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Innovativeness and Paralysis in International Climate Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2012

Charlotte Streck
Charlotte Streck*
Affiliation:
ClimateFocus, Washington, DC, United States; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article describes the challenges of using the constrained tools of international law to negotiate a sustainable framework to address climate change. It sets out to show how the particularities of the problem have led to creative and innovative solutions expanding the borders of international law. To this end, the article discusses carbon market mechanisms, the compliance regime of the Kyoto Protocol, and the emerging framework to create incentives to reduce land-based emissions in developing countries. These examples illustrate that the recognition of the role of sub-national and private entities in mitigating climate change has had significant impact on the rules of the climate regime. But the article also asserts that the un process, while recognizing the role of private actors, is still inadequately equipped to involve non-state actors in a meaningful way. The climate regime therefore challenges the traditional thinking about interstate relationships. No longer solely a matter for international environmental law, contemporary environmental governance has become a global affair, which makes the lens of transnational law a useful tool to think about these issues in practice in a more intellectually fruitful and relevant way. This article thereby provides a snapshot of the type of issues and discussion that readers of this journal can look forward to in the years to come.

Keywords

Climate Change NegotiationsTransnational GovernancereddEmissions TradingCompliance RegimeunfcccKyoto Protocol
Type
Invited Article
Information
Transnational Environmental Law , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 2012 , pp. 137 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 New York, NY (US), 9 May 1992, in force 21 Mar. 1994, available at: http://unfccc.int.

2 Kyoto (Japan), 10 Dec. 1997, in force 16 Feb. 2005, available at: http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php.

3 Transnational law here refers to all law which regulates actions or events that transcend national frontiers.

4 Despite the increasing recognition that, while global warming may still be categorized as an environmental problem, addressing climate mitigation and adaptation requires economically and socially sustainable solutions; state delegations to the UNFCCC often continue to be led by officials from environmental ministries.

5 Brunnée, J., Toope, S.J., Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account (Cambridge University Press, 2010), at p. 178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Ibid., at pp. 145, 184.

7 The rules of procedures of the UNFCCC, adopted at the first conference of the parties, exclude a decision on voting (Art. 42): see FCCC/CP/1995/7, available at: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/cop1/07a01.pdf.

8 See ‘Summary of the Bonn Climate Change Conference’, Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 12(513)SB34, 20 June 2011, available at: http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb12513e.pdf.

9 A Google search for ‘stalemate in climate negotiations’ results in 1,290,000 hits from around the world.

10 The establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 was an important step towards creating a scientific basis for political action.

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15 Decision 2/CP.15, UN Doc. FCCC/CP/2009/11/Add.1, 30 Mar. 2010.

16 Art. 3.1, UNFCCC.

17 It has been argued that the South–North divide is not the main problem of climate negotiations, though; in the negotiation history North–North disagreements were at least as relevant as South–North confrontations: see D.A. Mejía, ‘The Evolution of the Climate Change Regime: Beyond a North–South Divide?’, ICIP Working Paper, Institut Catala International, Per La Pau, Barcelona, Spain, June 2010, available at: http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/icip/Continguts/Publicacions/WorkingPapers/Arxius/WP10_6_ANG.pdf.

18 N. 5 above, p. 131.

19 Directive 2003/87/EC of 13 Oct. 2003 establishing a Scheme for Greenhouse Gas Emission Allowance Trading within the Community and Amending Directive 96/61/EC [2003] OJ L275/32, amended through Directive 2008/101/EC [2009] OJ L8/3; and Directive 2009/29/EC [2009] OJ L140/63.

20 See Verified Carbon Standards, available at: http://www.v-c-s.org.

21 D. Burtraw & S.J. Szambelan, ‘U.S. Emissions Trading Markets for SO2 and NOx, Resources for the Future’, Discussion Paper RFF DP 09-40, Washington DC, 2009; M.W. Gehring & C. Streck, ‘Emissions Trading: Lessons from SOx and NOx Emissions Allowance and Credit Systems, Legal Nature, Title, Transfer, and Taxation of Emission Allowances and Credits’ (2005) 35 Environmental Law Reporter, pp. 10219–35.

22 R. Calel, ‘Climate Change and Carbon Markets: A Panoramic History’, Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy Working Paper No. 62, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment Working Paper No. 52, July 2011, available at: http://www.cccep.ac.uk/Publications/Working-papers/Papers/60-69/WP62_Climate-change-carbon-markets-panoramic-history.pdf, at p. 1.

23 UNFCCC, Marrakesh Accords, from Decision 2/CP.7 through to Decision 24/CP.7, adopted and confirmed in 2005 as Decisions of the COP serving as a Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), available at: http://unfccc.int/documentation/decisions/items/3597.php.

24 Netto, M. & Barani Schmidt, K.-U., ‘The CDM Project Cycle and the Role of the UNFCCC Secretariat’, in Freestone, D. & Streck, C. (eds.), Legal Aspects of Carbon Trading (Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 213–30.Google Scholar

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26 Michaelowa & Purohit, ibid.; L. Schneider, ‘Is the CDM Fulfilling its Environmental and Sustainable Development Objectives? An Evaluation of the CDM and Options for Improvement’, Oeko Institut, Berlin, 2007, available at: http://www.oeko.de/oekodoc/622/2007-162-en.pdf; M.W. Wara & D.G. Victor, ‘A Realistic Policy on International Carbon Offsets’, Stanford University, Energy and Sustainable Development Working Paper No. 74, Apr. 2008, available at: http://pesd.stanford.edu/publications/a_realistic_policy_on_international_carbon_offsets.

27 There are 3,500 registered CDM projects for which 740m tCO2e (740 million tons of CO2 equivalent) emissions reductions had been issued by Oct. 2011. See UNFCCC website: http://cdm.unfccc.int.

28 An exception is the Regional GHG Initiative in the Northeast of the US: Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, available at: http://www.rggi.org.

29 The EU has integrated the (more complex) EU trading registries with the Protocol’s registries and by choosing to shadow the Protocol’s assigned amount units (AAUs) with EU emission allowances.

30 N. 22 above.

31 Streck, C. & Lin, J., ‘Making Markets Work: A Review of CDM Performance and Need for Reform’ (2008) 19(2) European Journal of International Law, pp. 409–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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34 ‘Harper’s Letter Dismisses Kyoto as “Socialist Scheme”’, CBC News, Canada, 30 Jan. 2007, available at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2007/01/30/harper-kyoto.html; and ‘Harper Letter Called Kyoto a “Socialist Scheme”’, Canadian Press, Canada, 30 Jan. 2007, available at: http://www.lilithgallery.com/articles/environmental/Harper-Vs-Kyoto.html#Letter.

35 These general procedures consist of the control exerted by the European Commission acting as the ‘keeper of the treaties’, control which can lead to an action before the European Court of Justice (ECJ): Art. 258 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Tabau, A-S. & Maljean-Dubois, S., ‘Non-compliance Mechanisms: Interaction between the Kyoto Protocol System and the European Union’ (2010) 21(3) European Journal of International Law, pp. 749–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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37 J. Depledge, ‘Tracing the Origins of the Kyoto Protocol: An Article-by-Article Textual History’, UNFCCC Technical Paper, FCCC/TP/2000/2, 25 Nov. 2000, available at: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/tp/tp0200.pdf; MacFaul, L., ‘Developing the Climate Regime: the Role of Verification’, in Avenhaus, R., Kyriakopoulos, N., Richard, M. & Stein, G. (eds.), Verifying Treaty Compliance: Limiting Weapons of Mass Destruction and Monitoring Kyoto Protocol Provisions (Springer, 1996) p. 171–212,at 185.Google Scholar

38 UNFCCC, Decision 24/CP.7, 21 Jan. 2002, available at: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/cop7/13a03.pdf.

39 UNFCCC, Decision 27/CMP.1, 30 Mar. 2006, available at: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2005/cmp1/eng/08.pdf.

40 The compliance system of the Kyoto Protocol builds on the non-compliance procedure adopted under the Montreal Protocol (Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, Montreal (Canada), 16 Sept. 1987, in force 1 Jan. 1989, available at: http://ozone.unep.org/new_site/en/montreal_protocol.php), that made one of the tasks of the Compliance Committee to ‘identify the facts and possible causes relating to individual cases of non-compliance’: see UNEP, ‘Report of the Tenth Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, Annex II: Non-Compliance Procedure’, UNEP Doc. OzL.Pro.10/9, 3 Dec. 1998, available at: http://ozone.unep.org/Meeting_Documents/mop/10mop/10mop-9.e.pdf.

41 Brunnée, J., ‘Enforcement Mechanisms in International Law and International Environmental Law’, in Beyerlin, U. et al. . (eds.), Ensuring Compliance with Multilateral Environmental Agreements: A Dialogue between Practitioners and Academia (Brill, 2005), pp. 1–23.Google Scholar

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43 In favour of sanctions as part of the international compliance mechanisms, see Downs, G.W., Rocke, D.M. & Barsoom, P.N., ‘Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation?’ (1996) 50 International Organization, pp. 379–406, at 382–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 UNFCCC, Decision 27/CMP.1, n. 39 above, Annex V, para. 4.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., Annex, para. 2.

47 N. 42 above. Non-compliance procedures (NCPs) have been negotiated under the following: the Montreal Protocol (n. 40 above); the UNECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), Geneva (Switzerland), 13 Nov. 1979, in force 16 Mar. 1983, available at: http://www.unece.org/env/lrtap; the UNECE Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context (Espoo Convention), Espoo (Finland), 25 Feb. 1991, in force 10 Sept. 1997, available at: http://www.unece.org/env/eia; the Kyoto Protocol, n. 2 above; the Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (Basel Convention), Basel (Switzerland), 22 Mar. 1989, in force 5 May 1992, available at: http://www.basel.int; the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention), Aarhus (Denmark), 25 June 1998, in force 30 Oct. 2001, available at: http://www.unece.org/env/pp/welcome.html; the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Cartagena Biosafety Protocol), Montreal (Canada), 29 Jan. 2000, in force 11 Sept. 2003, available at:http://bch.cbd.int/protocol; the Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (Rotterdam PIC Convention), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), 11 Sept. 1998, in force 24 Feb. 2004, available at: http://www.pic.int; the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (Stockholm POPs Convention), Stockholm (Sweden), 22 May 2001, in force 17 May 2004, available at: http://www.pops.int; and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), Rome (Italy), 3 Nov. 2001, in force 29 June 2004, available at: http://www.planttreaty.org.

48 Ibid.

49 UNFCC, Decision 27/CMP.1, n. 39 above.

50 Ibid.

51 The full reference to REDD+ includes sustainable forest management, the role of conservation, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

52 Project Catalyst, ‘Towards a Global Climate Agreement’, Synthesis Briefing Paper, June 2009, available at: http://www.project-catalyst.info/images/publications/synthesis_paper1.pdf.

53 ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation: Approaches to Stimulate Action’, submission by the Governments of Papua New Guinea & Costa Rica, to Item 6 of the provisional agenda of CP-11, 11 Nov. 2005, available at: http://www.rainforestcoalition.org/documents/COP-11AgendaItem6-Misc.Doc.FINAL.pdf.

54 UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.16 (Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention) (‘AWG-LCA Outcome’), Section III (C) & Annex I, available at: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2010/cop16/eng/07a01.pdf.

55 Ibid., paras. 71 and 74.

56 Ibid., para. 71.

57 Ibid., para. 73.

58 See, e.g., the activities undertaken in the context of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility by the World Bank, available at: http://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/fcp.

59 N. 20 above.