Global governance for climate justice : A cross-national analysis of CO2 emissions

Abstract

Sustainable energy transitions are key to achieving climate justice for all. Carbon dioxide emissions'(CO2) unequal distribution globally is one of the many issues preventing climate justice. Efforts to reduceglobal CO2impacts are vital for environmental justice efforts and a future free from climate change is-sues. Researchers have long been interested in how the rise of global governance initiatives, such asmultilateral treaties, impact environmental outcomes across the world. However, little is known abouthow global governance concerning energy usage and technologies impacts CO2emissions across theworld. Using two-wayfixed effects regression analysis from 1996 to 2011, we test how 24 multilateralenvironmental treaties with an energy focus impact CO2emissions per capita, CO2emissions as a per-centage of gross domestic product, and total CO2emissions for 162 nations. The multilateral energytreaties were collected from Ecolex. This analysis assesses how the legitimacy of global contracts mayimpact actual decreases in CO2emissions, resulting in climate justice outcomes. Additionally, thisanalysis considers how factors of institutional state governance, including control of corruption, rule oflaw, political stability, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality moderate the impact of multi-lateral energy environmental treaties and CO2emissions. Wefind that stocks of environmental treatyratification are associated with decreases in all three types of CO2emissions. Renewable energy con-sumption, GDP per capita, and urban and total population are associated with increased CO2 emissions.We alsofind some support for the idea that treaties are associated with larger decreases in emissions innations with higher levels of state governance. Understanding how state accountability, transparency,and legitimacy factor into the effectiveness of multilateral environmental treaties on reducing CO2emissions is essential to combating climate change issues.