Post-Paris: Understanding Pledge and Review and its Implications for International Cooperation on Climate Change
- 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.
Document Type: | Doctoral Thesis |
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Language: | English |
Author(s): | Kilian Raiser |
Advisor: | Christian Flachsland, Ottmar Edenhofer, Sebastian Oberthür |
Hertie Collections (Serial Number): | Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School (05/2022) |
Publication year: | 2022 |
Publishing Institution: | Hertie School |
Granting Institution: | Hertie School |
Thesis date: | 2022/04/20 |
Number pages: | 224 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4407 |
Release Date: | 2022/04/25 |
Notes: | 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 |
Notes: | Shelf mark: 2022D005 + 2022D005+1 |
Hertie School Research: | Publications PhD Researchers |
Licence of document (German): | Creative Commons - CC BY - 4.0 International |