scholarly journals The Paris Agreement: A New Step in the Gradual Evolution of Differential Treatment in the Climate Regime?

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Maljean-Dubois
Keyword(s):  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Differential Treatment ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Gradual Evolution

scholarly journals The Paris Agreement: Historic Breakthrough or High Stakes Experiment?

Climate Law ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meinhard Doelle
Keyword(s):  
Kyoto Protocol ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Top Down ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Climate Negotiations ◽  
Loss And Damage ◽  
Self Differentiation

This article offers an overview of the two key outcomes of the 2015 Paris climate negotiations, the Paris cop decision, and the Paris Agreement. Collectively, they chart a new course for the un climate regime that started in earnest in Copenhagen in 2009. The Paris Agreement represents a path away from the top-down approach and rigid differentiation among parties reflected in the Kyoto Protocol, toward a bottom-up and flexible approach focused on collective long-term goals and principles. It represents an approach to reaching these long-term goals that is focused on self-differentiation, support, transparency, and review. The article highlights the key elements of the agreement reached in Paris, including its approach to mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance, transparency, and compliance.

scholarly journals Dangerous Incrementalism of the Paris Agreement

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jen Iris Allan
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Past ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Reduce Emissions ◽  
Binding Agreement

After a decade of negotiation, countries adopted a new, legally binding agreement on climate change. Excitement for a new era in the climate regime is palpable among pundits and policy makers alike. But such enthusiasm largely overlooks that most of the Paris Agreement’s provisions represent continuity with existing climate policy, not a break with the past. This forum argues that the Paris Agreement is a dangerous form of incrementalism in two ways. First, it repackages existing rules that have already proven inadequate to reduce emissions and improve resilience. Second, state and nonstate actors celebrate the Agreement as a solution, conferring legitimacy on its rules; I suggest that, beyond the strong desire to avoid failure, developing countries and nongovernmental organizations accepted the Paris Agreement to secure the participation of the United States and to uphold previous agreements. Given the reification of existing rules, the ratchet-up mechanism and nonstate actors offer the last remaining hopes in global efforts to catalyze climate action on a scale necessary to safeguard the climate.

scholarly journals Shifting Traction: Differential Treatment and Substantive and Procedural Regard in the International Climate Change Regime

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Huggins ◽  
Md Saiful Karim
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Differential Treatment ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Common But Differentiated Responsibilities ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Treaty Implementation ◽  
Robust Framework ◽  
International Climate Change

AbstractThe Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signifies a shift in how the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) manifests in the international climate change regime. Unlike the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement does not enshrine differentiated substantive mitigation obligations for developed and developing countries. However, an increasingly proceduralized variant of the CBDR principle, which facilitates regard for the interests of developing countries with respect to treaty implementation yet does not guarantee favourable substantive outcomes for these states, is evident in the emerging regime. The experience of the International Maritime Organization’s climate change regime provides a cautionary tale with respect to procedurally oriented differentiation that is not reinforced by effective processes to ensure that developed states honour their finance and technology transfer commitments. Accordingly, this article posits that strong accountability mechanisms are required to transform opportunities for procedural differentiation in the Paris Agreement into a robust framework for procedural regard for the interests of developing states.

Filling in for Governments? The Role of the Private Actors in the International Climate Regime

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Charlotte Streck
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
State Actor ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Private Actors

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change abandons the Kyoto Protocol’s paradigm of binding emissions targets and relies instead on countries’ voluntary contributions. However, the Paris Agreement encourages not only governments but also sub-national governments, corporations and civil society to contribute to reaching ambitious climate goals. In a transition from the regulated architecture of the Kyoto Protocol to the open system of the Paris Agreement, the Agreement seeks to integrate non-state actors into the treaty-based climate regime. In 2014 the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Peru and France created the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (and launched the Global Climate Action portal). In December 2019, this portal recorded more than twenty thousand climate-commitments of private and public non-state entities, making the non-state venues of international climate meetings decisively more exciting than the formal negotiation space. This level engagement and governments’ response to it raises a flurry of questions in relation to the evolving nature of the climate regime and climate change governance, including the role of private actors as standard setters and the lack of accountability mechanisms for non-state actions. This paper takes these developments as occasion to discuss the changing role of private actors in the climate regime.

scholarly journals The Paris Agreement and the Prospects for Socialization into the Climate Norm: Lessons from the U.S. and China

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-97
Author(s):  
Jinhyun Lee
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Institutional Transformation ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Critical Elements ◽  
The Us ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The U.S

The Paris Agreement made a breakthrough amid the deadlock in climate negotiations, yet concerns are raised regarding how much impact the new voluntary climate regime can make. This paper investigates the socialization mechanism that the Paris Agreement sets up and explores the prospects of “institutional transformation” for it to make a dent. It examines the factors that can facilitate voluntary climate action by using the cases of the most recalcitrant emitters, the United States and China. It argues that the US and China cases suggest that the socialization from the bottom-up by domestic actors may be one of the critical elements that determine states’ position on climate change.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Differential Treatment in International Climate Law: Innovation, Experimentation, and ‘Hot’ Law

Climate Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 195-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Huggins
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
Differential Treatment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Ongoing Controversy ◽  
Deep Fault ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Legal Frameworks

The UN climate regime is a domain of international environmental law (IEL) that has developed in distinctive ways. Applying insights from the work of Michel Callon, climate change is a ‘hot’ situation characterized by ongoing controversy, making it difficult to develop stable and sustainable legal frameworks to manage this state of flux. Building on Elizabeth Fisher’s work positing that environmental law has qualities of ‘hot’ law, this article argues that, in the context of the UN climate regime, the ‘hot’ nature of climate law is compounded by the geopolitical tensions among states in IEL, particularly the deep fault lines between developed and developing states. The novel legal and regulatory solutions that have been experimented with to address issues of differential treatment reflect attempts to manage and contain these ongoing controversies. The UN climate regime yields insights into the promises and pitfalls of designing international legal frameworks to respond to highly contested and divisive issues in a context in which states create, implement, and enforce legal rules.

scholarly journals Climate Mitigation Efforts After the Paris Agreement: Achievements, Remaining Debates, and New Challenges

2016 ◽  
Vol 02 (03) ◽  
pp. 383-400
Author(s):  
Huang Yitian
Keyword(s):  
Global Climate ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Institutional Innovation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Global Challenge ◽  
Nationally Determined Contributions ◽  
New Challenges

Climate change has been widely recognized as a global challenge that must be addressed in the twenty-first century. As an important step toward a post-2020 climate regime, the Paris Agreement has shown great achievements as well as future directions of global climate mitigation. Although some key features can be found in the mitigation provisions of the agreement, such as dual goals of temperature increase, reliance on “nationally determined contributions,” the blending of market and non-market elements, and ambiguity in financial and technology transfer, yet remaining debates including the allocation of responsibilities and the fairness of international transfer of mitigation outcomes will continue to affect the future of global climate governance. Furthermore, new challenges have also emerged after the Paris deal. Political and economic uncertainties, “carbon leakage” among industrializing countries, and the overgrowth of climate financial institutions will all generate impacts on future climate mitigation efforts. There is no ready panacea to these problems. Nevertheless, a few options of policy and institutional innovation at the technical level should be considered to generate incremental progress.

scholarly journals Strategic Diplomacy, Fractal Governance and the BRICS in the Climate Regime

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Ana Flávia Barros-Platiau ◽  
Niels Soendergaard ◽  
Jorge Gomes do Cravo Barros ◽  
Liziane Paixão Silva Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Multilateral Negotiations ◽  
Power Shift ◽  
Opening Up

In the context of the COP 23 outcomes, the puzzling question is: how to save the climate? Starting from the multilateral negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the French-Californian initiative "Make our Planet Great Again" as a response to President Trump's declarations, this article states that diplomacy and international law have to be more adaptive and inclusive. The emerging order from a fractal governance perspective and the power shift to Asia show the need of opening up for effective dialogue and attracting the BRICS to the UN sphere, not the BASIC.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document