After twenty years of global negotiations, the world is still far from a comprehensive climate agreement. The "top-down" approach embodied by the Kyoto Protocol has all but stalled, chiefly due to disagreements over levels of ambition and objections to financial transfers. To avoid those...

This paper explains the emergence of the "pledge and review" governance approach found in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, in place of the "obligatory targets and timetables" approach found in the Kyoto Protocol, from a neo-Gramscian perspective. The main argument is that the adoption of...

In international climate change negotiations, China’s role is an issue of perennial concern. In particular, the lack of quantitative, absolute emissions commitments from China has been the focus. In line with changing domestic and international contexts, China is recalibrating its stance and...

Expectations concerning international climate finance have increased considerably. In particular, provisions for international transfer schemes are an important element in the Paris Agreement. Yet, climate finance is not only seen as a tool to efficiently combat global warming, but also to solve...

Growing North-South tensions are impeding global climate cooperation and hampering Germany’s search for reliable partners. Brazil is a key actor with the potential to alleviate tensions: it sees itself as a bridge-builder and will host the Climate Change Conference in 2025 (COP30). Under their...

Long-term Strategies for Decarbonization, termed long-term low emissions and development strategies (LT-LEDS) by the UNFCCC, and sometimes referred to as LTS, can influence the transition to a resilient and decarbonized economy. LT-LEDS additionally make it possible to identify investments and...

This paper examines the detailed provisions on clean energy technology deployment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), with a particular focus on the design of international cooperation under Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Agreement and on the critical role of...

We develop the concept of aggregate emission targets, which are goals for national emissions but do not dictate the forms of regulation used to achieve the goals. We compare aggregate emission intensity, quantity, and price targets adopted at the national level but implemented cost effectively...

The East-West Center convened the international conference on climate policy in Honolulu, Hawaii, on September 4-6, 2003. Sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, Industrial Technology Research Institute (Taiwan),...

Theoretical analyses of international environmental agreements (IEAs) have typically employed the concept of self-enforcing agreements to predict the number of parties to such an agreement. The term self-enforcing, however, is a bit misleading. The concept refers to the stability of cooperative...