The Paris Climate Agreement was crafted following the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2015. It arguably represents the most rigorous and ambitious international policy commitment to combatting climate change. Among its provisions, the Agreement stipulates an international commitment to limiting global temperature increase by to Celsius and to achieving zero-net greenhouse gas emissions during the second half of the 21st century. Indeed, the Paris Climate Agreement embodies the kind of purposeful policy steps necessary in extending a truly global sustainability agenda from international to local levels.
If anything, it also embodies the importance of international cooperation in approaching climate change policy. Evidently, global warming and climate change are phenomena that will affect all countries, regardless of their respective roles in engendering the issue. Tackling this problem requires international action and cooperation; that is, no free riders.
On this level, the Paris Climate Agreement has been a success. Of 197 recognized countries involved in the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), only 3 have not signed. This group includes Nicaragua, Syria, and Uzbekistan, with most recently Saudi Arabia and Iraq only submitting their acceptances in November and December of last year.
Beyond simply signing, however, the Agreement also requires domestic ratification on the part of each signatory government as national legislation. The Agreement lacks considerable commitment in this realm: 57 of the signing countries’ governments still have not ratified the Agreement domestically[1].
Who are these countries? On what grounds do they refuse to ratify the Paris Agreement? As for the three dissenting countries that failed to sign in the first place—how do they justify their inaction? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we get them to join? I suspect that this lag in ratification may be more broadly representative of a diversity of interests and internal conflicts across the globe—an indication that, on a global level, we are not yet speaking the same language when it comes to climate change.
Using data from the World Bank as well as the information made available by the UNFCCC on the legislative status of the Agreement with respect to each country, we can shed some light on what kinds of forces may be at play in inhibiting international cooperation.
They are poorer. On average among the 194 signatories, a 10,000 USD increase in per capita GDP is associated with a roughly seven-percent decrease in the chance they have also domestically ratified the Agreement. This relationship is may be attributable to poorer countries’ disproportionate reliance on industries and energy-inefficient technologies that will most likely be targeted under international climate change action.
They are less democratic. Even after controlling for per capita GDP, percent contributions to global CO2 emissions, and natural resource rent share of GDP, strength of democracy remains an important predictor of whether a signing country has ratified the agreement. As a gauge for democracy, I use the Economist Intelligence Unit 2016 Democracy Index from 0 to 10. For a two-point increase in the Democracy Rating Index, i.e. an improvement by one category[2] (either from hybrid regime to flawed democracy or from flawed democracy to full democracy), the chance that a country has also ratified the Paris Agreement increases by approximately 8 percentage points. One narrative that might account for this trend is that authoritarian regimes tend to be more hostile toward arrangements that dilute their power. In this case, although the Paris Agreement has even been criticized for lacking sufficient binding authority, such an agreement may serve to grant the illusion of de-concentrating power. If this were truly the case, one should expect to observe a systematically lower rate of international cooperation among less democratic countries.
They rely more heavily on natural resource rents. Perhaps, the economy may prove to be one of the greatest predictors of ratification. Among strength-of-democracy, GDP, and percent contribution to global CO2 emissions, natural resource rents as percent share of GDP has the greatest isolated explanatory power in accounting for whether signatory countries have domestically approved the agreement[3]. For a single-percentage point increase of a country’s natural resource rents component of its GDP, its chance of having only signed the Agreement (without ratifying) increases by between .5 and .6 percentage points. Figure 1 illustrates this trend, demonstrating that countries relying more heavily on natural resources have ratified the Agreement at significantly lower rates. Overall, it may be the case that moving forward with international climate change policy is a matter of providing the proper incentives.
These observed trends might give some credence to the claims of opponents of the Agreement that argue against radical climate action on a largely development-oriented basis. They, along with officials from developing countries tend to cite an urgent fear that the proposed action against climate change will impede the prospects for development of poorer nations. Of course, whether climate change action and development are reconcilable is frequently debated (although studies suggest both that developing countries have the most to lose in terms of the consequences of climate change and that investment in sustainable development may prove a prime opportunity to ameliorate poverty). To the extent that the poorer, natural resource-centric economic have less frequently successfully ratified the Agreement, it appears that some countries believe this to be the case.
Moreover, others argue that developed countries essentially profited off of the pollution they created stemming from industrialization, and therefore should bear the brunt of the fiscal consequences of climate change policy. Daniel Ortega, President Nicaragua—one of the three countries yet to ratify the Agreement—reportedly stated that ‘wealthy countries should bear their historical responsibility for causing climate change and provide adequate climate finance’. Telesur, a public news network funded by several Latin American Governments, even referred to the agreement as “Climate Imperialism” in an article published only two days before the climate agreement opening day.
For better or for worse, the greatest obstacle to international climate change policy cooperation appears to be development itself. That is, at least on an international policy level, we are not yet speaking the same language.
The data indicates a tangible, positive relationship between developmental status and commitment to international action against climate change. While the current paradigm of development is unlikely to be the long-sought panacea for ending international conflict, disparities in development might play an important part in explaining our disagreements in moving toward cooperation.
These findings suggest that a truly international climate change agenda should not only strive for environmental justice, but also pursue a more nuanced vision of international obligation and equity. Perspectives from developing countries stress a disconnect in terms of climate responsibility and historically propagated inequalities among the developed nations. Adopting this new vision of sustainability might allow us to approaching the climate crisis from a more unified perspective. Overall, the transition to a global society that more wholly embraces welfare and equality may prove to be key in uniting the world in face of this common threat.
[1] As of March 25, 2017
[2] Except in purely authoritarian regimes, which comprise the range 0-4 in the Index
[3] Overall, the variables mentioned, in aggregate, account for only a small proportion (10%) of the variation in ratification status. This suggests that there are other large factors at play in explaining which countries have yet to approve of the Agreement domestically.
