Past and future of burden sharing in the climate regime: positions and ambition from a top-down to a bottom-up governance system

Paula Castro ()
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Paula Castro: University of Zurich

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2020, vol. 20, issue 1, No 4, 60 pages

Abstract: Abstract Historically, burden sharing of mitigation in the climate regime was operationalized as a binary division of the world between the Annex I group of industrialized countries with emission reduction targets and the non-Annex I (developing) countries without them. The 2015 Paris Agreement arguably ended such division by introducing a bottom-up system of self-differentiated emission reduction commitments through countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions. This paradigmatic regime shift creates the opportunity to research to what extent it has been accompanied by a similar change in member states’ negotiation positions and policymaking. I explore whether key developing countries’ discourses regarding burden sharing of mitigation have changed pre- and post-Paris and how this relates to their own mitigation contributions. Has the Paris Agreement led to a new way of thinking regarding burden sharing? Do countries in favour of abolishing the Annex I–non-Annex I divide also propose more ambitious climate policies? I rely on text analysis of written position papers submitted to the negotiations, focusing on members of two coalitions at opposite extremes of developing countries’ positions: the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean, a group of progressive countries arguing for more comprehensive climate agreements; and the Like-Minded Developing Countries, a coalition that aims to uphold the regime’s differentiation between developed and developing countries.

Keywords: UNFCCC; Climate negotiations; Mitigation; Burden sharing; Text analysis; Coalitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1007/s10784-019-09465-4

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