Friendly neighbor or Trojan Horse? Assessing the interaction of soft law initiatives and the UN climate regime

摘要

Current global climate governance is characterized by increasing institutional proliferation. Within the last 5 years several non-legally binding initiatives have emerged, including (i) the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate and various other public–private partnerships working on the policy implementation level and (ii) the Group of Eight Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development, and Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change as high-level political processes. As a first step toward analyzing the relationship between these parallel initiatives and the UN climate regime, this article looks at the negotiations of four UN-hosted climate meetings in 2007–2008, providing an examination of the interaction of ‘soft law’ climate initiatives and the ‘hard law’ UNFCCC/Kyoto Protocol process. The methodology of the study is based on participatory observations in the negotiations and document analysis of country and stakeholder positions. The analysis shows that the current multitude of processes in global climate governance entails potential institutional interaction. Deliberations of the key actors give some support to the claims of non-UN soft law being used to exert influence on the negotiations on a future climate regime within the UN context.