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Institute
While the intergovernmental climate regime increasingly recognizes the role of non-state actors in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement (PA), the normative linkages between the intergovernmental climate regime and the non-state dominated 'transnational partnership governance' remain vague and tentative. A formalized engagement of the intergovernmental climate regime with transnational partnerships can increase the effectiveness of partnerships in delivering on climate mitigation and adaptation, thereby complementing rather than replacing government action. The proposed active engagement with partnerships would include (i) collecting and analyzing information to develop and prioritize areas for transnational and partnership engagement; (ii) defining minimum criteria and procedural requirements to be listed on an enhanced Non-state Actor Zone for Climate Action platform; (iii) actively supporting strategic initiatives; (iv) facilitating market or non-market finance as part of Article 6 PA; and (v) evaluating the effectiveness of partnerships in the context of the enhanced transparency framework (Article 13 PA) and the global stocktake (Article 14 PA). The UNFCCC Secretariat could facilitate engagement and problem solving by actively orchestrating transnational partnerships. Constructing effective implementation partnerships, recording their mitigation and adaptation goals, and holding them accountable may help to move climate talks from rhetoric to action.
COP 25
(2020)
The 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) became the longest COP on record - but yielded few results. It appears that four years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, enthusiasm has waned and political bargaining and bean-counting have taken over. Countries, for even the slightest chance to keep temperatures 'well below' 2 degrees Celsius, must do much more than they have previously committed to and accelerate the shift towards a zero-carbon economy. However, the conference largely failed to heed the rallying cry of the Chilean presidency. The flagship decisions (grouped under the banner "Chile-Madrid Time for Action") neither produced new commitments - enhancing ambition or finance for developing countries - nor new rules that would nudge countries closer to the climate action targets needed. The leftover pieces from last year's negotiations of the "Paris Rulebook" were also not resolved, in particular the unfinished decisions on Article 6 on market- and non-market mechanisms. The procrastination shows that the new architecture of the Paris Agreement, while addressing several of the shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol, suffers from its own weaknesses. The meager results of Madrid give reason to pause and reflect on the conditions that may hold countries back from fully embracing the Paris Agreement, but also to consider the future and nature of carbon markets and what is making the issue so difficult to resolve.
Filling in for Governments?
(2020)
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change abandons the Kyoto Protocol's paradigm of binding emissions targets and relies instead on countries' voluntary contributions. However, the Paris Agreement encourages not only governments but also sub-national governments, corporations and civil society to contribute to reaching ambitious climate goals. In a transition from the regulated architecture of the Kyoto Protocol to the open system of the Paris Agreement, the Agreement seeks to integrate non-state actors into the treaty-based climate regime. In 2014 the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Peru and France created the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (and launched the Global Climate Action portal). In December 2019, this portal recorded more than twenty thousand climate-commitments of private and public non-state entities, making the non-state venues of international climate meetings decisively more exciting than the formal negotiation space. This level engagement and governments' response to it raises a flurry of questions in relation to the evolving nature of the climate regime and climate change governance, including the role of private actors as standard setters and the lack of accountability mechanisms for non-state actions. This paper takes these developments as occasion to discuss the changing role of private actors in the climate regime.