Suchergebnisse

The 2015 Paris Agreement established a new logic for international climate governance: the pledge-and-review system. In 2009, the same idea had been proposed in the Copenhagen Accord, but was then forcefully rejected by the negotiation community. Explaining this turnaround, I analyze the role of the United States in the international climate negotiations, using Putnam's two-level game framework and Snidal's k-group theory. U.S. domestic politics imposed significant constraints on the terms of the Paris Agreement, contributing to the emergence of the new treaty architecture. Until 2015, U.S. negotiators were either unable or unwilling to bring the demands of political actors at the domestic and international levels in alignment. President Obama achieved this alignment in 2015 by creating international support for a treaty without legally binding obligations that could circumvent a Congressional ratification barrier. The latter required a surprising move: the proactive engagement of China despite the structural context of hegemonic transition.

In December 2015, 196 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement, seen as a decisive landmark for global action to stop human- induced climate change. The Paris Agreement will replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2020, and it creates legally binding obligations on the parties, based on their own bottom-up voluntary commitments to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) The codification of the climate change regime has advanced well, but the implementation of it remains uncertain. This book focuses on the implementation prospects of the Agreement, which is a challenge for all and will require a fully comprehensive burden- sharing framework. Parties need to meet their own NDCs, but also to finance and transfer technology to others who do not have enough. How equity- based and facilitative the process will be, is of crucial importance. The volume examines a broad range of issues including the lessons that can be learnt from the implementation of previous environmental legal regimes, climate policies at national and sub-national levels and whether the implementation mechanisms in the Paris Agreement are likely to be sufficient. Written by leading experts and practitioners, the book diagnoses the gaps and lays the ground for future exploration of implementation options. This collection will be of interest to policy-makers, academics, practitioners, students and researchers focusing on climate change governance.

Climate change has a profound impact on agriculture and on food security. At the same time agriculture contributes to climate change to a considerable extent. Fortunately there is also much to gain since the agricultural sector holds significant climate change mitigation potential through reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and enhancement of sequestration. A policy aimed at achieving greenhouse gas emission reductions, adaptation to climate change and an increase in productivity is, therefore, very much needed. "Climate smart agriculture" policies are being proposed, but so far remain underdeveloped. This article reviews whether the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement pushes towards the development of such policies. It finds that, unfortunately, the Paris Climate Agreement does not provide a powerful stimulus to adopt and implement climate smart agriculture policies. The Paris Climate Agreement does not change the troublesome relationship between agriculture policies and climate policies that we have already witnessed under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. There is some attention for adaptation to climate change in rural areas in developing countries, but progress is painfully slow. For the developed countries, the UNFCCC does not make much of a contribution to addressing climate change and food security issues. This is a pity, as the developed country agriculture sector will play an important role in addressing the increasing global demand for food. Developed countries, including important players such as the EU, should, therefore, not wait for the UNFCCC process. The EU recently announced its intention to implement an ambitious policy aimed at climate friendly and resilient food production, while optimising the agricultural sector's contribution to greenhouse gas mitigation and sequestration. It is of vital importance that this example is followed and implemented across the globe. Hopefully such initiatives will then be picked up by the international community under the UNFCCC process.

The Paris Agreement constitutes a political success in climate negotiations and traditional state diplomacy, and offers important implications for academic research. Based on participatory research, the article examines the political dynamics in Paris and highlights features of the process that help us understand the outcome. It describes battles on key contentious issues behind closed doors, provides a summary and evaluation of the new agreement, identifies political winners and losers, and offers theoretical explanations of the outcome. The analysis emphasizes process variables and underscores the role of persuasion, argumentation, and organizational strategy. Climate diplomacy succeeded because the international conversation during negotiations induced cognitive change. Persuasive arguments about the economic benefits of climate action altered preferences in favor of policy commitments at both national and international levels.

Part I. Introductory chapters -- Introduction: Scientific and political drivers for the Paris Agreement / Andreas Fischlin, Maria Ivanova -- Foundations for the Paris Agreement / Joanna Depledge, Andrew Higham -- Negotiating history of the Paris Agreement / Jane Bulmer, Meinhard Doelle, and Daniel Klein -- Central concepts in the Paris Agreement and how they evolved / Lavanya Rajamani and Emmanuel Guérin -- Legal form of the Paris Agreement and nature of its obligations / Ralph Bodle and Sebastian Oberthür -- Part II. Analysis of the provisions of the agreement -- Contextual provisions (Preamble and Article 1) / María Pía Carazo-- Objective (Article 2.1) / Halldór Thorgeirsson -- Guiding principles and general obligation (Article 2.2 and Article 3) / Lavanya Rajamani -- Mitigation (Article 4) / Harald Winkler -- Conserving and enhancing sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases, including forests (Article 5) / Antonio G M La Viña and Alaya de Leon -- Voluntary cooperation (Article 6) / Andrew Howard -- Adaptation (Article 7) / Irene Suárez Pérez and Angela Churie Kallhauge -- Loss and damage (Article 8) / Linda Siegele -- Climate finance (Article 9) / Jorge Gastelumendi and Inka Gnittke -- Technology development and transfer (Article 10) / Heleen de Conick and Ambuj Sagar -- Capacity-building (Article 11) / Crispin d'Auvergne and Matti Nummelin -- Education, training, public awareness participation and access to information (Article 12) / Jeniffer Hanna Collado -- Transparency (Article 13) / Yamide Dagnet and Kelly Levin -- Global stocktake (Article 14) / Jürgen Friedrich -- Facilitating implementation and promoting compliance (Article 15) / Yamide Dagnet and Eliza Northrop -- Institutional arrangements and final clauses (Articles 16-29) / Christina Voigt -- Part III. Concluding reflections -- Assessment of strengths and weaknesses / Meinhard Doelle -- Implications for public international law : initial considerations / María Pía Carazo -- Epilogue: Making the transition from an international agreement to a new epoch of human prosperity in one generation / Andrew Higham

This paper presents a critical review of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in the light of legal and political aspects. There is also an analysis of the effects of the Paris Agreement, as an important international agreement in the context of international legal regulation of the consequences of climate change and the obligations of states, and the new socio-political relations they establish. The paper also contains an overview of reactions to the ParisAgreement by analysts and experts in international climate law. The well-known fact that climate change affects human rights and how a country can be held responsible for the international consequences of climate change resulting from activities under that country jurisdiction has been re-examined. It has also been shown that human rights are a common denominator in the approach to climate change and the legal solutions that apply to it. In the end, the paper presents the impact of international law on the responsibility of states to cooperate in devising adequate international action, in relation to the current environmental crisis, caused by climate change.

This mini-symposium of the European Journal of Risk Regulation focuses on the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which was concluded at COP-21 in December 2015. It has been called the 'world's greatest diplomatic success' and a 'historic achievement,' but also an 'epic failure' and even a 'fraud' and 'worthless words.' Disappointed with the Paris Agreement, a group of eleven climate scientists signed a declaration stating that it suffers from "deadly flaws" and gives "false hope;" they argue that the time for "wishful thinking and blind optimism" is over, and "the full spectrum of geo engineering" should be considered. The broad disagreement over the outcome of COP-21 in Paris (in particular, over its binding effect) illustrates not only the diverging expectations of interest groups, but also the antagonisms that arise in all areas of policy-making between the dogmatic and the pragmatic, the idealistic and the realistic, and the internationalists and nationalists.

In June 2017, US President Donald Trump announced that the US 'will withdraw from the Paris Accord'. This paper argues that the US is still a party to the Paris Agreement and that its current domestic policies, such as revocation of the Clean Power Plan and lifting the Coal Moratorium, constitute an internationally wrongful act.

In the coming few decades, the world is facing three related problems.First, agriculture contributes to climate change to a considerable extent. In its Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC's Working Group III concludes that the AFOLU sector (agriculture, forestry and other land use) is responsible for just under a quarter (∼10 – 12 GtCO2eq/yr) of anthropogenic GHG emissions. Usually, a distinction is made between non-CO2 emissions, in particular methane (NH4) emitted by livestock and rice cultivation, and nitrous oxide (N2O) caused by the use of synthetic fertilizers and the application of manure on soils and pasture. Methane and Nitrous oxide have 25 times and 300 times stronger impact on the climate than CO2 respectively. CO2 emissions from agriculture are mainly caused by deforestation and peatland drainage. Emissions from agriculture have been rising on a yearly basis since 1990, although with important regional differences (they went down in Europe and up in Asia).

Recognising the importance of science to climate policies, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (the 'Paris Agreement' or 'Agreement') stipulates that 'an effective and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate change' should be based on 'the best available scientific knowledge.' The terms 'best available scientific knowledge' or 'best available science' are used in several places throughout the agreement.