TY - JOUR A1 - Raiser, Kilian A1 - Kornek, Ulrike A1 - Flachsland, Christian A1 - Lamb, William F. T1 - Is the Paris Agreement effective? A systematic map of the evidence JF - Environmental Research Letters N2 - The Paris Agreement (PA) sets out to strengthen the global response to climate change, setting targets for mitigation, adaptation, and finance, and establishing mechanisms through which to achieve these targets. The effectiveness of the PA's mechanisms in achieving its targets, however, has been questioned. This review systematically maps the peer-reviewed literature on the PA, categorizing the available evidence on whether or not the 'Paris Regime' can be effective. We split our analysis into three methodologically distinct sections: first we categorize the literature according to the mechanisms being studied. We find a diverse body of literature, albeit with a clear focus on mitigation, and identify adaptation and capacity building to be clear gaps. Second, we carry out a content analysis, identifying common drivers of, barriers to, and recommendations for effectiveness. Here we find mixed evidence, with potential drivers often qualified by more concrete barriers. Thirdly, we use scientometrics to identify six research clusters. These cover loss and damage, finance, legal issues, international politics, experimental evidence, and studies on tracking progress on the PA's targets. We conclude with a narrative discussion of our findings, presenting three central themes. First, transparency is widely considered a precondition for the PA to be institutionally effective. However, a lack of clear reporting standards and comparable information renders the PA's transparency provisions ineffective. Second, environmental effectiveness relies on national ambition, of which there is currently too little. It remains unclear to which extent the Paris Regime structure itself can induce significant ratcheting-up of ambition. Finally, the PA facilitates the diffusion of norms, enables learning and the sharing of best practices. This production of shared norms provides the most promising avenue for overcoming the current lack of ambition. One of the primary successes of the PA is in providing a platform for the exchange of experiences and ideas. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab865c VL - 15 IS - 8 SP - 1 EP - 16 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Raiser, Kilian A1 - Flachsland, Christian A1 - Çalı, Başak T1 - Understanding pledge and review: learning from analogies to the Paris Agreement review mechanisms JF - Climate Policy N2 - This article draws lessons for the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement’s pledge and review mechanisms from the performance of comparable review mechanisms established under other international treaties. The article employs systematic evidence synthesis methods to review the existing literature on international review mechanisms in the human rights, trade, labour, and monetary policy fields and identifies six common factors influencing their performance. Applying these findings to the Paris Agreement, the analysis finds that its review mechanisms incorporate many of these factors. In particular, they combine both expert and peer review, allow for repeated interaction and capacity building, and facilitate the regular and transparent provision of information. The comparative analysis also highlights two major deficiencies of the Paris Agreement: the absence of procedures to assess the adequacy of national pledges and actions taken to implement them, and resource constraints in carrying out a complex and arduous review process. Active engagement of non-state actors with review mechanisms is identified as a potential remedy to these shortcomings. However, the overall experience of other regimes suggests that, on their own, review mechanisms provide few incentives for states to undertake significant policy changes. Rather, the political context of each regime conditions the performance of review mechanisms. We therefore conclude that the Paris Agreement’s review mechanisms alone are unlikely to bring about the necessary ratcheting up of climate policy ambitions. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2022.2059436 N1 - This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Climate Policy. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2022.2059436 SP - 1 EP - 25 ER - TY - THES A1 - Raiser, Kilian T1 - Post-Paris: Understanding Pledge and Review and its Implications for International Cooperation on Climate Change N2 - This dissertation studies the mechanisms through which the Paris Agreement proposes to limit global greenhouse gas emissions, and the prospects for these mechanisms to succeed in doing so. In particular it focuses on the Paris Agreement’s pledge and review structure, taking a cumulative approach comprising three distinct research papers studying the Agreement from different perspectives. In the first paper I systematically map the literature studying the Agreement and synthesize existing insights on whether or not it will be effective. I find mixed evidence. Potential drivers of effectiveness, such as the Agreement’s transparency provisions, are often qualified by concrete barriers, with the information submitted thus far lacking in quality and comparability. Although the literature provides ample recommendations for overcoming such barriers, the success of the Agreement is found to ultimately depend on national ambition. As such, the Paris Agreement’s most promising features are found to lie in its facilitation of norm-diffusion and learning. In the second paper I use systematic evidence synthesis methods to review existing literature studying five comparable review mechanisms in the human rights, trade, finance and labour regimes. I identify six common factors that influence the performance of these review mechanisms. Using these as benchmarks to assess the Paris Agreement’s review mechanisms I find that the Agreement incorporates many of these features. However, two major shortcomings remain, namely the lack of an assessment of the adequacy of national climate policies, and a lack of capacities to effectively carry out the review process. Combined with existing political constraints, these shortcomings suggest that that the Paris Agreement alone is unlikely to be effective. In the third paper I develop a novel framework for assessing states’ nationally determined contribution formulation process based on the state capacities and policy design literatures. I apply the framework to the cases of Brazil, South Africa, India and China. I find that these countries engage imperfectly with the pledge and review structure of the Paris Agreement. They lack systematic processes for formulating their nationally determined contributions, and their international pledges remain detached from domestic climate policy considerations. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 05/2022 Y1 - 2022 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-44070 N1 - Related publications: Kilian Raiser et al (2020) Is the Paris Agreement effective? A systematic map of the evidence, Environ. Res. Lett. 15 083006, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab865c Kilian Raiser, Başak Çalı & Christian Flachsland (2022) Understanding pledge and review: learning from analogies to the Paris Agreement review mechanisms, Climate Policy, DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2022.2059436 N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D005 + 2022D005+1 ER -