Accountability Challenges in the Transnational Regime Complex for Climate Change

Abstract

This article discusses challenges to accountability in the context of transnational climate governance. It argues that the emergence of a distinct transnational regime complex and the increasingly integrated structure of international and transnational climate governance create new challenges for using established analytical frameworks that rely on accountability regimes for individual actor types. Instead, studying accountability requires a system-level conceptualization and a revisiting of accountability regimes, taking diversity and networked governance structures into account. Using data from the CONNECTproject on the transnational regime complex for climate change, the article uses a framework of six elements of an accountability regime to identify three overarching accountability challenges. First, the expanding borders of the transnational regime complex for climate change are starting to shift accountability from the multilateral level (the UNFCCC) to a networked and more intricate structure. Second, transparency, monitoring, and reporting remain an urgent challenge despite a rapidly increasing flow of data and repositories in particular concerning ex-post impacts. Third, the availability and utility of sanctions are poorly understood in the context of transnational climate governance.

Global adaptation governance: An emerging but contested domain

“…In the scholarship on global climate governance, a number of concepts and terms have been introduced to analyze how we have moved away from a single regime (the UNFCCC) consisting of predominantly state actors towards a more complex arrangement, such as regime complex (Keohane & Victor, 2011), networked climate governance (Bäckstrand, 2008), transnational climate governance (Andonova, Betsill, & Bulkeley, 2009;Bulkeley et al, 2014), transnational regime complex (Abbott, 2012;Widerberg & Pattberg, 2017), and polycentric governance (Jordan et al, 2015;Morrison et al, 2017;Ostrom, 2010). These terms describe the system, while terms such as international cooperative initiatives (Widerberg & Pattberg, 2015) and non-state climate actions (Chan et al, 2015) describe units of study within the system.…”

Covenant of Mayors: Local Energy Generation, Methodology, Policies and Good Practice Examples

“…Although in the absence of obligation, cities adhere voluntarily to the initiative and they render themselves accountable both globally as well as locally [1]. The largest difference perhaps between national and transnational systems, such as CoM, on the governance is related to possibilities for sanctioning non-compliance with soft measures such as removal of support or suspension from the initiative [35].…”

“…The Covenant of Mayors (CoM) is an EU based initiative, which started in 2008. The CoM has been a disrupting phenomenon in the arena of transnational initiatives, which have expanded tremendously over the past 10 years [35], covering more than 7,850 local authorities and…”

Introduction: The Politics of Environmental Accountability

“…The means‐ends problematic is also evident in Oscar Widerberg and Philipp Pattberg's () article on tracing accountability for the climate change regime. Focusing on how private actors attempt to demonstrate their commitments to reducing their carbon use reveals the multiplicity of metrics private actors invoke as evidence of accountability.…”

“…In the context of an emerging polycentric climate governance regime, Widerberg and Pattberg () identify three main challenges for accountability: the overlap between institutions, questions around which actors participate, and the blurred lines of responsibility among principals and agents. Accountability relationships increasingly begin to operate in multiple multilevel contexts, creating overlapping institutions.…”