Author:

Keywords:

BASIC, climate change, emerging powers, G20, G77/China, MEF, minilateralism, UNFCCC

Abstract:

This paper studies the role and impact that rising powers have in the global climate change regime, and how those actors challenge the course of climate negotiations in the future. The global climate change regime, centred around the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is plagued by a number of problems, which make that it is insufficient today to deal with the problem it was intended to solve. A number of those problems relate to the regime’s design, which assigns reduction targets to only a specific type of countries (Annex 1 countries). Considering that global emissions have increased considerably, it is obvious that the institutional solutions of the UNFCCC do not match the scale of the problem in the 21st century. That is because emissions in developing countries, most importantly in the new economic powerhouses, are rising exponentially. To increase its effectiveness, a redesign of the global climate change regime is needed, but any reform seems futile if it does not include the acceptance by rising powers of binding reduction targets. Besides China and India, the commitment of other non-Annex 1 countries such as South Korea, Brazil or the OPEC members will be extremely significant. At the same time, the reality of global climate negotiations does not remain unaffected by the new world order. While the negotiations are still dominated by large coalitions such as the G77/China, underlying dynamics and power relations are changing, for instance through the creation of BASIC. Furthermore, climate discussions seem to be shifting to new groups and institutions outside the UN framework, such as the G20 or the Major Economies Forum. The paper concludes that those ‘clubs’, for the time being, fulfil only a limited role in the broader regime complex of climate change. It also argues that other developing countries are de facto sidelined because of the increasing clout of rising powers in climate negotiations.