stringent policy goals associated with flexible instruments and economic sanctions. The importance of these findings for understanding the role of corporate leadership in polycentric climate governance is discussed.     

The untapped potential of preferential trade agreements for climate governance

The regulatory contribution that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) make to global climate governance is assessed through an analysis of climate-related provisions found in 688 PTAs signed between 1947 and 2016. Provisions are analyzed along four dimensions: innovation, legalization, replication, and distribution. Innovative climate provisions are found in several PTAs that are in some cases more specific and enforceable than the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Nonetheless, these climate provisions offer limited progress because they remain weakly ‘legalized’, fail to replicate broadly in the global trade system, and were not adopted by the largest greenhouse gas emitters. Despite the inclusion of innovative climate provisions in a number of PTAs, their poor design and weak replication position them as some of the weakest environmental provisions within PTAs.     

Political ideology and views about climate change in the European Union

There is a strong political divide on climate change in the US general public, with Liberals and Democrats expressing greater belief in and concern about climate change than Conservatives and Republicans. Recent studies find a similar though less pronounced divide in other countries. Its leadership in international climate policy making warrants extending this line of research to the European Union (EU). The extent of a left–right ideological divide on climate change views is examined via Eurobarometer survey data on the publics of 25 EU countries before the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2009 ‘climategate’ controversy and COP-15 in Copenhagen, and an increase in organized climate change denial campaigns. Citizens on the left consistently reported stronger belief in climate change and support for action to mitigate it than did citizens on the right in 14 Western European countries. There was no such ideological divide in 11 former Communist countries, likely due to the low political salience of climate change and the differing meaning of left–right identification in these countries.     

The oil and gas sector: from climate laggard to climate leader?

ABSTRACT

The oil and gas industry has traditionally been reticent to engage with the issues surrounding climate change, typically being cast as a laggard. Yet, over recent years, the sector has begun taking on a more active role in climate governance, doing so in a variety of capacities – as initiators, catalysts and participants in industry-led or multi-stakeholder efforts. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative is reviewed, as a case study to illustrate emerging climate leadership within the global oil and gas industry. In 2015, its members committed to a two-degree pathway. The paucity of research on the nascent role of oil and gas firms in climate governance is addressed.     

Climate laws in small European states: symbolic legislation and limits of diffusion in Ireland and Finland

ABSTRACT

The past decade has seen the introduction of framework climate change laws in several countries. The development of climate laws in two small European states, Ireland and Finland, both of which introduced national climate laws in 2015, are examined. Two questions are addressed. First, to what extent do later adopters of climate policy instruments draw on the examples of pioneering legislation? Second, how and why are pioneering climate policy instruments modified by later adopters? In both cases, the 2008 UK Climate Change Act was a source of inspiration in the early stages, particularly for civil society campaigns. Thereafter, domestic interests mobilised to remove from legislative proposals the most pioneering and ambitious parts of the UK model. The result, in both cases, was enactment of climate laws that resembled only very loosely the UK Climate Change Act.     

Environmental,climate and social leadership of small enterprises: Fairphone’s step-by-step approach

ABSTRACT

Achieving sustainable consumption and production requires a break with current practices in many sectors, including the smartphone sector. Leaders are central actors in catalysing such change by developing, implementing and promoting innovative ideas, products and practices. Not only large but also small enterprises can aspire to assume leadership for sustainability. This contribution explores the environmental, climate and social leadership of the social enterprise Fairphone that seeks to start a movement towards a more sustainable smartphone sector. Endowed with barely any structural power, it relies on other leadership types, especially entrepreneurial leadership, which is based on dialogue, persuasion and coalition-building. Small enterprises can be leaders, but pursuing a goal such as transforming the smartphone sector takes a step-by-step approach targeting different follower groups from suppliers, competitors and consumers to end-of-life processors and policymakers. Those different follower groups are susceptible to different (combinations of) leadership types.     

Carbon border adjustment mechanism in the transition to net-zero emissions: collective implementation and distributional impacts

As an instrument to minimize carbon leakage, the effects and feasibility of Carbon Border Adjustments Mechanism (CBAM) will depend on multiple design options. While the EU has committed to introducing CBAM as part of its green climate deal, pursuing climate efforts to successfully limit global warming requires a collective implementation involving major emitters China and the US. This paper quantifies the distributional impacts of a joint CBAM implementation of in a climate alliance or a club of the EU, the US, and China. Differing from a myriad of studies that focus on unilateral CBAM, this analysis emphasizes collective implications on leakage, sectoral competitiveness, and welfare by projecting climate neutrality relative to current policies and climate targets. Our findings confirm that coalition reduces leakage, improves production on energy-intensive industries, and increases club’s welfare relative to a non-CBAM and a unilateral implementation. These are in contrast with some unilateral analytical studies, especially for the US. It is further proof of the potential of CBAM as collective instruments to facilitate mitigation and trade competitiveness.

     

Can public engagement democratize environmental policymaking in a resource-dependent state? Comparative case studies from Alberta,Canada

What factors shape the democratic potential of public consultation in environmental policymaking? Here, the motivations, purposes, designs, and outcomes of recent public engagement on land use planning, climate change policy, and water resource management in Alberta, Canada are reviewed in order to show how the power dynamics of the political and economic context shape the democratic potential of public and stakeholder consultations, especially where dominant resource interests are at stake. At the same time, political leadership, interactions between civil society actors and key design elements are shown to be important to democratization.     

Climate pioneership and leadership in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities

ABSTRACT

Innovative climate governance in small-to-medium-sized structurally disadvantaged cities (SDCs) are assessed. Considering their deeply ingrained severe economic and social problems it would be reasonable to assume that SDCs act primarily as climate laggards or at best as followers. However, novel empirical findings show that SDCs are capable of acting as climate pioneers. Different types and styles of climate leadership and pioneership and how they operate within multi-level and polycentric governance structures are identified and assessed. SDCs seem relatively readily willing to adopt transformational climate pioneership styles to create ‘green’ jobs, for example, in the offshore wind energy sector and with the aim of improving their poor external image. However, in order to sustain transformational climate pioneership they often have to rely on support from ‘higher’ levels of governance. For SDCs, there is a tension between learning from each other’s best practice and fierce economic competition in climate innovation.     

Measuring and explaining the EU’s effect on national climate performance

ABSTRACT

To what extent has the European Union (EU) had a benign or retarding effect on what its member states would have undertaken in the absence of EU climate policies during 2008–2012? A measurement tool for the EU policy’s effect is developed and shows a benign average EU effect with considerable variation across countries. The EU’s policy effectiveness vis-à-vis its member states is explained by the EU’s non-compliance mechanism, the degree of usage of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, and national pre-Kyoto emission reduction goals. Time-series cross-sectional analyses show that the EU’s non-compliance mechanism has no effect, while the ex-ante plans for using Kyoto flexible mechanisms and/or the ambitious pre-Kyoto emission reduction targets allow member states to escape constraints imposed by EU climate policy.     

States,coalitions, and the legalization of the global climate regime: negotiations on the post-2020 architecture

Why do some states and state coalitions, acting within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), support harder legalization of the global climate regime? In order to explain why, the effects of four causal factors are considered: climate vulnerability, the emission intensity of the national economy, a state’s power position, and socialization into climate norms. To identify the legalization positions of UNFCCC actors, an original content analysis is conducted of all the submission and meeting statements made at the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform during the years 2012–2015. Subsequently, a qualitative comparative analysis is carried out to find out which combinations of the causal factors offer a sufficient explanation for the analyzed outcome, leading to the identification of two causal pathways that lead states to endorse harder legalization of the climate regime.     

Free market ideology and deregulation in Colorado’s oil fields: Evidence for triple movement activism?

Unconventional oil and gas extraction (UOGE) has spurred an unprecedented boom in onshore production in the US. Despite a surge in related research, a void exists regarding inquiries into policy outcomes and perceptions. To address this, support for federal regulatory exemptions for UOGE is examined using survey data collected in 2015 from two Northern Colorado communities. Current regulatory exemptions for UOGE can be understood as components of broader societal processes of neoliberalization. Free market ideology increases public support for federal regulatory exemptions for UOGE. Perceived negative impacts do not necessarily drive people to support increased federal regulation. Utilizing neo-Polanyian theory, interaction between free market ideology and perceived negative impacts is explored. Free market ideology appears to moderate people’s views of regulation: increasing the effect of perceived negative impacts while simultaneously increasing support for deregulation. To conclude, the ways in which free market ideology might normalize the impacts of UOGE activity are discussed.     

Assessing President Obama’s climate change record

ABSTRACT

President Obama’s climate change record is assessed by looking at his success in translating policy goals into policy outputs (laws or regulatory action) during his time in office. Obama’s campaign speeches are examined to identify specific promises to take action on climate change before proceeding to examine whether, how and with what success he managed to act upon these pledges. Obama is shown to have set out a multi-pronged approach to deal with climate change in his campaign speeches and succeeded in translating many of his goals into policy outputs. This finding contributes to debates about Obama’s ‘green’ credentials.     

Do global climate summits influence public awareness and policy preferences concerning climate change?

A survey-embedded experiment implemented around the time of the 2014 annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (N ≈ 1200) examined whether such summits are able to increase citizens’ awareness of climate problems. This study finds that exposure to positive or negative cues about the COP increases climate change awareness, particularly among participants who start out with a low level of awareness. Neither positive nor negative cues about the COP significantly affect people’s policy preferences. Our finding resonates with Bernard Cohen’s observation that the mass media may not often be successful in telling people what to think, but they are successful in telling readers what to think about.     

Does size matter? Comparing the party politics of climate change in Australia and Norway

ABSTRACT

The implications of state size for the party politics of climate change are examined, and in particular its effect in facilitating or impeding cross-party consensus on the issue. This issue is explored through an in-depth, qualitative comparison of Australia and Norway, which are shown to be comparable in important respects yet differ in terms of their size and climate politics. Original primary data is presented from 44 interviews with policymakers and policy-shapers in both countries, which shows that, to the limited extent that state size moderates the parties’ behaviour, it is the countries’ geographical – not economic – size that matters. Institutional factors are found to play a more significant role, however, and the corporatist features of state-business cooperation, strong ENGOs and compensatory welfare arrangements are highlighted as particularly important.