From Kyoto to Paris and Beyond: The Emerging Politics of Climate Change

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change has emerged as the most disruptive socio-political issue in the last few decades. The Kyoto Protocol’s failure to curb the rising greenhouse gases emissions pushed the UNFCCC-led negotiations towards a more flexible, non-binding agreement at the Paris COP21 meeting in 2015. The Paris Agreement’s hybrid approach to climate change governance, where flexible measures like the nationally determined commitments are balanced against the ambition of limiting the global temperature within the two-degree range, ensured the emergence of an increasingly complex and multi-stakeholder climate change regime. The article outlines the roadmap of the transition from the top-down approach of Kyoto Protocol to the legally non-binding, bottom-up approaches adopted for the post-Paris phase. The article outlines the post-Paris developments in international climate politics, which hold long-term geopolitical and geoeconomic implications. The article focuses on the fundamental shifts and balances within the UNFCCC architecture and examines the four fundamental features of this transition—the interpretation of differentiation and common but differentiated responsibilities, the evolving role of emerging economies in the negotiations, the rising profile of non-party stakeholders in shaping the climate action strategies and the emergence of climate justice movements as an alternate site of climate action.

A New Climate Change Analysis Parameter: A Global or a National Approach Dilemma

“…Therefore, the results obtained in this research contradict some of those of previous studies, such as Grunewald and Martínez-Zarzoso [74,75], who stated that the Kyoto Protocol had a reducing effect on CO 2 emissions in both developing and developed countries, and Maamoun [76], who considered the Kyoto Protocol a success. However, the results of this study are in line with the results obtained in other research: Kim et al [72] limited the environmental benefits of the Kyoto Protocol to annexed countries, and Almer and Winkler [73] and Thakur [77] even questioned these positive effects.…”

Emerging Powers and Small Island Developing States: Leadership or Co-Option?

“…Since its articulation in the Rio Declaration of 1992 (see Principle 07), CBDR-RC has been reiterated time and again in legal texts relating to climate change (e.g., Article 3 [1] of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] and Article 2 [2] of the Paris Agreement). A lot has already been written about the evolution of CBDR-RC (Rajamani, 2006; Thakur, 2021). It was incorporated in its most extreme form in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, where developing countries were given complete exemption from the binding emission reduction targets.…”

“…It was incorporated in its most extreme form in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, where developing countries were given complete exemption from the binding emission reduction targets. In the Paris Agreement of 2015, CBDR-RC has been considerably watered down through the requirements of ‘Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in light of different national circumstances’, which in turn signals a shift towards individual differentiation (Pauwelyn, 2013; Rajamani, 2016; Thakur, 2021).…”

“…Loss and damage is of specific relevance to SIDS, but emerging powers like India have also publicly endorsed the concept. For instance, India is also concerned with loss and damage, and its Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has stated that it will be seeking payments for climate-related disasters at COP26 ( The Economic Times , 2021). Further, India has declared that it will pursue efforts to ensure that loss and damage is a central issue at COP27 (Kumar, 2022).…”

“…However, climate-induced migration is a matter of serious concern for emerging powers like India as well. While Bangladesh, which is extremely vulnerable to the hazards of climate change (The Climate Reality Project, 2021), is suffering from climate-induced migration, one study states that because of the interdependence of India and Bangladesh, all vulnerabilities and effects of climate change like migration are ‘interrelated and interconnected’ (Panda, 2015, p. 207).…”