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On the (in)effectiveness ofinternational environmental
cooperation
Issues of International Relations
De la Ruelle
Jannes
S0212297
Bridging Programme International Relations and Diplomacy
, Introduction
Many attempts to solve environmental issues arising at the international level have met with limited
success or have even ended in outright failure. While certain authors consider the Copenhagen Accord
of 2009 to represent a setback in the fight against the global climate crisis, others argue that the Kyoto
Protocol of 1997 in fact contributed to short-sighted behavior of member states and has cost the global
community an enormous amount of time. In this article, a literature review is conducted to examine
which factors determine the (non)effectiveness of multilateral climate agreements. To facilitate this
discussion, theoretical arguments and observations from the following four articles on international
environmental cooperation are analyzed and discussed:
- “The architecture of the global climate regime: a top-down perspective” by William Hare,
Claire Stockwell, Christian Flachsland and Sebastian Oberthür;
- “Toward Effective International Cooperation on Climate Change: Numbers, Interests and
Institutions” by David G. Victor;
- “Trading Places: The Role of the United States and the European Union in International
Environmental Politics” by R. Daniel Kelemen and David Vogel;
- “Why is it hard to solve environmental problems? The perils of institutional reductionism and
institutional overload” by Oran R. Young and Olav S. Stokke.
The structure of this article is as follows: in the first section, all four essays are briefly introduced by
delineating their research question and main hypothesis.1 In the second and third sections, I discuss the
authors’ main arguments by conceptualizing the key variables. 2 A brief conclusion follows at the end.
Organizing International Environmental Cooperation
Why are we having such a hard time dealing with environmental problems? Many authors agree that an
effective climate regime at the international level is necessary to respond to the global climate crisis, but
there is some controversy as to how such a regime would best be established. An important point of
discussion relates to which model is most effective in shaping the architecture of multilateral
environmental agreements: while some advocate a strict top-down perspective, others suggest a bottom-
up approach as being the most sustainable in addressing environmental problems. As for this discussion,
Hare et al. (2010) come up with a crystal-clear answer to the question of which architectural model is
most likely to lead to the development of an effective international climate regime: they propose that
a top-down architecture is more appropriate than a bottom-up architecture when it comes to securing
an effective global climate regime. In their essay, they specifically make the conclusion that a legally
binding, multilateral agreement is a prerequisite for achieving the highest levels of GHG emission
reductions consistent with limiting warming to below 2°C (as stipulated in the Copenhagen Accord of
2009).
1
The research question is written in bold italics, and the main hypothesis in italics only.
2
The dependent variable is written in bold italics, and the independent variables are in italics only.
2
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