Abstract
Historically, burden sharing of mitigation in the climate regime was operationalized as a binary division of the world between the Annex I group of industrialized countries with emission reduction targets and the non-Annex I (developing) countries without them. The 2015 Paris Agreement arguably ended such division by introducing a bottom-up system of self-differentiated emission reduction commitments through countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions. This paradigmatic regime shift creates the opportunity to research to what extent it has been accompanied by a similar change in member states’ negotiation positions and policymaking. I explore whether key developing countries’ discourses regarding burden sharing of mitigation have changed pre- and post-Paris and how this relates to their own mitigation contributions. Has the Paris Agreement led to a new way of thinking regarding burden sharing? Do countries in favour of abolishing the Annex I–non-Annex I divide also propose more ambitious climate policies? I rely on text analysis of written position papers submitted to the negotiations, focusing on members of two coalitions at opposite extremes of developing countries’ positions: the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean, a group of progressive countries arguing for more comprehensive climate agreements; and the Like-Minded Developing Countries, a coalition that aims to uphold the regime’s differentiation between developed and developing countries.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
We’re sorry, something doesn't seem to be working properly.
Please try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, please contact support so we can address the problem.
Notes
Nonetheless, the UNFCCC also contains more qualitative mitigation-related obligations for all parties: Article 4.1b mandates all parties to formulate, implement, publish and update national climate mitigation programmes, while Article 4.1c mandates them to promote and cooperate on technology development, application, diffusion and transfer for climate change mitigation.
The countries that have at least once subscribed to a written submission by LMDC are: Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Bolivia, China, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, India, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, the Philippines (left the group in 2014), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Venezuela and Yemen (Blaxekjær et al., 2016). The countries written in italics above are those with clearly active roles in the coalition, such as delivering statements on behalf of LMDC.
AILAC’s founding members are Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Peru. Paraguay and Honduras joined in 2015. Paraguay is the only member to both AILAC and LMDC. Mexico and the Dominican Republic are very close to AILAC and its work, without being actual members.
Before carrying out the analysis, I remove all standard stop words: words used very frequently that carry little meaning, such as articles (“the”, “a”) or prepositions (“in”). I also remove numbers, symbols, URLs and punctuation, and the names of the coalitions and their member countries. As a final pre-processing step, I build key phrases by putting together the forty compounded expressions most frequently found across all texts. The analysis was carried out with the package quanteda in R (Benoit et al. 2018).
References
AILAC. (2014a). Submission on the ad hoc working group on the Durban platform (ADP). Bonn: UNFCCC Secretariat. https://unfccc.int/files/documentation/submissions_from_parties/adp/application/pdf/adp2.4_submission_by_ailac_20140310.pdf. Accessed 23 June 2019.
AILAC. (2014b). About AILAC. http://ailac.org/en/sobre/. Accessed 12 May 2019.
AILAC. (2017a). Submission by Guatemala on behalf of the AILAC group of countries composed by Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. Item 3 Further guidance in relation to the mitigation section of decision 1/CP.21. Bonn: UNFCCC Secretariat. https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/SubmissionsStaging/Documents/233_321_131354731660216313-170331%20AILAC%20Submission%20NDCs%202017.pdf. Accessed 23 June 2019.
AILAC. (2017b). Submission by Peru on behalf of the AILAC group of countries composed by Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. Item 3 Further guidance in relation to the mitigation section of decision 1/CP.21. Bonn: UNFCCC Secretariat. https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/SubmissionsStaging/Documents/863_356_131499694560533194-SUBMISSION%20BY%20PERU%20ON%20BEHALF%20OF%20THE%20AILAC%20GROUP.pdf. Accessed 23 June 2019.
Audet, R. (2013). Climate justice and bargaining coalitions: a discourse analysis. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics,13(3), 369–386.
Benoit, K., Watanabe, K., Wang, H., Nulty, P., Obeng, A., Müller, S., et al. (2018). quanteda: An R package for the quantitative analysis of textual data. Journal of Open Source Software,3(30), 774.
Bhandary, R. R. (2017). Coalition strategies in the climate negotiations: An analysis of mountain-related coalitions. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics,17(2), 173–190.
Blaxekjær, L. Ø., & Nielsen, T. D. (2015). Mapping the narrative positions of new political groups under the UNFCCC. Climate Policy,15(6), 751–766.
Blaxekjær, L. Ø., Nielsen, T. D., Sælen, H., Lahn, B., & Green-Weiskel, L. (2016). The narrative position of the Like Minded Developing Countries in global climate negotiations: A policy-oriented narrative approach to IR. Paper presented at the Earth System Governance Berlin Conference, 23–24 May.
Bondi, M. (2010). Perspectives on keywords and keyness: An introduction. In M. Bondi & M. Scott (Eds.), Keyness in Texts (pp. 1–18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Chasek, P., & Rajamani, L. (2003). Steps toward enhanced parity: Negotiating capacity and strategies of developing countries. In I. Kaul, P. Conceição, K. Le Goulven, & R. U. Mendoza (Eds.), Providing global public goods: Managing globalization (pp. 245–262). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Costantini, V., Crescenzi, R., De Fillipis, F., & Salvatici, L. (2007). Bargaining coalitions in the WTO agricultural negotiations. The World Economy,30(5), 863–891.
Dunning, T. (1993). Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics,19(1), 61–74.
Dupont, C. (1996). Negotiation as coalition building. International Negotiation,1(1), 47–64.
Frieden, J. A. (1999). Actors and preferences in international relations. In D. A. Lake & R. Powell (Eds.), Strategic choice and international relations (pp. 39–76). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gupta, J. (2000). “On behalf of my delegation,…” A survival guide for developing country climate negotiators. Washington, D.C.: Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas.
Holz, C., Kartha, S., & Athanasiou, T. (2018). Fairly sharing 1.5: National fair shares of a 1.5°C-compliant global mitigation effort. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics,18(1), 117–134.
Kasa, S., Gullberg, A. T., & Heggelund, G. (2007). The Group of 77 in the international climate negotiations: Recent developments and future directions. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics,8(2), 113–127.
Klöck, C., & Castro, P. (2018). Coalitions in global climate change negotiations. INOGOV Policy Brief No. 5. Norwich: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia.
LMDC. (2013). LMDC views on identification of elements in ADP Workstream 1. Bonn: UNFCCC Secretariat. http://unfccc.int/files/documentation/submissions_from_parties/adp/application/pdf/adp2-3_lmdc_workstream_1_20131118.pdf. Accessed 23 June 2019.
LMDC. (2017). LMDC submission on further guidance for the Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. Bonn: UNFCCC Secretariat. https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/SubmissionsStaging/Documents/214_321_131353593505879518-LMDC%20Submission%20on%20Further%20Guidance%20for%20the%20NDCs%20under%20the%20Paris%20%20Agreement%20-%20FINAL.pdf. Accessed 23 June 2019.
Maljean-Dubois, S. (2016). The Paris Agreement: A new step in the gradual evolution of differential treatment in the climate regime? Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law,25(2), 151–160.
Obergassel, W., Arens, C., Hermwille, L., Kreibich, N., Mersmann, F., Ott, H. E., et al. (2015). Phoenix from the ashes: An analysis of the Paris Agreement to the United Nations framework convention on climate change. Environmental Law and Management,27(6), 243–262.
Odell, J. S. (2013). Negotiation and bargaining. In W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse, & B. A. Simmons (Eds.), Handbook of international relations (2nd ed., pp. 379–400). London: Sage.
Pauw, P., Cassanmagnano, D., Mbeva, K., Hein, J., Guarin, A., Brandi, C., et al. (2016). NDC explorer. Bonn, Nairobi and Stockholm: German Development Institute, African Centre for Technology Studies and Stockholm Environment Institute.
Rajamani, L. (2006). Differential treatment in international environmental law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rajamani, L. (2016). Ambition and differentiation in the 2015 Paris Agreement: Interpretative possibilities and underlying politics. International and Comparative Law Quarterly,65(2), 493–514.
Roberts, J. T. (2011). Multipolarity and the new world (dis)order: US hegemonic decline and the fragmentation of the global climate regime. Global Environmental Change,21(3), 776–784.
UNFCCC. (2012). Decision 1/CP.17—Establishment of an ad hoc working group on the Durban platform for enhanced action. In Report of the conference of the parties on its seventeenth session, held in Durban from 28 November to 11 December 2011. Addendum. Part two: Action taken by the conference of the parties at its seventeenth session, FCCC/CP/2011/9/Add.1. Bonn: UNFCCC Secretariat.
Vihma, A., Mulugetta, Y., & Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, S. (2011). Negotiating solidarity? The G77 through the prism of climate change negotiations. Global Change, Peace and Security,23(3), 315–334.
Voigt, C., & Ferreira, F. (2016). ‘Dynamic differentiation’: The principles of CBDR-RC, progression and highest possible ambition in the Paris Agreement. Transnational Environmental Law,5(2), 285–303.
Watts, J., & Depledge, J. (2018). Latin America in the climate change negotiations: Exploring the AILAC and ALBA coalitions. WIREs Climate Change,9(6), 1–14.
Williams, R. (1976). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. London: Fontana Press.
Winkler, H., & Rajamani, L. (2013). CBDR&RC in a regime applicable to all. Climate Policy,14(1), 102–121.
Acknowledgements
This work was partially carried out while the author was at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Financial support by the Centre and by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. PMPDP1_171273) is gratefully acknowledged.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Castro, P. Past and future of burden sharing in the climate regime: positions and ambition from a top-down to a bottom-up governance system. Int Environ Agreements 20, 41–60 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-019-09465-4
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-019-09465-4