What determines UN approval of greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in developing countries?

Flues, Florens; Michaelowa, Axel; Michaelowa, Katharina

doi:10.1007/s11127-009-9525-9

Cited by 33 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Only very few other studies are explicitly related to developing countries. Flues, Michaelowa, and Michaelowa (2010) discuss the influence of institutional variables on decision making on the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism. And finally, in the context of environmental aid flows, Hicks, Parks, Roberts, and Tierney (2008) use PLAID data to assess donors' incentives to increase aid flows benefiting the environment, while reducing aid that has negative impacts on the environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coding Error or Statistical Embellishment? The Political Economy of Reporting Climate Aid

Michaelowa

2010

SSRN Journal

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To benefit from a wide-spread public support for climate policy, aid agencies strive to show the climate relevance of their development activities. Using project-level aid data and country-level political data for 21 DAC donors from 1995 to 2007, we test whether this may lead to politically motivated misreporting. Through keyword search in individual project descriptions and complementary hand-coding we assess all aid activities for their actual climate change-related content, and thereby construct our most relevant control variables. Econometric results reveal that indeed, project coding is influenced systematically by the donor governments' ideological orientation as well as by national voters' environmental preferences.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coding Error or Statistical Embellishment? The Political Economy of Reporting Climate Aid

Michaelowa

2010

SSRN Journal

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“…The CDM Executive Board consists of political candidates nominated by the UNFCCC's regional groups. Fues et al (2008) find that as a result decisions are substantially influenced by political-economic variables. In particular, Board membership of the country or countries involved in a project raises the chance of approval.…”

Section: Element 5: International Governance Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 88%

Developing a sectoral new market mechanism: insights from theoretical analysis and country showcases

Sterk

Bolscher²,

Laan³

et al. 2014

Climate Policy

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Abstract:Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have decided to establish a "new market-based mechanism" (NMM) to promote mitigation across "broad segments" of developing countries' economies but have so far defined only some broad outlines of how it is to function. This article identifies key design options of the NMM based on a survey of the literature and reviews them against a range of assessment criteria. Furthermore, potential application of the NMM is analysed for five country-sector combinations. The analysis finds that lack of data and of institutions that could manage the NMM are key bottlenecks. In addition, the analysis reveals the existence of substantial no-regret reduction potential, suggesting that sectors may not be sensitive to the market incentives from an NMM. Governmental capacity building and nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) might be more appropriate on the short term, preparing the ground for the adoption of market-based approaches at a later stage. NMM pilots could be based on supported NAMAs but should ideally generate tradable and compliance-grade emission credits in order to fully simulate the real-life conditions of an NMM. Policy Relevance:The Doha conference identified "possible elements" of the NMM to be addressed in the development of the NMM's modalities and procedures. This article identifies available options for these possible elements and reviews these options against a number of criteria, including environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, political and administrative efficiency, and others. On this basis the article identifies options that are best suited to fulfil the main aims of the NMM as decided at the Durban conference, "to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote, mitigation actions". In addition, the article analysis potential application of the NMM for five country-sector combinations. The analysis assesses the emission reduction potential that could be mobilised through the NMM as well as the institutional market readiness of the sectors. Finally, the article synthesises the challenges ahead for the NMM that have emerged from the analysis and suggests possible ways forward.

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“…As a result, economic and political considerations may induce countries to influence the decisions of the World Heritage Committee members through several channels First, the selection of sites depends on the power and influence specific countries have within the World Heritage decision making process. The Public Choice literature recognizes that membership on governing boards can yield more favorable outcomes for the countries represented, as this position provides more decision making power in respect to other countries (Flues et al 2010). As a result, serving on the World Heritage Committee may be considered as a measure of the influence a country is able to exert in the decision making process.…”

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To control for the scientific quality of the proposed heritage properties we consider the initial technical recommendation provided by the Advisory Bodies and we code binary variables for each of the four evaluation criteria (Inscription, Referral, Deferral, Not to Inscribe). An alternative approach, as adopted by Flues et al (2010) for initial Meth Panel Recommendations, would have been to create an ordinal variable according to the scale of the evaluation categories. However, the use of dummies for World Heritage sites evaluations seems better suited to capture the individual effect of each evaluation category.…”

Section: Data and Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recent studies have shown that countries represented on governing boards of international organizations can obtain more favorable outcomes than other state parties. In the context of international environmental decision making, Flues et al (2010) find that decisions about methodologies and projects taken by the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanisms, along with formal quality criteria, tend to favor projects that are relevant for board members. Similarly, several authors find that the membership of a developing country on the UN Security Council not only significantly increases the aid flows from the United States, but also the credits extended by the IMF and World Bank (Kuziemko and Werker 2006;Dreher et al 2009a;Dreher et al 2009b).…”

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The politicization of UNESCO World Heritage decision making

et al. 2016

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The purpose of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention is to protect the global merit good of cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value for humanity. Many observers, however, have suggested that this international organization is subject to politicization as the selection process of sites on the World Heritage List is increasingly driven by countries' political influence and national strategic interests. This article explores this possibility quantitatively by analyzing a unique dataset containing information from the summary records of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee's sessions over the 2003-2012 period. Focusing on the difference between technical experts' recommendations and Committee final decisions on new additions to the List, our empirical analysis addresses four main theoretical questions: (i) Does the World Heritage Committee follow the advisory bodies' recommendations for the evaluation of heritage sites? ii) Does Committee membership or size of national delegations influence the addition of sites to the List or an upgrade of the initial technical evaluations? iii) Is the Committee's decision regarding the selection of World Heritage sites driven by a country's political and economic power? iv) Do close political and economic relationships between countries influence Committee members' behavior? The paper contributes to Public Choice literature on international organizations by providing new evidence on the role of political and economic interests in decision making concerning global merit goods.

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What determines UN approval of greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in developing countries?

Abstract: International climate policy, CDM, Political economy, Rational choice, International organization, D73, O19, Q56,

Cited by 33 publications

References 17 publications

Coding Error or Statistical Embellishment? The Political Economy of Reporting Climate Aid

Coding Error or Statistical Embellishment? The Political Economy of Reporting Climate Aid

Developing a sectoral new market mechanism: insights from theoretical analysis and country showcases

The politicization of UNESCO World Heritage decision making

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