MRV in the 2015 climate agreement: Promoting Compliance through Transparency and the Participation of NGOs (original) (raw)
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International climate change policy and the contribution of civil society organisations.docx
This article considers the development of climate change policy and the contribution of civil society organisations. It discusses that contribution firstly as actors in the process including in the context of the emergence of the broader grouping of non-state actors, and then in the context of achieving the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It then explores the international policy development process and why efforts to date to deliver the objectives of the Convention have proved problematic. It considers the governance and integrity issues and the institutions measures of integrity. The chapter identifies three main reasons for difference between the objectives of the Convention and the outcomes achieved i) the priority afforded the economic and social development as policy requirements alongside the ecological outcome ii) the exemptions previously afforded the world’s major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters including China, India, Brazil and Indonesia through the common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR) provisions and iii) that energy security is in some key cases a principle objective in domestic policy and therefore a factor impacting the international negotiations. Civil Society has been an active and welcome participant in the UNFCCC events, bringing specialist knowledge and informed comment in its sphere of interest. In accordance with the UNFCCC rules CSOs must be representative, a feature which underpins the validity of its interventions. Since the 2012 Cancun COP, Parties have expressed their commitment to better and more effective engagement with non-state actors, a move welcomed by CSOs but which are now be required to share their limited opportunities at the COPs and meetings with other stakeholders, non-state actors. This article considers the impact on the CSOs and the consequence for their advocacy and relevance. The report also comments on the contribution to the process by embracing a theoretical framework. The framework adopted for this research is Governance and Integrity and demonstrates how it can inform the process and provide measures for policy effectiveness.
Increasing Participation and Compliance in International Climate Change Agreements
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Scientific and economic consensus points to the need for a credible and cost-effective approach to address the threat of global climate change, but the Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change appears incapable of inducing significant participation and compliance. We assess the Protocol and alternative policy architectures, with particular attention to their respective abilities to induce participation and compliance. We find that those approaches that offer cost-effective mitigation are unlikely to induce significant participation and compliance, while those approaches that are likely to enjoy a reasonably high level of implementation by sovereign states are sorely lacking in terms of their anticipated cost effectiveness. The feasible set of policy architectures is thus limited to second-best alternatives.
Climate change is a common concern of humankind, as so have acknowledged States Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Such common concern grants international community as a whole legitimate interest in entire and general compliance with the Convention, through erga omnes obligations and collective mechanisms. Precedents provided by international human rights mechanisms, the Aarhus Convention and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation confirm that individuals are subjects of international law. This new framework, in conjunction with a teleological, systematic and evolutionary interpretation – according to article 31.1 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969 and jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice – of the principle of public participation in environmental matters, provides fundaments for the participation of individuals in such issues also at international level. The “Procedures for the Adoption and Implementation of Rules in the Field of Environment” recommend a broader public participation at international level and exhort States to encourage such participation. The Almaty Guidelines recommend the participation of individuals at international levels in environmental matters. Individuals could monitor States’ obligations on policies and measures relating to climate change, as well as provide local knowledge, new approaches and insights, especially where and when the reach of States, international organizations and NGOs may be wanting. Environmental treaties could replicate good practices of human rights mechanisms. This paper brings two practical suggestions for the participation of individuals at international level, therein inspired: “Climate policies and measures monitoring” and “Climate Change Universal Periodic Review”, which need and deserve further research.
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Marmara University Journal of Political Science, 2020
Global climate governance is one of the most complex global governance systems that is also ridden with divergent interests of states and non-state actors. Since the 2000s, the authority of UN-led global climate governance has been contested by the states declining their mitigation targets of the Kyoto Protocol and by those that find the international climate negotiations inefficient to ramp up climate action. These divergent views of states resulted in the counter-institutionalization apparent in the proliferation of minilateral forums and hybrid coalitions of climate initiatives oftentimes bringing states and non-state actors together. These non-UNFCCC partnerships have functioned to be strategic actions that put pressure on the global climate governance system to re-legitimate itself. Meanwhile, transnational actors have also contested the same system demanding a deeper cooperation that will keep the temperature goal below 2 degrees. This study argues that with its new mode of governance named hybrid multilateralism, the Paris Agreement was actually an institutional adaptation to the contestations by states and non-state actors in the forms of counter-institutionalization and politicization. It also discusses the problematic sides of the functions that non-state actors are expected to provide in this new governance mode. This paper is composed of four parts: firstly, the theoretical background that feeds into the analysis of empirical data with regard to global climate governance will be presented. Secondly, beginning from the Rio Conference, milestone developments in global climate governance will be examined by taking the contestation by the states into consideration. In the third part, the process of the politicization of climate change in which transnational actors and specifically the climate change movement demanded more decisive climate action will be explicated. In the last part, the existing legitimacy deficits with regard to non-state actors in post-Paris climate governance will be elaborated.
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Sammendrag/Abstract This report explores the influence of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on the design of the climate compliance regime and how they work to promote climate performance,among,both parties and non-parties tothe Kyoto Protocol. ,NGOs have been quite successful in attaining their goals for the design of the compliance regime: They won acceptance for the dual approach to compliance, with both a