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Contextualization of Multilateral Climate Change Negotiations: Understanding the Meaning of Path Dependency for Decision-Making

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Strategic Facilitation of Complex Decision-Making

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Abstract

Claiming that history matters in climate change negotiations is a commonly accepted notion among policy makers and researchers. Nevertheless, there seems to be much difficulty in providing answers as to how history actually matters, and how things in the past are not only determining the current behavior of decision makers but also defining the sets of possible subsequent decisions. Looking at the climate change regime building process, which already started long before the Rio convention of 1992, involves a historical process that is difficult to grasp. The complexity of the climate change negotiations is a product of this unique historical process and understanding its complex trajectory requires reexamining the past.

“Study the past if you would define the future” (Confucius)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Smog related deaths in London were reported to have increased from 2,062 to 4,703 in just a week in December 1952. Deaths resulting from bronchitis and lung infection was reported to have increased sevenfold (Lamb 1989).

  2. 2.

    The “Minamata sickness” was discovered between 1950 and 1960 in Minamata, Japan. The sickness, which involved the partial and total paralysis of inhabitants of Minamata, was caused by the mercury contamination of the sea through the company Nippon Chisso. Until 1997, 1,246 inhabitants died following this sickness. The subsequent legal processes in the 60s and 70s received huge public attention not only in Japan but also in the world (Gunnarson et al. 1974).

  3. 3.

    The death of European forests was highly controversial in the media leading to its inclusion in the political agenda (Kommission für Reinhaltung der Luft 2005).

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  1. University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Ariel Macaspac Hernández

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Hernández, A.M. (2014). Contextualization of Multilateral Climate Change Negotiations: Understanding the Meaning of Path Dependency for Decision-Making. In: Strategic Facilitation of Complex Decision-Making. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06197-9_2

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