Institutional project for global climate regulation

Abstract

The climate agenda is beginning to have a significant impact on the economic policies of different countries. We argue that the established global climate regulation can be seen not only as a co-ordinated project of forming new institutions, but also as a competition of separate projects, one of which takes the place of the global one. The aim of our paper is to characterise the institutional project of climate regulation as the result of collective choices to adopt and implement measures to internalise the global externalities of climate change. We conducted an institutional analysis of the selection of the main directions and instruments of climate regulation, and highlighted the criteria for this selection. The article shows that in the process of coordination of interests the choice is determined by the correlation of political and economic positions of different interest groups (international organisations, countries, corporations and banks, their associations), and the interests of increasing competitiveness and strengthening control and power in the modern economy come to the fore. As a result, the low-carbon economy project is taking the place of the global climate regulation project. Its core is the energy transition, which involves replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. The low carbon economy project is supported by the narratives of impending disaster, the «Net-Zero» and «Race to Zero campaign». Its main beneficiaries are developed countries as developers and suppliers of relevant technological and management solutions. The financial sector gets its share of benefits. M. Olson's formula «the majority tyrannizes and exploits the minority» is realized. We show that «distribution coalitions», when given additional resources, are willing to continue investing them in collective action to promote a low-carbon economy. We conclude that getting global climate regulation out of the «race to zero» trap involves the development of sovereign climate policies by different countries and groups of countries. These policies do not focus on following specific low-carbon development recommendations, but rather on their own socio-economic development with a view to reducing their impact on the climate system.