Sectoral Approaches to Climate Change

• In Event: Climate Action in the Private Sector

Abstract

Concerned with the slow pace at which the conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climtae Change (UNFCCC) is making progress, there has been increasing discussion about a “sectoral approach” in tackling climate change. A sectoral approach refers to a bottom-up approach for climate mitigation that is driven by various sectors, where industry and associations play bigger roles and possibly facilitate issue-specific inter-state negotiations. The recent global pledge on methane is a case in point. The question is whether such a sectoral approach helps, and if so which institutions. In this paper, we study several non-climate international regimes that have engaged with the aim to reduce carbon emissions in their respective sectors. It builds on the studies on strategic issue linkage and the recently revived interest in empirical-driven climate policies in international regimes outside the UNFCCC. Instead of evaluating the sufficiency of sectoral climate policies, this paper evaluates the venue-shift of certain climate issues from the UNFCCC to non-climate institutions, with the goal to understand the impact of this venue-shift on the UNFCCC and the overall effectiveness of the regimes involved. It analyzes the actors and processes of climate-related agreement making, as well as the inter-regime dynamics with the UNFCCC. We choose four regimes from two sectors: The Montreal Protocol, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and International Maritime Organization. The case studies will be based on interviews and process tracing in each regime, and findings of these case studies have implications regarding the relationships between the UNFCCC and non-climate regimes in tackling climate change.

Author

• SHIMING YANG, Leiden University