J. Timmons Roberts

Carbon intensity and economic development 1962-1991: A brief exploration of the environmental Kuznets curve

The relationship between national carbon dioxide emissions intensity (CO2 emitted per unit of Gross Domestic Product) and level of economic development has changed from essentially linear in 1962 to strongly curvilinear in 1991. The inverted-U curve reached statistical significance briefly in the early 1970s and increasingly since 1982. This is the result not of groups of countries passing through stages of development, but of efficiency improvements in a small number of wealthy countries combined with worse performance in poor and middle-income countries. The curvilinear relation is deepening and is likely to persist due to constraints on poorer countries in the world economy.

Targeting global conservation funding to limit immediate biodiversity declines

Inadequate funding levels are a major impediment to effective global biodiversity conservation and are likely associated with recent failures to meet United Nations biodiversity targets. Some countries are more severely underfunded than others and therefore represent urgent financial priorities. However, attempts to identify these highly underfunded countries have been hampered for decades by poor and incomplete data on actual spending, coupled with uncertainty and lack of consensus over the relative size of spending gaps. Here, we assemble a global database of annual conservation spending. We then develop a statistical model that explains 86% of variation in conservation expenditures, and use this to identify countries where funding is robustly below expected levels. The 40 most severely underfunded countries contain 32% of all threatened mammalian diversity and include neighbors in some of the world’s most biodiversity-rich areas (Sundaland, Wallacea, and Near Oceania). However, very modest increases in international assistance would achieve a large improvement in the relative adequacy of global conservation finance. Our results could therefore be quickly applied to limit immediate biodiversity losses at relatively little cost.

Who Ratifies Environmental Treaties and Why? Institutionalism, Structuralism and Participation by 192 Nations in 22 Treaties

International environmental accords have become important mechanisms by which nations make promises to administer natural resources and manage the global environment. Previous studies, relying mainly on single cases or small-n data sets, have shed light on the proximate political causes of participation in these agreements. However, no study has yet systematically explained the deeper social determinants of why nations sign, ignore or resist environmental treaties. We offer a theoretically-sequenced model that exploits complementarities between rational choice institutionalism and world-systems theory. Key variables posited by realists and constructivists are also examined, using a new environmental treaty participation index based on ratifications of 22 major environmental agreements by 192 nations. Cross-sectional OLS regression and path analysis strongly supports the institutionalist claim that credibilitythe willingness and ability to honor ones international environmental commit-mentsmatters. But these measures also lend considerable support to the world-systems hypothesis that state credibility is strongly influenced by a legacy of colonial incorporation into the world economy. Narrow export baseour proxy for disadvantaged position in the world-economydirectly and indirectly (through institutions and civil society strength) explains nearly six-tenths of national propensity to sign environmental treaties. A nations natural capital, its ecological vulnerability, and international environmental NGO memberships had no explanatory power in the path analysis. Our results indicate that new theoretical, methodological and policy approaches are needed to address structural barriers to international cooperation.

The future of the Amazon: new perspectives from climate, ecosystem and social sciences.

The potential loss or large-scale degradation of the tropical rainforests has become one of the iconic images of the impacts of twenty-first century environmental change and may be one of our centurys most profound legacies. In the Amazon region, the direct threat of deforestation and degradation is now strongly intertwined with an indirect challenge we are just beginning to understand: the possibility of substantial regional drought driven by global climate change. The Amazon region hosts more than half of the worlds remaining tropical forests, and some parts have among the greatest concentrations of biodiversity found anywhere on Earth. Overall, the region is estimated to host about a quarter of all global biodiversity. It acts as one of the major ‘flywheels’ of global climate, transpiring water and generating clouds, affecting atmospheric circulation across continents and hemispheres, and storing substantial reserves of biomass and soil carbon. Hence, the ongoing degradation of Amazonia is a threat to local climate stability and a contributor to the global atmospheric climate change crisis. Conversely, the stabilization of Amazonian deforestation and degradation would be an opportunity for local adaptation to climate change, as well as a potential global contributor towards mitigation of climate change. However, addressing deforestation in the Amazon raises substantial challenges in policy, governance, sustainability and economic science. This paper introduces a theme issue dedicated to a multidisciplinary analysis of these challenges.

Compulsory Voting, Invalid Ballots, and Abstention in Brazil

This paper explores the determinants of invalid ballots and abstention in the worlds largest electorate subject to compulsory voting. Previous analysts have seen blank and spoiled ballots either as an expression of po litical protest or as a product of the social structure. To these interpreta tions we add the hypothesis that invalid voting can be caused by institutional factors. In studying twelve legislative elections in Brazil be tween 1945 and 1990, we find that for each of three dependent variables considered (invalid votes for both houses of Congress, and noncompliant abstention), a model incorporating political, socioeconomic, and institu tional factors is more powerful than a model relying on any one of these alone. We also provide evidence that Brazils unusual system of open-list proportional representation generates institutional features which serve as barriers impeding the effective incorporation of newly enfranchised voters. The extraordinarily high rates of invalid balloting in recent Brazilian elec tions point to the necessity of institutional reform in order to achieve democratic consolidation, with important implications for other new democracies.

Climate Change, Social Theory and Justice

This article seeks to answer why North—South climate negotiations have gone on for decades without producing any substantial results. To address this question, we revisit and seek to integrate insights from several disparate theories, including structuralism (new and old), world systems theory, rational choice institutionalism, and social constructivism. We argue that the lack of convergence on climate grew almost inevitably from our starkly unequal world, which has created and perpetuated highly divergent ways of thinking (worldviews and causal beliefs) and promoted particularistic notions of fairness (principled beliefs). We attempt to integrate structural insights about global inequality with the micro-motives of rational choice institutionalism. The structuralist insight that ‘unchecked inequality undermines cooperation’ suggests climate negotiations must be broadened to include a range of seemingly unrelated development issues such as trade, investment, debt, and intellectual property rights agreements. We conclude by reviewing the work of some ‘norm entrepreneurs’ bringing justice issues into climate negotiations and explore how these insights might influence ‘burden sharing’ discussions in the post-Kyoto world, where development is constrained by climate change.

Globalization, Vulnerability to Climate Change, and Perceived Injustice

ABSTRACT As the earths climate begins to shift into a hotter and less predictable period, there is a basic injustice in who will suffer worst and first. Nations facing rising oceans and drought are those least responsible for the problem, and they have the least resources to cope with them. To evaluate claims of environmental injustice, we examine three cases where the first signs of climate change are being felt worst and first: murderous flooding from Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, rising sea levels swamping entire Pacific Island atoll nations, and devastation from flooding among squatter settlements in Mozambique. In each case these nations are suffering not only because of bad geography or management. Rather, because of their colonial past and current positions in the world economy, they are brutally vulnerable to forces outside their control. We conclude by offering an explanation for generalized mistrust among Southern nations vis-à-vis Northern nations and the Kyoto treaty.

The Politics of International Climate Adaptation Funding: Justice and Divisions in the Greenhouse

Finance for developing countries to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change now tops the international climate negotiation agenda. In this article, we first assess how adaptation finance came to the top of the agenda. Second, drawing upon Amartya Sens (2010) “realization-focused comparison” theory of justice, we develop a definition of adaptation finance justice based upon the texts of the 1992 UNFCCC and its subsidiary bodies. From this perspective, we assess three main points of contention between countries on both sides of the North-South divide: The Gap in raising the funds, The Wedge in their distribution, and The Dodge in how they are governed. Overall, we argue that while some ambiguity exists, the decisions of the UNFCCC provide a strong basis for a justice-oriented approach to adaptation finance. However, in practice, adaptation finance has reflected developed country interests far more than the principles of justice adopted by Parties.

Difficulties in accounting for private finance in international climate policy

It is widely acknowledged that private finance has a key role to play in achieving low-carbon development and resilience to climate change. However, while there have been several studies that have closely examined the data on public climate finance, there have been few such studies of the private climate-related finance data. There is a political dimension to accounting for ‘private finance’ given the commitment of industrialized countries – enshrined in the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreements – to mobilize US

Inequality and the global climate regime: breaking the north-south impasse

100 billion of public and private finance for developing countries by 2020, on an annual basis. The availability and quality of data for different types of private climate finance flows with climate benefits (investments, carbon market payments, and voluntary funding) are analysed, and these flows are assessed according to various criteria for inclusion in the