The European Union as a negotiator in the international climate change regime

While the leadership role of the European Union (EU) in the climate change regime has been largely acknowledged, less attention has been paid to identifying the reasons why the EU often fails in climate change negotiations. Such an undertaking is deemed imperative following the negative for the EU turn of events at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. There is sufficient literature to be found on the link between the Union’s unique and complex organizational structure and its inability to act cohesively and purposefully. This study seeks to add to this corpus by looking at the extent to which the EU has been able to learn from its mistakes and incorporate timely remedial action. Even though important, the EU’s failures as a global actor cannot be explained by only looking at its ineffective institutional architecture. A more systematic understanding of the reasons behind EU’s failures in climate talks is in fact needed. By using Underdal’s theory of ‘negotiation failure’, this study tries to explore the extent to which negotiation theory could help with better comprehending the obstacles that prevented the Union from getting more out of the climate negotiation process.     

Linking EU climate and energy policies: policy-making,implementation and reform

This contribution examines the EU’s innovative climate and energy package: how this package of binding policies has been initiated, decided, implemented and reformed. The key argument is that linking climate and energy concerns can help to explain how the EU managed to adopt an ambitious package of policies aimed at achieving 2020 goals. The combination of differently valued issues, side payments to overcome distributional obstacles and the creation of synergies contributed to a successfully negotiated outcome. The consequences for implementation and further policy development towards 2030 are explained by challenges in reproducing these joint EU-level gains at national level and by new circumstances. This may weaken the EU’s chances of realizing a low-carbon economy and ‘leadership by example’ in international climate policy.     

Ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation: progress and challenges

Resilient ecosystems are vital to human well-being and are increasingly recognised as critical to supporting communities’ efforts to adapt to climate change. The governing bodies of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are encouraging parties to adopt ‘ecosystem-based adaptation’ (EbA) approaches, which utilise biodiversity and ecosystem services to support climate change adaptation. These approaches are wide ranging and include mangrove restoration to buffer against storm surges; watershed management to protect against droughts and floods; rangeland management to prevent desertification; and sustainable management of fisheries and forests to ensure food security. This article examines the emergence of EbA in international legal frameworks for climate change and biodiversity and progress towards implementation. The EbA concept is potentially powerful in catalysing international and national commitments to act due to its key defining features of a focus on societal adaptation rather than ecocentricism, and a targeting of the immediate adaptation needs of the poorest and most vulnerable communities who are adversely affected by climate change. However, examination of national policy and practice in two least developed countries, Samoa and Cambodia, reveals that institutional and legal barriers at national level can pose significant challenges to operationalising EbA to achieve adaptation objectives.     

Access and allocation in climate change adaptation

As climate change impacts become increasingly apparent, adaptation becomes increasingly urgent. Accordingly, adaptation to climate change has shifted towards the centre of attention in both policy and research. In this article, we review the last 10 years of adaptation research (2008–2018), with a focus on work within the Earth System Governance network. We use the lens of access and allocation to structure our review and examine how adaptation affects, and is affected by, access to basic needs, basic rights, and decision-making on the one hand, as well as allocation of responsibilities, resources, and risks on the other. We find that questions of justice, equity, and fairness are fundamental to all dimensions of adaptation. The access perspective, for example, suggests that we need to assess vulnerability, understood broadly, while the allocation perspective focuses on questions of responsibility for being vulnerable, e.g. when people live, or move to, hazard-prone areas exposed to climate risk. This also relates to questions of who is responsible for selecting, implementing, and funding adaptation measures. Overall, we find that the framework of “access and allocation” and its subcategories offer a detailed approach to adaptation and adaptation research, but that it is not intuitive. The notion of “climate justice” seems to resonate more with both academic and policy debates.

     

Special issue: Exploring global and transnational governance of climate change adaptation

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics -     

Access and allocation in earth system governance: water and climate change compared

A significant percentage of the global population does not yet have access to safe drinking water, sufficient food or energy to live in dignity. There is a continuous struggle to allocate the earth’s resources among users and uses. This article argues that distributional problems have two faces: access to basic resources or ecospace; and, the allocation of environmental resources, risks, burdens, and responsibilities for causing problems. Furthermore, addressing problems of access and allocation often requires access to social processes (science, movements and law). Analysts, however, have tended to take a narrow, disciplinary approach although an integrated conceptual approach may yield better answers. This article proposes a multi-disciplinary perspective to the problem of access and allocation and illustrates its application to water management and climate change.     

Convergence in the Dutch Health Insurance: Possibilities and Obstacles in a European Perspective

Convergence in Dutch Health Insurance presents possibilities and obstacles considered from a European perspective. The idea is to converge the two existing systems of social and private health insurance. Private health insurers will be obliged to offer a minimum level of health insurance cover based on community rating. In this article consequences of the EC Treaty are in focus. Extensive convergence can be legally allowed in the interests of the common good. The European Court of Justice plays a decisive role in deciding whether convergence is approved according to the rules of the EC Treaty.     

Prevention and health standards: American, Soviet, and European models

This paper explores some significant sources of variation in the way health standards are derived and used in various countries: differences in biological and regulatory philosophies, in enforcement strategies, and in institutional arrangements. Such cross-national variations raise a number of questions about the process of standard-setting. Among the issues discussed here are the nature of the trade-off between long-run goals and feasibility criteria that merely codify current technical and economic practice, and the possibility of replacing statutory regulation by self-regulation and non-statutory codes and standards.     

International and intranational equity in sharing climate change mitigation burdens

Is inequality within countries relevant for global climate policy? Most burden-sharing proposals for climate mitigation treat states as homogenous agents, even those that aim to protect individual rights. This can lead to free riders in some large emerging economies and expose the poor to mitigation burdens in others. Proposals that incorporate an exemption for the poor can avoid these outcomes, but do not account for the role of internal policies on the poor’s actual emissions and mitigation burdens. This will create moral hazards in the design of such agreements and risk the misallocation of mitigation costs when implemented. To ensure equitable outcomes at the individual level, international agreements would need to build in additional provisions to encourage benefiting states to reduce emissions and target exemptions to the poor. But such agreements will face political conflicts over sovereignty and the burdensomeness of such provisions.     

20 Years of global climate change governance research: taking stock and moving forward

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - Research on global climate change governance is no longer primarily concerned with the international legal regime, state...     

The European Union as a global climate leader: confronting aspiration with evidence

In rhetoric and action the European Union has attempted to be a global leader in forging solutions to confront the problem of climate change. Using unique survey data collected at five consecutive UN climate summits from 2008–2012, this article provides evidence on the extent to which the EU is actually recognized as a leader in the UNFCCC climate negotiations, investigates how perceptions of EU leadership have evolved overtime, and helps make sense of the role that the EU has played in recent negotiation outcomes. The survey’s findings show that recognition of the EU as a leader dropped sharply in 2009 at the COP 15 summit in Copenhagen, but has climbed again in subsequent years. The results reveal a fragmented leadership landscape in which the EU must share or compete for leadership with other actors, such as the USA and China, who hold drastically different institutional design preferences and leadership visions than those promoted by the EU. The article’s findings provide insight into the dynamics that both foster and frustrate the EU’s aspiration to lead the effort to reach a deal on a binding post-2020 climate change agreement in Paris at COP 21.     

The role of technology transfer offices in building the South African biotechnology sector: an assessment of policies,practices and impact

While South Africa appears to have many of the building blocks in place to support a vibrant biotechnology sector, the potential which exists has not yet been realised. Several policies and programmes have therefore been introduced by government in recent years in order to address some of the barriers. The poor flow of technologies from research laboratories to industry has been identified as an area of particular concern, with the role of institutional technology transfer offices (TTOs) as facilitators of improved technology transfer being highlighted. This paper describes the status quo of biotechnology in South Africa, discusses relevant policy developments and against this background, examines the status of TTOs, the constraints which are faced and how these might be overcome.

Security policies and the weakening of personal data protection in the European Union

In recent years, the reinforcement of security policies alongside the expansion of information systems for law enforcement and crime prevention entailed growing restrictions to personal data protection principles and procedural rights in the European Union. This paper seeks to elucidate this trend, while matching it with an EU institutional discourse based on balancing and proportionality. Indeed, EU institutions regularly present security measures and fundamental rights as somewhat symmetric values to be easily conciliated through balancing and proportionality. Considering the raising of the protection of personal data to the status of a fundamental right by the Charter of Fundamental Rights, its effect on a possible rebalancing of the values at stake is discussed. Yet, we conclude, for the time being, the potential for just and democratic solutions provided by the ideas of balancing and proportionality does not appear to be properly used.     

Financial development policies in Uzbekistan: an analysis of achievements and failures

This paper provides a detailed analysis of Uzbekistan’s performance in liberalising its financial system. Two major areas are considered in the paper. First, we review financial development reform in Uzbekistan from independence until 2006, including the banking sector, non-bank financial institutions and securities markets. Second, it examines the policy achievements and failures of the Uzbek path and the sequence of reforms in each of these areas. Policy recommendations are then offered to remedy the existing problems that we identify. This paper is first to make a detailed analysis of policy successes and failures in Uzbekistan financial reform.     

The power of presidency in UN climate change negotiations: comparison between Denmark and Mexico

In December 2010, the 16th Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ended with adopting Cancun Agreements as official decisions under the UN process. The international community determined the meeting a success. This was a substantial change compared to the previous year’s Copenhagen climate conference, which failed to reach consensus at the official level and thus having come under severe criticism as “diplomatic failure.” This article aims to explain the stark contrast between the two consecutive COP meetings and argues that the leadership style of the president of the conference is one important factor propelling negotiations forward. While the current literature scarcely addresses the role of the president, this article explores multiple variables that condition the president’s effectiveness in moving negotiations forward. This article concludes that the Mexican government successfully chaired the negotiations with excellent agenda management and process management capability, which the Danish government lacked. In particular, its transparent and embracing manner in handling subgroup meetings and the production of a single negotiation text facilitated trust among negotiators, which in turn made the parties tend to cooperate better. More importantly, the case study reveals that the Mexican government had a significant influence on given conditions of the negotiation process, such as the international environment surrounding the negotiation and the decision-making rules.     

National institutional response to climate change and stakeholder participation: a comparative study for Asia

Asian countries are building domestic institutions in response to climate change at both the international and domestic levels. Many countries have adopted the inter-agency coordination mechanism (IACM) as a national institutional approach to adjust the functions of various governmental agencies to tackle climate change. This article compares and contrasts national IACMs in four countries: Japan, the Republic of Korea, China and India. It examines (1) the structure and function of an IACM; (2) agencies and their specific roles in IACMs; (3) measures to empower the participation of other stakeholders including local governments, private sector, civil society and academia; and (4) changes in IACMs and reasons for such changes. Four success factors drawn from our comparative study suggest that an effective IACM should feature (1) strong overall coordination by the President/Prime Minister; (2) empowerment of the industry and environment agencies as joint lead agencies coordinating mitigation and adaptation; (3) involvement of all major sectoral agencies related to mitigation and adaptation; and (4) maximisation of the use of the comparative advantages of other stakeholders. The article highlights successful practices in Asia that can be emulated by other governments considering reform of their own domestic institutions in response to climate change.