| Abstract [eng] |
Towards the Paris Agreement: Coalitions at the United Nations Climate Change Conferences. The study researches the phenomenon of climate coalitions at the UNFCCC Climate Change Conferences (COP). It seeks to provide an answer for the following question: why, internationally, major coalitions were lacking true commitment to collective action in Copenhagen (COP15), yet managed to deliver a new global agreement in Paris (COP21)? The paper suggests a game theoretic analysis of the current lack of international policy. A stag hunt game is used as a model to enable relatively simple way of explaining the reason and the manner in which political actors behave on environment policy-related issues. As climate change is really a collective action problem, no effective policy is apt to emerge unless mutual expectations predict a fair strategy of other participants in the game. Using the method of process tracing, the study shows how mutual expectations evolved and were shaped by various climate coalitions before and during both COP15 and COP21. In essence, global circumstances were unfavourable for cooperation into collective action in Copenhagen, as major climate coalitions, especially their leading countries, were not willing to make the commitments that were necessary to actually mitigate climate change. Since the majority of actors had some sort of doubt that all high carbon dioxide emitters would cooperate, main climate coalitions were obviously very fragmented and divided, thus highly distrustful. As a result, it made sense for all of them to defect given the other actor’s potential choice to defect as well. Meanwhile, during the COP21 negotiations the most significant groups were represented through strong, well-organised, thus more trustworthy coalitions. Overcoming the barriers of the lack of assurance and long-term information sharing concerns gave the opportunity to the parties to make significant steps towards the cooperative agreement in only a few years. The conference came up with a policy that almost every country contributed to. Therefore the parties involved in developing the treaty had an easier time signing it. Even if this argument provides a possible explanation only for global negotiations at the UNFCCC COP during 2007–2015, it still delivers quite clear universal message. Response to environmental challenges require not only further technological development and investment, but also a deeper understanding among the political leaders of US and China and their-led climate coalitions. To address problems such as these, climate coalitions are essencial in encouraging mutual trust, improving mutual expectations and making it easier for the states to feel as if they can cooperate in developing the treaty. |
