Date: 2020
Type: Article
Participation, ambition and compliance : can the Paris Agreement solve the effectiveness trilemma?
Environmental politics, 2020, Vol. 29, No. 5, pp. 761-780
TØRSTAD, Vegard, Participation, ambition and compliance : can the Paris Agreement solve the effectiveness trilemma?, Environmental politics, 2020, Vol. 29, No. 5, pp. 761-780
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/65846
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
An effective climate agreement should simultaneously foster broad participation, high ambition, and sufficient compliance: this is the ‘effectiveness trilemma’. While the Paris Agreement has been acclaimed for spurring universal participation, its mitigation mechanism – an unenforced bottom-up framework of voluntary pledges – has been criticized for lacking ambition and incentivizing free riding. Does the Paris Agreement come with effectiveness trade-offs? How ambitious is the Agreement, and how likely is it that countries will comply with it? Using an effectiveness formula to assess ambition, I find that the Paris Agreement constitutes an important improvement compared to business-as-usual. Further, based on evidence from interviews with 21 climate negotiators and observers, the compliance prospects of the Agreement are evaluated as moderately positive. I conclude that the Agreement has the potential to overcome the effectiveness trilemma, and outline policy measures for achieving that objective.
Additional information:
First published online: 2 January 2020
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/65846
Full-text via DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2019.1710322
ISSN: 0964-4016; 1743-8934
Publisher: Routledge
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