The Handbook of

Global Climate and Environment PolicyEdited by Robert Falkner

Handbooks of Global Policy

The Handbook of Global Climateand Environment Policy

The Handbook of Global Climateand Environment Policy

Handbooks of Global Policy Series

Series EditorDavid Held

Master of University College and Professor of Politics and InternationalRelations at Durham University

The Handbooks of Global Policy series presents a comprehensive collection ofthe most recent scholarship and knowledge about global policy and governance.Each handbook draws together newly commissioned essays by leading scholarsand is presented in a style which is sophisticated but accessible to undergraduateand advanced students, as well as to scholars, practitioners, and others interestedin global policy. Available in print and online, these volumes expertly assess theissues, concepts, theories, methodologies, and emerging policy proposals in the field.

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The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment PolicyRobert Falkner

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The Handbook of Global CompaniesJohn Mikler

The Handbook ofGlobal Climate andEnvironment Policy

Edited by

Robert Falkner

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The handbook of global climate and environment policy / edited by Robert Falkner.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-470-67324-9 (cloth)1. Climatic changes–Government policy. 2. Global warming–Government policy.

3. Environmental policy. I. Falkner, Robert, 1967-QC902.9.H36 2013363.7′0561–dc23

2012045304

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Set in 10/12.5pt Sabon by Aptara Inc., New Delhi, India

1 2013

Contents

Notes on Contributors viii

Preface xiii

Part I Global Policy Challenges 1

1 Global Climate Change 3Matthew J. Hoffmann

2 Global Water Governance 19Joyeeta Gupta

3 Biodiversity and Conservation 37Stuart Harrop

4 Marine Environment Protection 53Markus Salomon

5 Deforestation 72David Humphreys

6 Biotechnology and Biosafety 89Aarti Gupta

7 Global Chemicals Politics and Policy 107Henrik Selin

Part II Concepts and Approaches 125

8 Global Environmental Norms 127Steven Bernstein

vi CONTENTS

9 Global Governance 146Johannes Stripple and Hannes Stephan

10 Global Environmental Security 163Simon Dalby

11 International Environmental Law 179Daniel Bodansky

12 Green Growth 197Michael Jacobs

13 Sustainable Consumption 215Doris Fuchs

14 Climate Change Justice 231Edward Page

Part III Global Actors, Institutions, and Processes 249

15 The Nation-State, International Society, and the GlobalEnvironment 251Robert Falkner

16 Transnational Environmental Activism 268Susan Park

17 Business as a Global Actor 286Jennifer Clapp and Jonas Meckling

18 International Regime Effectiveness 304Steinar Andresen

19 Strengthening the United Nations 320Steffen Bauer

20 International Negotiations 339Radoslav S. Dimitrov

21 Regionalism and Environmental Governance 358Miranda Schreurs

Part IV Global Economy and Policy 375

22 Globalization 377Peter Newell

23 Private Regulation in Global Environmental Governance 394Graeme Auld and Lars H. Gulbrandsen

24 International Trade, the Environment, and Climate Change 412Nico Jaspers and Robert Falkner

CONTENTS vii

25 Global Finance and the Environment 428Christopher Wright

26 Energy Policy and Climate Change 446Benjamin K. Sovacool

27 Economic Instruments for Climate Change 468Jonas Meckling and Cameron Hepburn

28 International Aid and Adaptation to Climate Change 486Jessica M. Ayers and Achala Chandani Abeysinghe

Index 507

Notes on Contributors

Steinar Andresen is Research Professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway.He has also been Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, Norway,and a visiting scholar at Princeton University, University of Washington Seattle,and IISA. He has published extensively on various topics, mostly related to globalenvironmental governance.

Graeme Auld is an Assistant Professor at Carleton University, Ontario, Canada, inthe School of Public Policy and Administration. His research examines the emergence,evolution, and impacts of non-state and hybrid forms of global governance. He isco-author (with Ben Cashore and Deanna Newsom) of Governing through Markets:Forest Certification and the Emergence of Nonstate Authority (Yale University Press,2004).

Jessica M. Ayers holds a PhD in climate governance from the London School ofEconomics and Political Science. At the time of writing, she was a researcher for theClimate Change Group at the International Institute for Environment and Develop-ment (IIED), London, UK. She is now a Senior Policy Advisor to the UK Departmentof Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Steffen Bauer is a Senior Researcher in the Department for Environmental Policy andManagement of Natural Resources at the German Development Institute/DeutschesInstitut fur Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in Bonn, Germany. He also serves as Ger-many’s Science and Technology Correspondent to the United Nations Conventionto Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Steven Bernstein is Associate Chair and Graduate Director of the Department ofPolitical Science and Co-Director of the Environmental Governance Lab at the MunkSchool of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Canada.

Daniel Bodansky is Lincoln Professor of Law, Ethics, and Sustainability at the SandraDay O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University. He is the author of the Art

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix

and Craft of International Environmental Law (Harvard University Press, 2009) andco-editor of The Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law (OxfordUniversity Press, 2007).

Achala Chandani Abeysinghe is a senior researcher and environmental lawyer at theInternational Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London. She is thelegal advisor to the current Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group inthe United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) nego-tiations, team leader of the global climate governance program, and head of theEuropean Capacity Building Initiative (ECBI) workshops program at IIED. She is alead author of the chapter on “Climate Resilient Pathways: Adaptation, Mitigationand Sustainable Development” in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Jennifer Clapp is a Professor in the Environment and Resource Studies Departmentand Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Environment at the Universityof Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Her recent books include: Hunger in the Balance:The New Politics of International Food Aid (Cornell University Press, 2012), Food(Polity, 2012), Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the GlobalEnvironment, 2nd edn (with Peter Dauvergne, MIT Press, 2011), and CorporatePower in Global Agrifood Governance (co-edited with Doris Fuchs, MIT Press,2009).

Simon Dalby, formerly at Carleton University, Ontario, Canada, is now CIGI Chairin the Political Economy of Climate Change at the Balsillie School of InternationalAffairs in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and is author of Environmental Security(University of Minnesota Press, 2002), Security and Environmental Change (Polity,2009) and co-editor of the journal Geopolitics.

Radoslav S. Dimitrov is an Associate Professor at Western University in Canada.He is consultant to the World Business Council on Sustainable Development andhas served on the European Union delegation at UN climate negotiations. He is theauthor of Science and International Environmental Policy (Rowman and Littlefield,2006).

Robert Falkner is Reader in International Relations at the London School of Eco-nomics and Political Science (LSE). He is an Associate of the Grantham ResearchInstitute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE and an Associate Fellowof the Energy, Environment and Resources department at Chatham House. He isthe author of Business Power and Conflict in International Environmental Politics(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Doris Fuchs is Professor of International Relations at the University of Munster,Germany. Her research focuses on corporate structural and discursive power, sus-tainable development/consumption, and food politics and policy. She is the authorof Business Power in Global Governance (Lynne Rienner, 2007) and has publishednumerous articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Millennium, Global Environ-mental Politics, International Interactions, Agriculture and Human Values, FoodPolicy, and Energy Policy.

x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Lars H. Gulbrandsen is Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Global Gover-nance and Sustainable Development research program at the Fridtjof Nansen Insti-tute, Norway. He is the author of Transnational Environmental Governance: TheEmergence and Effects of the Certification of Forests and Fisheries (Edward Elgar,2010).

Aarti Gupta is Senior Lecturer (tenured) with the Environmental Policy Group atWageningen University’s Department of Social Sciences, the Netherlands. She is alsoa Senior Fellow of the Earth System Governance Project and Associate Editor ofthe journal Global Environmental Politics. Her research and publications focus onglobal risk and environmental governance and the role of science, knowledge, andtransparency therein.

Joyeeta Gupta is Professor of Environment and Development in the Global South ofthe Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdamand at UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft, the Netherlands.

Stuart Harrop is Professor of Wildlife Management Law and Director of the DurrellInstitute of Conservation and Ecology in the School of Anthropology and Con-servation at the University of Kent, UK. His research concentrates on the field ofinternational law and policy relating to biodiversity conservation.

Cameron Hepburn is a Senior Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Instituteat the LSE and a Fellow of New College, Oxford. He has degrees in law and engi-neering, a doctorate in economics, and is the author of peer-reviewed publicationsin economics, biology, philosophy, engineering, and public policy. He is involved inpolicy formation, including as a member of the Department of Energy and ClimateChange (UK) Secretary of State’s Economics Advisory Group. He has also had anentrepreneurial career, co-founding two successful businesses and investing in severalother start-ups.

Matthew J. Hoffmann is an Associate Professor of International Relations at theUniversity of Toronto, Canada, and Co-Director of the Environmental GovernanceLab at the Munk School of Global Affairs there. He is the author of Climate Gover-nance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global Response after Kyoto (OxfordUniversity Press, 2012).

David Humphreys is Senior Lecturer in Environmental Policy at The Open University(UK), where he specializes in the global politics of deforestation and climate change.His book Logjam: Deforestation and the Crisis of Global Governance (Earthscan,2006) won the International Studies Association’s Harold and Margaret SproutAward for 2008.

Michael Jacobs is Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute on ClimateChange and the Environment at the London School of Economics and PoliticalScience, and in the School of Public Policy at University College London. A for-mer Special Advisor to the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister(2004–2010), his books include The Green Economy: Environment, SustainableDevelopment and the Politics of the Future (Pluto Press, 1991).

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

Nico Jaspers is a post-doctoral researcher at the Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany.He received a doctorate in international relations from the London School of Eco-nomics and Political Science in 2011. He has published widely on nanotechnologypolicy and in 2009 co-authored an EU-commissioned report on transatlantic coop-eration in nanotechnology regulation.

Jonas Meckling is an Associate with the Belfer Center for Science and InternationalAffairs at Harvard University, USA. He is Senior Advisor for Transatlantic Cooper-ation on Energy and Climate to the German Federal Ministry of the Environment.He is the author of Carbon Coalitions: Business, Climate Politics, and the Rise ofEmissions Trading (MIT Press, 2011).

Peter Newell is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Centrefor Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex, UK. He is author mostrecently of Globalization and the Environment: Capitalism, Ecology and Power(Polity, 2012) and co-author of Climate Capitalism (with Matthew Paterson; Cam-bridge University Press, 2010) and Governing Climate Change (with Harriet Bulke-ley; Routledge, 2010).

Edward Page is Associate Professor in Political Theory at the University of Warwick,UK. His research interests cover a range of topics in contemporary political theory,environmental politics, applied ethics, and global climate change. He has publishedarticles in journals such as Environmental Politics, Political Studies, The Monist,and International Theory, and is the author of Climate Change, Justice and FutureGenerations (Edward Elgar, 2006).

Susan Park is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Syd-ney, Australia. She has published in a range of International Relations journalsincluding International Politics, Global Environmental Politics, and Global Gover-nance. In 2010 she published World Bank Group Interactions with Environmen-talists (Manchester University Press) and co-edited Owning Development: CreatingPolicy Norms in the IMF and the World Bank (with Antje Vetterlein; CambridgeUniversity Press).

Markus Salomon is a marine biologist working for the German Advisory Councilon the Environment, an independent scientific council giving advice to the Germanfederal government. He recently published “Towards a Sustainable Fisheries Policyin Europe,” Fish and Fisheries (with K. Holm-Muller; 2012).

Miranda Schreurs is director of the Environmental Policy Research Centre(Forschungszentrum fur Umweltpolitik) and Professor of Comparative Politics atthe Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. She is a member of the German EnvironmentAdvisory Council, chair of the European Environment and Sustainable DevelopmentAdvisory Councils, and was a member of the German Ethics Commission on a SafeEnergy Supply.

Henrik Selin is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relationsat Boston University, USA. He is the author of Global Governance of HazardousChemicals (MIT Press, 2010) as well as a numerous journal articles and book chap-ters on the politics and management of hazardous substances and wastes.

xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Benjamin K. Sovacool is an Associate Professor at Vermont Law School, USA, wherehe also directs the Energy Security and Justice Program at the Institute for Energy andthe Environment. He is a contributing author to the forthcoming Fifth Assessmentfrom the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as the author, co-author, or editor of 12 books and almost 200 peer-reviewed articles on energy andclimate-change issues.

Hannes Stephan is a Lecturer in Environmental Politics and Policy at the Universityof Stirling, Scotland. His co-authored article “International Climate Policy afterCopenhagen: Towards a ‘Building Blocks’ Approach” appeared in 2010 in GlobalPolicy. Another article on the transatlantic cultural politics of GM foods and cropswas published in 2012 in Global Environmental Politics.

Johannes Stripple is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, LundUniversity, Sweden. His research interests lie at the intersection of InternationalRelations theory and global environmental politics. His recent research has cov-ered European and international climate policy, carbon markets, renewable energy,sinks, scenarios and governmentalities around climate change, carbon, and the EarthSystem.

Christopher Wright undertook the research underpinning his contribution to thisvolume while a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Development and Environment,University of Oslo, Norway. He is currently a Senior Analyst at Norges Bank Invest-ment Management, the division of the Norwegian central bank which manages theNorwegian Government Pension Fund – Global.

Preface

The world faces a growing number of complex global challenges, but global politicalleadership and international cooperation are in short supply. Climate change andother environmental threats are among the most intractable issues on the globalagenda today. Accelerated biodiversity loss, disruptions to food and energy supplies,intensified competition for scarce natural resources, and a warming climate all com-bine to create global risks that are likely to further destabilize an already unsettledworld.

Addressing global environmental threats requires a high degree of internationalcooperation. As could be witnessed at the recent “Rio+20” UN summit on sustain-able development, however, the international community remains divided on how totackle the most urgent environmental threats. The international institutional archi-tecture for dealing with global environmental problems is fragmented and weak, andglobal environmental protection efforts are insufficiently funded. It is encouragingthat environmental concerns have gained in prominence in international politics,with a large numbers of actors – from concerned scientists to environmental activistsand enlightened business and political leaders – now engaged in the search for globalsolutions. But despite the remarkable growth in global environmental policy-making,the international community appears unable to slow down, let alone reverse, mostof the destructive trends of environmental degradation.

Still, some efforts to address specific environmental problems and create inno-vative institutional solutions are paying off. The Montreal Protocol of 1987, aninternational agreement to phase out ozone-depleting substances, is one of the out-standing successes of global green diplomacy. Negotiations on a global climate agree-ment may have proved less successful, but myriad initiatives to halt the growth ingreenhouse gas emissions have sprung up at regional, national, and local levels. Envi-ronmentalists are mobilizing around the world to limit the destructive side-effectsof industrialization and urbanization, while a growing number of corporations arewilling to engage with campaigners in efforts to set new rules and standards for

xiv PREFACE

environmentally responsible business behavior. And international economic organi-zations such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank have begun tointegrate environmental concerns more fully into their operations.

As climate change and other environmental issues have moved center stage onthe international agenda, global policy practitioners and students are searching fornew, innovative solutions and more effective policy approaches. The purpose of thisHandbook is to help with this search and provide an authoritative guide to recentacademic research on global climate and environment policy. The Handbook con-tains 28 chapters that offer in-depth yet accessible surveys of the main global policyissues and approaches emerging from the best research in the field. The Handbook ismulti-disciplinary in orientation and covers perspectives from international relationsand political science as well as economics, environmental studies, geography, andinternational law. It employs a broad understanding of global climate and environ-ment policy that includes state-centric approaches of international diplomacy, treatynegotiation and law, as well as those transnational political activities that transcendthe state-centric system. As such, this volume should appeal to a wide internationalaudience. For policy practitioners of international diplomacy, international organi-zations and environmental groups, the Handbook will provide essential surveys ofacademic theory and research. For students enrolled in undergraduate or postgrad-uate degree programs, it will offer the starting point they need for the explorationof particular research fields. For researchers, it will allow easy access to specializedliteratures across different topics and disciplines alongside their own.

The contributions to the Handbook – all written by world-leading experts in theirrespective fields – are grouped into four broad parts.

The first part, on global policy challenges, consists of seven chapters that reviewspecific environmental issues and the global policy responses and governance systemsthat have been created to deal with them. The chapters cover climate change, globalwater governance, biodiversity and conservation, marine environmental protection,deforestation, biotechnology and biosafety, and chemicals safety.

The second part, on concepts and approaches, introduces major conceptual andtheoretical approaches in the study of global climate and environment policy. Theseven chapters discuss the role of global environmental norms, the changing natureof global governance, the concept of global environmental security, developments ininternational environmental law, discussions surrounding green growth and sustain-able consumption, as well as climate change justice.

The third part, on global actors, institutions, and processes, introduces the mainactors that make up the global policy agenda and examines key processes and insti-tutions through which the international community is addressing global environ-mental problems. The seven chapters in this part cover the role of the nation-stateand international society, NGOs and transnational environmental activism, busi-ness actors, international regimes and their effectiveness, international environmen-tal negotiations, regional environmental governance, and the debate surroundingUnited Nations reform.

The fourth part, on global economy and policy, brings together chapters thatconsider the links between global policy on climate change and environment onthe one hand, and major economic trends, institutions, and policy approaches onthe other. The seven chapters discuss the concept of economic globalization, the

PREFACE xv

role of private regulation by business actors, the linkages between internationaltrade, environmental protection, and climate change, the environmental dimensionsof global finance, linkages between energy policy and climate change, economicinstruments for climate change, and the role of international aid in adaptation toclimate change.

Robert Falkner

Part I Global Policy Challenges

1 Global Climate Change 3Matthew J. Hoffmann

2 Global Water Governance 19Joyeeta Gupta

3 Biodiversity and Conservation 37Stuart Harrop

4 Marine Environment Protection 53Markus Salomon

5 Deforestation 72David Humphreys

6 Biotechnology and Biosafety 89Aarti Gupta

7 Global Chemicals Politics and Policy 107Henrik Selin

The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment Policy, First Edition. Edited by Robert Falkner.C© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Chapter 1

Global Climate Change

Matthew J. Hoffmann

Analysts have struggled to find new and creative ways to describe the scope andcomplexity of climate change – a problem that finds its sources virtually everywhere,from nearly all kinds of human activity (agriculture, transportation, manufacturing,energy use, land use), and that has effects that are being and will be felt across theglobe. Perhaps the most apt characterization has come from Mike Hulme (2009),who eschews the label “problem,” preferring to describe climate change as a funda-mental part of the modern condition. Yet, no matter how one conceives of climatechange, there is little doubt that it is perhaps the global challenge of modern times.If climate scientists are correct in their understanding of the dynamics and impactof climate change, then the world needs to essentially decarbonize energy and trans-portation systems over the course of this century, with the lion’s share of progresstowards this goal taking place by 2050.

Mitigating climate change,1 taking the steps necessary to avoid its most dangerouspotential impacts, is thus at once elementary (in that we know we need to drasticallyreduce the emissions of greenhouse gases) and infuriatingly elaborate (in that thepathways to such reductions are fraught with small to enormous technical, economic,social, and political obstacles). This chapter examines the global response to climatechange from the perspective of this paradox. I first briefly describe the state ofknowledge of climate science and argue that while climate scientists can and do tellus about the nature of the problem, they cannot tell us about what kind of a problemit is – i.e. what features are important and what we should do. In fact, decidingwhat kind of problem climate change presents is an inherently political and fraughtprocess.

These decisions about the nature of the problem are not only difficult, they arealso consequential because they shape what kind of a response we can and do formu-late. I demonstrate this in the next section by comparing the different foundational

The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment Policy, First Edition. Edited by Robert Falkner.C© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

4 GLOBAL POLICY CHALLENGES

understandings of climate change embedded in traditional multilateral and emer-gent transnational governance responses. These two governance systems differ inhow they consider the global nature of climate change and in how they focus onproximate (greenhouse gas emissions) or fundamental (carbon dependence) causesof climate change. These differences shape the radically different politics and policyoptions available in the different processes.

This comparative exercise is not one of whistling past the graveyard or playinga tune as the ship sinks. On the contrary, understanding the foundation of climatemitigation efforts provides context for contemplating and (potentially) hope fordeveloping the paths along which climate governance must (and/or can) proceed inthe coming decades. I conclude, therefore, with some brief suggestions for how wecan move forward reflexively both in the research and policy-making communitiesto bring together the two main approaches to climate governance.

Understanding the “Problem(s)” of Climate Change

Just getting one’s head around the problem of climate change is a stiff challenge pre-cisely because the problem can be conceived in multiple ways. There is the science ofclimate change – how increasing greenhouse gas concentrations affect global temper-atures, ocean chemistry, and vegetation and the associated impacts that emerge fromthese changes. There are the social-economic-political understandings which focus,among other things, on economic development, the energy system, varied interests ofstates and other political actors. There is also the ethical dimension that concentrateson who faces the costs of climate change (mitigating it and the effects of it) both nowand in the future (Gardiner 2004; Roberts and Parks 2007; Vanderheiden 2008).To further complicate matters, none of these dimensions provide objective under-standings of the problem, but are rather wrapped up in the process of framing theissue in various ways that legitimate and even necessitate types of policy responses(Kahan et al. 2010; Hulme 2011). This brief chapter cannot do justice to all of thedimensions of the problem of climate change, thus this section focuses in on the latestunderstandings of climate science and how this knowledge can only take us part ofthe way towards understanding what kind of a problem climate change is becauseof varied political and economic aspects and framings of the problem.

Climate Science

The scientific logic of the climate change problem is relatively simple to describe(Hoffmann 2011; see also e.g. Maslin 2004; Dessler and Parson 2006; Houghton2009). The Earth’s atmosphere acts as a greenhouse whereby various gases (car-bon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, water vapor, and others) absorb solarradiation that would otherwise be reflected back into space from the Earth. Thisgreenhouse effect itself is beneficial as it keeps the planet warm and allows life toflourish in the forms with which we are familiar. However, since the industrial rev-olution humanity has been emitting more and more greenhouse gases (e.g. carbondioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons), mostly through the burning of fossil fuels,increasing their concentrations in the atmosphere and thus increasing the warmingeffect. Potential effects of increased greenhouse emissions include ocean acidification,

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE 5

along with the global warming that will likely engender sea level rise, increases inthe frequency and severity of storms and droughts, changed precipitation patterns,altered disease vectors and trajectories, species migration, reduced agricultural pro-ductivity, and more.

The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report laid out themost comprehensive examination of climate change to date. It found consensus inthe scientific community that greenhouse gas emissions have significantly increaseddue to human activity and further that the modest temperature increases we havealready experienced are “very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenicGHG concentrations” (IPCC 2007). Moving forward, even the relatively conser-vative IPCC language about the likelihood of further warming in the twenty-firstcentury raises alarms when they note that extant climate models predicted between2 and 4 ◦C of warming in the coming century (IPCC 2007). Put simply, in 2007,the scientific community considered that human activity was causing increases ingreenhouse gas concentrations and that we could expect significant warming andother effects because of it.

Data and models that have emerged since 2007 have consistently produced moredire predictions about the rate of emissions growth and the warming that we arelikely to see. In 2011, the National Research Council (2011) in the USA expandedthe range of anticipated warming, noting that now scientists are telling us that:

Projections of future climate change anticipate an additional warming of 2.0 to 11.5F(1.1 to 6.4C) over the 21st century, on top of the 1.4F already observed over the past100 years.

The International Energy Agency (2012: 15) concurs and estimates that if currenttrends of increasing energy use are not altered, the world is headed for at least 6 ◦Cof warming. The current (political) consensus is that constraining global temperatureincreases to 2 ◦C is crucial, but that time is rapidly running out to do so. In 2009 aprominent gathering of climate scientists and policy-makers (Copenhagen Diagnosis2009) declared what has now become a relatively taken-for-granted understanding:“If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2 ◦C above pre-industrial values,global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly.”

Knowledge about expected warming from current and anticipated concentrationsof greenhouse gases is increasingly troubling as the climate science community learnsmore about the kind of impacts we can expect. Here the news is frankly a bit fright-ening. The possible impacts of climate change are well known – glaciers melting,sea level rise, altered storm pattern and severity, altered precipitation patterns, andmore – but it appears as though at least some impacts are coming sooner than antic-ipated in earlier models and with greater magnitude. Already in 2009, UNEP (2009)was warning that “The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstrippingeven the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC).” Since 2009, a steady stream of reports have detailedhow climate change has already begun and that the impacts like the melting arcticice cap are coming more quickly than anticipated. The juxtaposition in 2012 of arecord-breaking warm winter in North America and bizarre cold snaps in Europehave added an experiential element to the notion that we are already experiencingsignificant climate change.

6 GLOBAL POLICY CHALLENGES

However, even with increasingly sophisticated climate science, there are still signif-icant uncertainties that complicate scientific understanding of the problem of climatechange. Some of these are inherent uncertainties, in the sense that we simply will notbe able to know for sure. These include comprehending and tracing:

� the intervening factors between concentrations of greenhouse gasses, temperatureincrease, and climatic changes like increased severity and frequency of storms,cycles of droughts and floods, and patterns of precipitation;

� how natural variability in the climate can mask and/or exacerbate the effect ofanthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions;

� the uncertain magnitude and geographically variable nature of the effects ofclimate change;

� the role that feedback effects and tipping points play in offsetting or acceleratingthe impact of global warming. (Hoffmann 2011: 10–11)

Beyond Climate Science: What Kind of Problem Is Climate Change?

Scientifically, then, we have a pretty good sense of the nature of the problem – itscauses and consequences and its uncertainties. But even scientific consensus cannottell us what kind of a problem climate change is: scientific understanding trans-lates uneasily into policy-making at the global or indeed other levels because it doesnot make political, economic, technological, and social definitions of the problemobvious (Litfin 1994). In fact, scientific uncertainties, in some ways, pale in com-parison to the obstacles and uncertainties that come with understanding what kindof problem climate change is from a social-economic-political perspective. Considerthe following:

� Greenhouse emissions arise from virtually every human activity. Most currentindustrial, energy, transportation, and agricultural processes produce greenhousegases. The world’s economy significantly runs on fossil fuel use.

� Dependence on fossil fuels is uneven. While the global economy runs on fossilfuels, there is disparity between consumers and producers of fossil fuels – in otherwords some countries produce a lot of fossil fuels, others consume a lot of fossilfuels, and many that consume less would like to consume more.

� Per capita greenhouse gas emissions vary significantly. While absolute emissionsfrom India and China rival those found in the USA and EU, the per capitaemissions are wildly divergent. According to the International Energy Agency(2009), in 2007 the average person in the USA produced over 19 t. of carbondioxide, while the average person in India and China produces 1.2 and 4.6 t.respectively.

� Historical responsibility for greenhouse gas concentrations is different fromfuture responsibility. The states that contributed most to the current level ofgreenhouse gas concentrations (USA, EU) are not going to be the same states thatcontribute the most to the future level of greenhouse gas concentrations (USA,China, India).

� Protecting the climate promises diffuse benefits in the future, while engender-ing concentrated costs now. Put simply, it is difficult to generate political will,

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE 7

especially across political jurisdictions, to solve a problem when identifiablegroups must pay up-front to generate benefits for the whole world sometime in thefuture. Scientists agree that the world must take action now to change the natureof our economy and wean itself off fossil fuels so that decades or even a centuryin the future, our climate remains hospitable for the world’s great-grandchildren.This creates an enormous incentive to delay and significantly hampers efforts togenerate urgent action in the present.

� Climate impacts will be felt differentially. Climate changes will be felt locally,regionally, nationally, and internationally, but with significant variation, andmany of the poorest countries are likely to suffer the most dramatic consequences.In addition, the capacity to respond to climate changes also varies significantly.This produces wide disparity in the urgency felt about the problem. (Hoffmann2011: 10–11)

So what is the problem? Is it a problem of overdevelopment or underdevelopment?Is it a problem of Northern historical responsibility or Southern future responsibility?Is it an economic problem or an environmental problem or an energy problem? Is ita problem of mitigation or adaptation? The very fact that climate change is in manyways objectively undefinable means that the framing of the issue creates the kind ofissue we are actually dealing with (Hulme 2011). How we understand the problemcreates the kind of problem that we try to solve.

Deciding what kind of a problem climate change is means focusing on particularaspects of the problem in formulating responses. This is both difficult and political.It is difficult simply because we cannot know which is the “right” decision. We haveno means of ascertaining what aspects of climate change we should focus on andwhat kind of solutions we should devise to best respond to the problem. It is politicalbecause the choice of features and responses to focus on have differential costs andbenefits for different groups of people. Actors have very different interests in theclimate change problem if it is defined as a problem of mitigation or adaptation, forinstance. These decisions are therefore consequential in addition to being difficultbecause they shape the contours of the global response to climate change. In thenext section I demonstrate this by comparing the consequences of two aspects ofthe foundational understandings of climate change embedded in the multilateral andtransnational responses to climate change.

The Global Responses to Climate Change

Traditionally, the multilateral treaty-making process overseen by the UN has beenequated with climate governance. Most studies of climate politics are concerned withthe negotiation, impact, and effectiveness of this process and center their analyses onthe development of major agreements – the UN Framework Convention on ClimateChange (UNFCCC, 1992), the Kyoto Protocol (1997), and the more recent attemptsto move beyond Kyoto with the Copenhagen Accord (2009) and Durban Agreements(2011). Most public international effort has been directed into this multilateralprocess as well. Essentially, the UN process has been climate governance, for good orbad, for the last 25 years. More recently, however, a nascent system of transnationalgovernance has emerged to address climate change (Andonova et al. 2009; Hoffmann

8 GLOBAL POLICY CHALLENGES

2011; Abbot 2012; Bulkeley et al. 2012). This decentralized approach to climategovernance engages multiple actors at multiple levels and is only loosely connectedto the multilateral process.

In this section I briefly introduce these two governance mechanisms and comparetheir understandings of climate change on two dimensions – the definition of theglobal scope of the problem and whether to focus on proximate or fundamentalcauses of climate change. This comparison reveals the consequences of choosingwhat kind of a problem climate change is for politics and policy.

Multilateral Governance

The UN-centered process of multilateral negotiations needs little or no introduction.It has been the key international response to climate change, consisting of annualglobal conferences and negotiations that produced the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Proto-col, and a string of more recent agreements moving towards replacing the KyotoProtocol. This process has been the subject of intense academic scrutiny, with stud-ies examining, among other areas, the early negotiating phases and regime building(Grubb 1993; Bodansky 1994; Rowlands 1995), the political economy of the nego-tiations (Grubb 1993; Barrett 2003), the North–South dimensions (Gupta 2000;Roberts and Parks 2007), the rise and inclusion of market mechanisms (Bernstein2001), and the problems and failures of the process (Victor 2004, 2011; Depledge2006; Prins and Rayner 2007; Falkner et al. 2009). Rather than rehashing a verylarge literature, this section examines aspects of what kind of a problem climatechange is considered to be in the multilateral process and the consequences of thatdefinition.

First, the global scope of the problem has always been emphasized in the multi-lateral negotiations. From the very beginning of climate change’s emergence as aninternational policy problem, everyone understood that it was a global problem thatrequired a global solution. This seems obvious enough, as climate science tells usthat climate change may be the one truly global environmental problem, in that theclimate/atmosphere is a global system and that the sources and effects of climatechange are found literally everywhere. But this somewhat banal notion of global –of the globe – is an empty signifier that could fit with any number of more specificnotions of what kind of a problem climate change actually is. Certainly there maybe global effects, but even in the early 1990s, it was fairly clear that at least 75%of the problem could be attributed to fewer than ten states if we consider the EUas a single entity (Hoffmann 2005). Further, even the global effects are diverselyand differentially distributed regionally and locally. These characteristics of climatechange, however, were not emphasized when the international community devised aresponse strategy. Instead, what everyone meant when characterizing climate changeas a global problem is that all states should participate in the devising of a solutionand that all states should take responsibility for participating in the solution thoughthe responsibility should be differentiated by development level (Hoffmann 2005).

Second, climate change was clearly defined as an emissions problem. This concep-tion has dominated the global response to climate change in the last 20 years, and theUN process has largely been an effort targeted at negotiating emissions reductions –how far to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, how to distribute reduction commit-ments, how to achieve reductions, and how to pay the costs of reductions.2 Clearly

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE 9

climate change does result from the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Thisunderstanding of the problem is not inaccurate, but it is a specific type of focus thatis not the only way to conceive of the problem. A focus on emissions is a focus onproximate causes of the problem. This may appear to be a subtle difference, to focuson the emissions of greenhouse gases rather than the processes that produce them,but it is more than semantics. Defining a problem based on its symptoms (adaptationefforts work from this definition when they look to deal with the consequences ofglobal warming), or its proximate causes, or its fundamental causes makes for verydifferent policy responses.

In fact, both of these foundational conceptions of climate change as a problem(a particular vision of “global” and equating the problem with its proximate causes)are consequential because they constrain the policy tools and politics of the multilat-eral process. The debates and options that flowed from the underlying definition haveremained remarkably stable over the course of the last 20 years, even while progresson an effective global response to climate change has been agonizingly slow (Depledge2006). The multilateral governance process was constructed as universal interstatenegotiations tasked with essentially distributing costs (i.e. emissions reductions), anddevising side payments (i.e. development assistance) and flexibility mechanisms (i.e.market measures like cap and trade) to make such costs palatable. Whether the under-standing of the problem as one of proximate causes led to the collective action prob-lems or whether the global, multilateral approach made this understanding of theproblem inevitable is an open question not fully explored here (see Hoffmann 2005).

From the beginning, all states (even the negotiations in the early 1990s attractedover 100 states) saw themselves as relevant participants in climate governance.“Global” meant universal, interstate governance through negotiation. The lines ofcontention over emissions reductions in this governance context were clear and hadto do with how different states considered the urgency of climate change and costs ofemissions reductions. The Europeans, mostly convinced of the urgency of the prob-lem (and beneficiaries of internal diversity of emissions profiles that would makereductions easier to come by within the EU), and small island nations, facing anexistential threat, have consistently pushed for significant emissions reductions. TheEuropeans wanted binding emissions reductions in the UN Framework Conventionon Climate Change, took on the deepest emissions reduction commitments in theKyoto Protocol, and have pledged a 30% reduction of greenhouse gas emissionseven in the absence of a legally binding replacement for the Kyoto Protocol.

On the other side of this debate, we find the USA, large developing countries(China, India, Brazil), and oil-producing states. This set of states was concernedabout the significant costs of emission reductions to their economies. The USA wasthe main obstacle to quick action on emissions reductions in these early negotiations,forswearing any moves to include binding greenhouse gas emissions reductions tar-gets in the framework convention. Though the USA changed course in the mid-1990sand agreed to modest emissions reductions in the Kyoto Protocol, it subsequentlyrepudiated those commitments in 2001 and has since rejected binding emissionsreductions in international negotiations. China and India, bolstered by the precedentset in the Montreal Protocol for ozone-depleting substances and the accepted princi-ple of common but differentiated responsibilities, urged Northern states to take thelead on significant actions to address climate change and, until very recently, rejectedany calls for emissions reductions from the global South.

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The result has been stalemate and, from a political economy perspective, not avery surprising one (Hoffmann 2011: 15; see also Barrett 1992, 2003; Sell 1996;Victor 2004). Given its preeminent position as an energy consumer and carbondioxide producer, the USA does not want to incur what would be significant costs toits economy to deal with the problem, especially in the absence of action by majoreconomic competitors like China. Large developing countries which have rapidlygrown in terms of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions (in absoluteif not per capita terms) prioritize development over action on climate change andalso argue that a problem historically caused in the North should be dealt withby Northern states first. The USA is reluctant, at best, to take significant action.The Europeans and major Southern states push for significant actions by Northernstates, and the USA and to a lesser extent Japan, Russia, and Canada, work to bothreduce and slow the response to climate change and push for concomitant Southernactions. China, India, Brazil, and other developing states are reluctant, at best, totake significant action. The EU, which has taken significant action, has not been ableto convince either side to make significant concessions.

The impasse that was already apparent in 2001 is still shaping the climate nego-tiations of today. The Copenhagen meetings of 2009 were designed to achieve thenext step beyond the Kyoto Protocol (ending in 2012) – the next binding emissionsreduction treaty. The fact that it failed to do so was not news, given the stalematethat had persisted for the prior decade. The major difference is that the internationalcommunity has given up, for the time being, on collective emissions targets. Afterlittle success in years of trying to take the next binding step beyond Kyoto, the 2009Copenhagen Accord and subsequent 2010 Cancun Agreement introduced the ideaof National Appropriate Mitigation Activities and allowed countries to pledge theirown emissions reductions targets and baseline years (UNFCCC 2009, 2010). Thefocus is still on emissions reductions, but there will be no collective target until atleast 2020. The 2011 Durban Agreement pledged only to negotiate a legal instrumentby 2015 that would come into force after 2020 (UNFCCC 2011).

The traditional way we go about the international response to climate change –negotiate a treaty among the entire international community to mandate a collectiveemissions reduction target that is distributed as various national emissions reductionstargets (which will include an enforcement mechanism so countries do not cheat) –has led to the impasse. In some ways, focusing on mandated emissions reductionsforces the international community into the box of a collective action problem over ajoint public good. In other words we define the problem as one where everyone emitsgreenhouse gases and we have to measurably restrict those in an enforceable way tosolve the problem. This fundamental definition of the problem actually creates manyof the intractable debates we have seen in the last 20 years – how much to reduce,who is obligated to reduce, what should we do if someone fails to reduce – becauseit inherently means distributing something costly (emissions reductions).

The fundamental understanding of the problem embedded in multilateral gov-ernance also contributed to the boundaries on the policy options available for theglobal response to climate change. Flexibility became the key term in the negotia-tion of the Kyoto Protocol as the USA and others sought low-cost mechanisms forachieving the emissions reductions that were under consideration. In this case, andin line with the dominant worldview of liberal environmentalism (Bernstein 2001),flexibility meant the inclusion of market mechanisms into climate governance. Two

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kinds of carbon markets – credit and allowance – emerged as the main policy toolsthat would dominate the discussions about achieving emissions reductions (Newelland Paterson 2010; Betsill and Hoffmann 2011).

The USA was the biggest advocate of market mechanisms in the multilateral nego-tiations that produced the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that they would control the costsof reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The idea of using market mechanisms in ser-vice of environmental goals was and remains a familiar motif in USA environmentalpolicy and in the OECD writ large (Raufner and Feldman 1987; Bernstein 2001;Engels 2006; Voß 2007; Newell and Paterson 2010; Paterson 2010).The originalvision was to have an integrated global carbon market associated with the KyotoProtocol consisting of a global cap-and-trade system and a global offset system thatengaged both states in the global North (Annex I) that were negotiating to take onemission reduction commitments and those in the global South (non-Annex I) thatwould not be taking on such commitments (Hoffmann 2011: 125).

The cap-and-trade system was to engage Northern states and facilitate theirachievement of the negotiated emission reductions (Hoffmann 2011: chapter 6).Along with a cap-and-trade system, the Kyoto Protocol laid out a complementarycredit or offset market. In credit markets actors undertake activities or projects toreduce greenhouse gas emissions from some baseline (plant trees, change land use,invest in energy efficiency or renewable energy, etc.). The reductions are turned intoemission credits – tons of greenhouse gases reduced and not emitted – that can besold to consumers who seek to manage their greenhouse gas emissions (either volun-tarily or by mandate). The Kyoto Protocol initiated two credit markets that could beused by Annex I countries to meet their emission reduction commitments. The JointImplementation initiative was for offsets produced in Annex I countries (especiallytransitional economies in Central and Eastern Europe). The Clean DevelopmentMechanism (CDM) was negotiated as a way for developing countries to partici-pate in the carbon market – producing credits that could be sold to entities withreduction commitments, simultaneously advancing sustainable development goals.A third type of credit market has recently emerged – the Reduced Emissions throughavoided Deforestation and Degradation program (REDD) that produces credits fordeveloping countries that protect their forests (Lederer 2011).

The multilateral process has always been founded on an understanding of cli-mate change as a global (read universal and international) problem of negotiatingemissions reductions. Treating climate change as this kind of problem had tangibleconsequences – namely political dynamics focused on the distribution of costly actionand the emergence of particular market-oriented policy options. While the originalunderstanding of the problem is not inaccurate, it is certainly not the only way toapprehend the problem of climate change. A different perspective on what kind ofa problem climate change is can be found at the foundation of an alternative globalresponse with significant consequences for the shape of that global response.

Beyond the Multilateral Process

The UN process has thus far failed to produce an effective response to climatechange. The future of multilateral negotiations also appears dim given the disap-pointing outcomes of the last three negotiations. Yet far from lacking a response toclimate change as the UN process has floundered, the world is, rather, awash with

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different approaches (Hoffmann 2011: chapter 1; see also Andonova et al. 2009;Bulkeley and Newell 2010; Hoffmann 2011; Bulkeley et al. 2012). Global networksof cities are working to alter municipal economies, transportation systems, andenergy use. Corporations are forming alliances with environmental NGOs to deviselarge and small ways to deliver climate-friendly technology and move towards a low-carbon economy. States, provinces, environmental organizations, and corporationsare engaged in developing carbon markets that promise low-cost means of reducingemissions. These transnational governance approaches, or what I have called climategovernance experiments, are shaping how individuals, communities, cities, counties,provinces, regions, corporations, and nation-states respond to climate change.

These initiatives are more than lobbying efforts looking to shape the multilat-eral process. On the contrary, they are explicitly engaged in making rules (broadlyconceived as including principles, norms, standards, and practices) – and entail aconscious intention to create/shape/alter behavior for a community of implementers(whoever and whatever they may be) to follow. Recent works have explored theemergence and functioning of this new approach to the global response to climatechange (Andonova et al. 2009; Bernstein et al. 2010; Hoffmann 2011; Abbot 2012;Bulkeley et al. 2012). Here, I want to explore the foundational understanding ofclimate change on which this governance approach rests and the implications of thisunderstanding. This is a somewhat more complex task than was the case for mul-tilateral governance because rather than a single, centralized process, transnationalgovernance of climate change is instead a decentralized, networked, self-organizedprocess that does not have a singular focus or direction (Bulkeley 2005). It is a gov-ernance approach made up of multiple, often entirely independent, initiatives. Thatis not to say that the transnational approach is random or chaotic. On the contrary,recent studies have shown that it is fairly structured, with observable patterns interms of governance functions and activities they engage in (Andonova et al. 2009;Bulkeley and Newell 2010; Hoffmann 2011; Bulkeley et al. 2012).

This approach to climate governance is founded on a very different understandingof what kind of a problem climate change is. While transnational climate governancealso considers climate change to be a global problem, global means something moreor different than a universal response by states. Global is understood to mean simul-taneously local and global, multilevel. Transnational governance is just as globalas multilateral climate governance, it is just global in a very different way and thisentails a very different kind of politics. It involves multiple actors and diverse rule-making practices as opposed to set actors (states) and an established, singular meansof making rules (multilateral treaty negotiations). It is flexible because there are mul-tiple sites of governance and actors can voluntarily engage in multiple venues wherethe multilateral process is tied to a formal consensual decision-making. It has areasof questionable political authority instead of the standard authority of internationallaw and sovereignty, but in bringing together like-minded actor around a range ofactivities, enforcement may be less of a significant issue.

This experimentation entails trying out new configurations and governing politi-cal spaces that did not exist before. Transnational climate governance initiatives orexperiments function across boundaries whether vertically (local-regional-national-transnational) or horizontally (networks of similar actors across boundaries). Exper-imentation is thus a process of making rules outside well-established channels. It is