Agreement, significance, and understandings of historical responsibility in climate change negotiations

Friman, Mathias; Hjerpe, Mattias

doi:10.1080/14693062.2014.916598

Cited by 40 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The INS has previously been used to study various aspects of climate change, such as leading actors 27 , effective solutions to climate change 28 , NAMAs 29 , preferences for conceptual or proportional historical responsibility 30 , the roles of non-state actors in climate change governance 31 , criticism of the pledge and review system 32 , and expectations on corporate climate action 33 . The surveys were distributed in person at the UNFCCC COP venues, an operating environment that hampers random sampling.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Views on alternative forums for effectively tackling climate change

Hjerpe

Nasiritousi

2015

Nature Clim Change

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First paragraph:This year (2015) marks the 21st formal anniversary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and in December a new climate treaty is expected to be reached. Yet, the UNFCCC has not been successful in setting the world on a path to meet the 2 degree target 1 . Meanwhile, other forums, such as the G20 and subnational forums, have increasingly become sites of climate change initiatives 2-6 . There has, however, to date been no systematic evaluation of what forums climate change policy-makers and practitioners perceive to be needed in order to effectively tackle climate change. Drawing on survey data from two recent UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP), we show that there exists an overall preference for state-led, multilateral forums. However, preferences starkly diverge between respondents from different geographical regions and no clear contender to the UNFCCC emerges. Our results highlight difficulties in coordinating global climate policy in a highly fragmented governance landscape.International efforts to tackle the challenges posed by climate change have in the past two decades centered on multilateral negotiations under the UNFCCC. Several scholars note however that the international negotiations under the UNFCCC have produced diminishing returns over time 7 . This has generated discussions about whether multilateralism should be abandoned in favor of minilateralism 8 , along with suggestions to shift the negotiations to other smaller and more flexible forums 9 . Critics of the current multilateral approach argue that it is too cumbersome, as the decision-making process of the UNFCCC relies on finding consensus among its 195 parties 10-11 . David Victor 11 , for example, has argued that since only a dozen countries emit the majority of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, a club like the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) would present a good candidate for making progress on climate change. Others, however, maintain that minilateral clubs like the MEF, G8, and the Asia-Pacific Partnership are not necessarily more effective than the UNFCCC, lack the legitimacy of the UN climate process 6 , and do not primarily focus on significantly increasing mitigation ambition 5 .A related discussion concerns the architecture of climate change governance. Thus far the main efforts to respond to climate change have been state-led, focusing on building a universal regime through a legally binding multilateral agreement in a so-called top-down approach. Proponents of this architecture maintain that a strong, centralized regime is necessary for ensuring effective and fair outcomes [12][13] . Critics, however, argue that a bottom-up approach, favoring more national and nonstate initiatives, would provide a more effective response [14][15][16] . A range of sub-national and transnational initiatives, such as the C40 network of major cities and the Carbon Disclosure Project, have shown that other actors can take ambitious steps when national governments resist strong ta...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Survey methods are increasingly used to examine preferences of, and activities performed by, different actors participating in the COPs of the UNFCCC in situ or by distributing surveys based on the List of Participants [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Views on alternative forums for effectively tackling climate change

Hjerpe

Nasiritousi

2015

Nature Clim Change

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“…The decision also show broad consensus across north-south lines about the need to acknowledge historical responsibility. Nevertheless, as the concept has now gained clear official recognition on the UN climate agenda, the struggle to pin down historical responsibility will likely continue and intensify, as the wider negotiating texts on the table indicate (Friman & Hjerpe, 2014).…”

Section: Onward: Historical Responsibility As Floating Signifiermentioning

confidence: 99%

Consensus rationales in negotiating historical responsibility for climate change

Friman

2014

Int Environ Agreements

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This article explores strategies in consensus-making processes in international climate diplomacy. Specifically it examines the consensus-making politics, in the case of negotiating historical responsibility within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In doing so, analytical concepts from the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe are utilized to look for rationales that underpin discursive structures as well as agreement. To conclude, three rationales have dealt with conflicts over historical responsibility. While the first rationale hid conflict behind interpretative flexibility, the second reverted to "reasoned consensus," excluding perspectives commonly understood as political rather than scientific. The third rationale has enabled equivocal use of the concept of historical responsibility in several parallel discourses, yet negotiators still stumble on how to synthesize these with a potential to foster future, more policy-detailed, consensuses with higher legitimacy. Understanding the history and current situation of negotiations on historical responsibility from this perspective can help guide policy makers towards decisions that avoid old pitfalls and construct new rationales that generate a higher sense of legitimacy.

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“…For over 20 years, parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have debated how to operationalize its normative principles of inter-and intragenerational equity. Within these debates, the underlying conflicts of interests between the participants have become obvious, as showcased in the negotiations on 'historical responsibility', which were marked by the dispute between developed and developing countries (Friman and Hjerpe 2015). While one might be tempted to reduce these debates to a matter of pure politics, arguments related to equity play an important role in the establishment of country positions.…”

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confidence: 99%