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Reinforcement of multilevel governance dynamics: creating momentum for increasing ambitions in international climate negotiations

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Abstract

Compared to the disappointment of the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, the results of the recent Conferences of the Parties can be regarded as positive progress. This was made possible due to lesson drawing and learning among states. Recent evidence from the UNFCCC negotiations suggests that countries began to reflect on the “Copenhagen experience.” They are setting up domestic climate legislation in the form of low carbon development plans and share their knowledge and experiences in the international climate change negotiations. Country representatives engage in workshops and roundtables to showcase their mitigation plans and low carbon development initiatives, thereby raising ambitions and creating group pressure on other countries. This article examines how the diffusion of policies across countries is motivated and facilitated by knowledge transfer and learning within multilevel-reinforcing governance dynamics between the domestic level and international negotiations. It analyzes how changes in the negotiation setting from confrontational formal negotiations to a more open forum and bottom-up pledge-and-review process, in combination with a positively framed win–win low carbon economic development narrative resulted in the diffusion of climate policies across developed and developing countries. Communicating these climate initiatives on the national level has shifted the debate. Countries emphasize less the win–lose perspective of economic costs and sacrifice. Thus, they focus less on the question of who should reduce emissions’, but identify co-benefits instead. The institutionalized knowledge sharing within the UNFCCC is also creating positive competitive dynamics among countries to increase their ambition and to take on a leadership role. This shift in the negotiations carries potential for a more ambitious aggregate negotiation outcome and opens up a window of opportunity.

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Notes

  1. Emphasized by multiple interviewees, e.g. European Commission (EC) 1 2011; EC 2 2011; EC 3 2011; EC 4 2011; EC 5 2012; EC6 2012; EC7 2012; Member of European Parliament (MEP) 1 2012; MEP 2 2012.

  2. IISD (2007–2013); Interviews with developing country representatives 2009–2011; participant observation 2009–2012 at UNFCCC conferences and Rio+20 in June 2012.

Abbreviations

AWG-ADP:

Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action

AWG-KP:

Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol

AWG-LCA:

Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention

COP:

Conference of Parties

EU:

European Union

IPCC:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

NAMAs:

Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions

NGO:

Nongovernmental Organization

UN:

United Nations

UNFCCC:

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Michael Mason, Richard Perkins, Michele Betsill, Joyeeta Gupta, the participants of the climate governance workshop at the International Studies Association conference in San Francisco 2013, the participants of the LSE Grantham Research Institute Seminar in June 2013 and especially the two anonymous referees at International Environmental Agreements for their helpful feedback and comments on earlier versions of this article.

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  1. Department of Geography and Environment, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment & Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK

    Katharina Rietig

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Rietig, K. Reinforcement of multilevel governance dynamics: creating momentum for increasing ambitions in international climate negotiations. Int Environ Agreements 14, 371–389 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-014-9239-4

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