Sylvia I. Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen

Legitimacy in an Era of Fragmentation: The Case of Global Climate Governance

Studies grounded in regime theory have examined the effectiveness of “minilateral” climate change forums that have emerged outside of the UN climate process. However, there are no detailed studies of the legitimacy of these forums or of the impacts of their legitimacy on effectiveness and governance potential. Adopting the lens of legitimacy, we analyze the reasons for the formation of minilateral climate change forums and their recent role in global climate governance. We use Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and Vihmas analytical framework for international institutions to examine three minilateral climate forums: the Asia-Pacific Partnership, the Major Economies Meetings, and the G8 climate process. These forums have significant deficits in their source-based, process-based, and outcome-based legitimacy, particularly when compared to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. If assessed purely on grounds of effectiveness, the minilateral forums might be easily dismissed as peripheral to the UN climate process. However, they play important roles by providing sites for powerful countries to shape the assumptions and expectations of global climate governance. Thus, the observed institutional fragmentation allows key states to use minilateral forums to shape the architecture of global climate governance.

The United Nations and global energy governance: past challenges, future choices

The link between energy, economic development and national security has often made governments reluctant to address energy in global governance. In the United Nations (UN) system and beyond, the result has been almost a normative and institutional vacuum on energy. In the last decade some efforts have been made to fill this vacuum within the UN but they have faced considerable resistance, and instead initiatives have multiplied outside it. This article outlines the dynamics of the low profile of the energy issue on the agenda of the UN since the organisations birth, analyses in more detail the efforts to strengthen this agenda in the 2000s, and also why they failed. Finally, it discusses possible future options for the UN and the international community at large to address this urgent issue, situates this discussion in the rationalist and constructivist theories of effective and legitimate global governance and outlines further research avenues.

Negotiating solidarity? The G77 through the prism of climate change negotiations

The negotiating group of developing countries, the G77, is one of the most important institutions in global climate governance. This article analyses the cohesiveness of, and internal tension within, the G77 coalition by using the politics of climate change as the empirical window. The study examines four arenas of UN-based deliberations on climate change in the years 2007–2010; the Security Council, the Commission on Sustainable Development, the General Assembly and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We argue that these deliberations, once they reached the top of the international political agenda in 2007, and ever since, have posed deeper challenges to the G77 coalition than ever before. While developing country interests are both converging and diverging, the increasingly conflicting interests, as well as the very slowly eroding common identity, are creating increasingly unified subgroups in the G77. The G77 is highly unlikely to break up formally, but how functional it will be as a bloc in the forthcoming climate change negotiations remains an open question.

Multiscale scenarios for nature futures

Targets for human development are increasingly connected with targets for nature, however, existing scenarios do not explicitly address this relationship. Here, we outline a strategy to generate scenarios centred on our relationship with nature to inform decision-making at multiple scales.

Entry into force and then? The Paris agreement and state accountability

ABSTRACT The entry into force of the Paris Agreement on climate change brings expectations that states will be held to account for their commitments. The article elaborates on why this is not a realistic assumption unless a broader multilevel perspective is taken on the nature of accountability regimes for international (legal) agreements. The formal accountability mechanisms of such agreements tend to be weak, and there are no indications that they will be stronger for the recent global goals adopted in the Paris Agreement. Looking beyond only peer review among states, national institutions, direct civil society engagement and internal government processes – while each coming with their own strengths and weaknesses – provide additional accountability pathways that together may do a better job. Scientific enquiry is, however, required to better understand, support and find improved mixtures of, and perhaps to move beyond, these accountability pathways. Policy relevance This perspective provides something of a clarion call for a variety of different types of actors at both global and national levels to engage in ensuring that states keep the promises they made in the Paris Agreement. It particularly highlights the importance of national institutions and civil society to step up to the task in the present world order, where states are reluctant to build strong accountability regimes at the global level.

The impact of the US retreat from the Paris Agreement: Kyoto revisited?

ABSTRACT 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

Read all about it!? Public accountability, fragmented global climate governance and the media

The way that the media reports and comments on key events in the fragmented global climate governance landscape is one important route to strengthening public accountability of such governance. Editorials and other opinion pieces provide key contributions to the public sphere, but have been almost entirely neglected in media research on climate change. Another understudied aspect in such research is the reporting on the fragmentation of global climate governance across numerous forums. This article provides an exploratory approach to address these two research gaps. It presents a quantitative analysis of how often leading newspapers in seven countries (Finland, India, Laos, Norway, South Africa, UK and USA) wrote about 18 meetings in six different global climate governance forums between 2004–2009 and whether they provided commentaries about them. The study shows that media coverage (articles and opinion pieces) is limited or absent for many meetings that are not attended by heads of state, are the launch of a new process or do not have the convening power of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The pattern of coverage differs significantly among individual newspapers and there is no clear distinction between developed and developing country newspapers. The article concludes that overall news coverage, and editorial commentary in particular, of global climate meetings in the selected newspapers is too low and too patchy to significantly support domestic publics to hold their own (and indirectly other) governments accountable with regard to fragmented global climate governance. Policy relevance This study is instructive for the media and civil society, who should both act as accountholders of governments with regard to how they act in global climate governance and its implementation. Reporting and commentaries need to reflect the overarching process, not only sporadic coverage of high-level meetings, but also critical analysis of what is achieved. They should also take a broader scope in terms of the kinds of meetings and processes in global governance that they cover. Civil society should encourage the media to increase coverage along these lines, e.g. by adequate monitoring of government actions (or lack thereof) and share this with the media.

Responsibility for radical change in addressing climate change

To radically address the problem of climate change, it is not enough to modify specific attitudes and behaviors while upholding the present paradigms. This article aims to show why modifications will never bring about radical carbon emission reductions. We discuss what it implies to desire radical change, using contemporary philosophy as a method. We argue that a key requirement to achieve radical emission reductions is that we as human beings adopt responsibility that brings with it a continuous commitment to the process of change. Acting on the new understanding of responsibility as an internal mindset toward the bringing about of radical change requires a cooperative decision-making model and a new understanding of leadership.

The influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit of the Abidjan Convention: implementing multilateral environmental agreements to prevent shipping pollution in West and Central Africa

The Regional Coordinating Unit of the Convention for Co-operation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment for West and Central Africa (the Abidjan Convention) has under its wings several multilateral environmental agreements including those addressing shipping pollution. Shipping, potentially, has negative impacts on marine fauna and flora and air quality, with implications for public health. The Regional Coordinating Unit seeks to strengthen implementation of the Abidjan Convention by party-states through co-operation with state actors using various pathways based on its internal resources and competencies but the Unit is also starting to explore engagement with potential non-state actors. The ability of the Unit to exert influence on implementation is constrained by domestic politico-administrative institutions. This paper seeks to understand the influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit on the implementation of the Abidjan Convention in the field of shipping pollution. It uses three theoretical perspectives for the analysis: the influence of international environmental bureaucracies, domestic regulatory-politics and transnational governance. The paper shows how these theories are complementary because the influence of international bureaucracies such as the Regional Coordinating Unit cannot be adequately understood through factors internal to their organisation alone but needs to be analysed in relation also to external factors, both domestic politico-institutional ones in states that international bureaucracies work with, and the role of relevant non-state actors in the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. It is concluded that, although influence cannot be measured directly, it is likely that Regional Coordinating Unit’s influence through its autonomy-centred efforts are quiet strong but negatively constrained by the traditional state-centric responsibility for implementation of international legal instruments where domestic regulatory-politics lack sufficient political will and support from and engagement with non-state actors.

The Strategizing of Policy Entrepreneurs towards the Global Alliance for Climate‐Smart Agriculture

Global collaborations across level, domain, and sector boundaries are on the rise. This article analyses policy entrepreneurship for the establishment of the Global Alliance for Climate‐Smart Agriculture (GACSA), a global multi‐actor collaboration to address climate change and foster food security and development. We explore policy entrepreneurship as a process embedded within specific contexts. To that end we focus on the strategizing process, consisting of conditions, activities, and implications. Through a congruence case study based on interviews, documents, survey, and observation we find that: (1) accommodating a varied global community requires flexibility and adaptability from entrepreneurs towards a dynamic and changing environment; (2) the variety of actors constituting GACSA compromises vigour of the collaboration, and confuses the meaning of CSA; (3) whereas collective entrepreneurship is often depicted as joint operation of multiple actors, it might also be characterized by conflicting activities and/or successive involvement; (4) policy entrepreneurship is useful to establish collaborations, but its role is temporary. Entrepreneurs must therefore be sensitive to their potential obsoleteness and withdraw at the right moment. Our results show that policy entrepreneurship is a useful lens to study global policy processes, while providing guidelines to inspire and support practitioners to engage with global policy processes.