Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-1 (section)

=== 1.4.10 International Cooperation ===

<div id="h2-16-siblings" class="h2-siblings"></div>

Tackling climate change is often mentioned as an important reason for strong international cooperation in the 21st century ( [[#Falkner--2016|Falkner 2016]] ; [[#Keohane--2016|Keohane and Victor 2016]] ; [[#Bodansky--2017|Bodansky et al. 2017]] ; [[#Cramton--2017b|Cramton et al. 2017b]] ). Mitigation costs are borne by countries taking action, while the benefits of reduced climate change are not limited to them, being in economic terms ‘global and non-excludable’. Hence anthropogenic climate change is typically seen as a global commons problem ( [[#Falkner--2016|Falkner 2016]] ; [[#Wapner--2017|Wapner and Elver 2017]] ). Moreover, the belief that mitigation will raise energy costs and may adversely affect competitiveness creates incentives for free riding, where states avoid taking their fair share of action ( [[#Barrett--2005|Barrett 2005]] ; [[#Keohane--2016|Keohane and Victor 2016]] ). International cooperation has the potential to address these challenges through collective action ( [[#Tulkens--2019|Tulkens 2019]] ) and international institutions offer the opportunity for actors to engage in meaningful communication and exchange of ideas about potential solutions ( [[#Cole--2015|Cole 2015]] ). International cooperation is also vital for the creation and diffusion of norms and the framework for stabilising expectations among actors ( [[#Pettenger--2016|Pettenger 2016]] ).

Some key roles of the UNFCCC have been detailed by its former heads ( [[#Kinley--2021|Kinley et al. 2021]] ). In addition to specific agreements (most recently the PA) it has enhanced transparency through reporting and data, and generated or reinforced several important norms for global climate action including the principles of equity, common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities, and the precautionary principles for maintaining global cooperation among states with unevenly distributed emissions sources, climate impacts, and varying mitigation costs across countries ( [[#Keohane--2016|Keohane and Victor, 2016]] ). In addition to formal negotiations, the annual Conference of the Parties (COPs) have increased awareness, and motivated more ambitious actions, sometimes through the formation of ‘coalitions of the willing’, for example. It provides a structure for measuring and monitoring action towards a global goal ( [[#Milkoreit--2019|Milkoreit and Haapala 2019]] ). International cooperation (including the UNFCCC) can also promote technology development and transfer and capacity building; mobilise finance for mitigation and adaptation; and help address concerns on climate justice ( [[#Okereke--2016|Okereke and Coventry 2016]] ; [[#Chan--2018|Chan et al. 2018]] ) (Chapters 14–16).

A common criticism of international institutions is their limited (if any) powers to enforce compliance ( [[#Zahar--2017|Zahar 2017]] ). As a global legal institution, the PA has little enforcement mechanism ( [[#Sindico--2015|Sindico 2015]] ), but enforcement is not a necessary condition for an instrument to be legally binding ( [[#Bodansky--2016|Bodansky 2016]] ; [[#Rajamani--2016|Rajamani 2016]] ). In reality implementation of specific commitments tends to be high once countries have ratified and a treaty or an agreement is in force ( [[#Bodansky--2016|Bodansky 2016]] ; [[#Rajamani--2016|Rajamani 2016]] ). Often, the problem is not so much of ‘power to enforce compliance or sanction non-compliance’, but the level of ambition (Chapter 14).

However, whilst in most respects a driver, international cooperation has also been characterised as ‘organised hypocrisy’ where proclamations are not matched with corresponding action ( [[#Egnell--2010|Egnell 2010]] ). Various reasons for inadequate progress after 30 years of climate negotiations, have been identified ( [[#Stoddard--2021|Stoddard et al. 2021]] ). International cooperation can also seem to be a barrier to ambitious action when negotiation is trapped in ‘relative-gains’ calculus, in which countries seek to game the regime or gain leverage over one another ( [[#Purdon--2017|Purdon 2017]] ), or where states lower ambition to the ‘least common dominator’ to accommodate participation of the least ambitious states ( [[#Falkner--2016|Falkner 2016]] ). [[#Geden--2016|Geden (2016)]] and [[#Dubash--2020|Dubash (2020)]] offer more nuanced assessments.

International collaboration works best if an agreement can be made self-reinforcing with incentives for mutual gains and joint action ( [[#Barrett--2016|Barrett 2016]] ; [[#Keohane--2016|Keohane and Victor 2016]] ), but the structure of the climate challenge makes this hard to achieve. The evidence from the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances and from the Kyoto Protocol on GHGs, is that legally binding targets have been ''effective'' in that participating Parties complied with them ( [[#Shishlov--2016|Shishlov et al. 2016]] ; [[#Albrecht--2019|Albrecht and Parker 2019]] ), and (for Kyoto) these account for most of the countries that have sustained emission reductions for at least the past 10 to 15 years (Sections 1.3.2 and 2.2). However, such binding commitments may deter ''participation'' if there are no clear incentives to sustain participation and especially if other growing emitters are omitted by design, as with the Kyoto Protocol. Consequently the USA refused to ratify (and Canada withdrew), particularly on the grounds that developing countries had no targets; with participation in Kyoto’s second period commitments declining further, the net result was limited global progress in emissions under Kyoto ( [[#Bodansky--2016|Bodansky 2016]] ; [[#Okereke--2016|Okereke and Coventry 2016]] ; [[#Scavenius--2018|Scavenius and Rayner 2018]] ) despite full legal compliance in both commitment periods (Chapter 14).

The negotiation of the Paris Agreement was thus done in the context of serious questions about how best to structure international climate cooperation to achieve better results. This new agreement is designed to sidestep the fractious bargaining which characterised international climate cooperation ( [[#Marcu--2017|Marcu 2017]] ). It contains a mix of hard, soft and non-obligations, the boundaries between which are blurred, but each of which plays a distinct and valuable role ( [[#Rajamani--2016|Rajamani 2016]] ). The provisions of the PA could encourage flexible responses to changing conditions, but limit assurances of ambitious national commitments and their fulfilment ( [[#Pickering--2018|Pickering et al. 2018]] ). The extent to which this new arrangement will drive ambitious climate policy in the long run remains to be seen (Chapter 14).

Whilst the PA abandoned common accounting systems and time frames, outside of the UNFCCC many other platforms and metrics for comparing mitigation efforts have emerged ( [[#Aldy--2015|Aldy 2015]] ). Countries may assess others’ efforts in determining their actions through multiple platforms including the Climate Change Cooperation Index (C3-I), Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), Climate Laws, Institutions and Measures Index (CLIMI) ( [[#Bernauer--2013|Bernauer and Böhmelt 2013]] ) and Energy Transition Index ( [[#Singh--2019|Singh et al. 2019]] ). International cooperative initiatives between and among non-state (e.g., business, investors and civil society) and sub-national (e.g., city and state) actors have also been emerging, taking the forms of public-private partnerships, private-sector governance initiatives, NGO transnational initiatives, and sub-national transnational initiatives ( [[#Bulkeley--2012|Bulkeley and Schroeder 2012]] ; [[#Hsu--2018|Hsu et al. 2018]] ). Literature is mostly positive about the role of these transnational initiatives in facilitating climate action across scales although criticism and caution about their accountability and effectiveness remain ( [[#Chan--2016|Chan et al. 2016]] ; [[#Michaelowa--2017|Michaelowa and Michaelowa 2017]] ; [[#Roger--2017|Roger et al. 2017]] ; [[#Widerberg--2017|Widerberg and Pattberg 2017]] ) (Chapter 14).

<div id="1.5" class="h1-container"></div>

<span id="emissions-scenarios-and-illustrative-mitigation-pathways-imps"></span>