No abstract

No abstract

A trinity composed of legally binding regulations, an independent financial mechanism, and a compliance mechanism characterizes the institutional design of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Meanwhile, few existing environmental treaties feature an independent financial mechanism as well as a compliance mechanism. Why did the Minamata Convention acquire two mechanisms? There are two rival hypotheses on uncertainty about institutional consequences and international agreements. The rational design school posits that countries can predict institutional consequences by acquiring all pieces of relevant information (Koremenos et al. 2001) and views the trinity as a rational design to enhance developing countries' regulatory capabilities under strict compliance. In contrast, the institutional diffusion school assumes that countries have limited information-processing abilities and use cognitive heuristics in designing institutions and argues that countries designed the trinity by learning from existing cases (Ovodenko and Keohane 2012). In this paper, I compare the negotiations process of the Minamata Convention with that of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). To test the hypotheses, I examine how countries resolved informational uncertainty in both negotiations by utilizing negotiations records and personal interviews with key officials as data. The analytical results support the institutional diffusion hypothesis by indicating that the trinity within the Minamata Convention is a product of countries' heuristic and incremental learning from existing treaties. for their invaluable comments. I wish to thank my interviewees for their insights about the negotiations on the Minamata Convention and the organization of the UNEP. Compliance with ethical standards: The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Decarbonization policies are being stymied by political conflict. Local communities might oppose decarbonization infrastructure such as solar farms, mines, or transmission lines if they view these projects as imposing high costs on them in relation to their benefits. To decarbonize, the automobile industry seeks to shift from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles, which require lithium-based rechargeable batteries. In the United States, to meet the increasing lithium demand through domestic sources, there is a proposal for a lithium mine in Thacker Pass, Nevada, which faces strong opposition from native nations and environmental groups. Using a representative sample of Nevada residents (n = 1,368), we explore if proximity to the Thacker Pass mine and to any Nevada mine influence public support for the proposed lithium mine. In addition, we test three frames that emphasize different benefits of the proposed mine: climate policy, national security, and local economic development. We find that respondents living closer to the Thacker Pass mine tend to be more supportive of the proposed lithium mine but exposure to existing Nevada mines does not affect public support. Among the treatment frames, only the national security frame increases public support. This suggests that to navigate local public opposition, the national security—domestic sourcing of key inputs required for decarbonization, aspect of decarbonization projects should be highlighted.

We examine public support in Japan for overseas climate adaptation assistance via foreign aid and accepting immigrants. Using a survey-embedded conjoint experiment (N=2,815), we focus on seven attributes of an adaptation policy package: (1) the continent in which the country is located; (2) the types of extreme weather event this country faces; (3) the volume of climate aid; (4) the number of climate migrants (5) Japanese exports; (6) Japanese imports, (7) the country’s record of voting with Japan in the United Nations. We find that while respondents are indifferent to aid volume, their support diminishes as the number of migrants increases. Moreover, support is higher for Asian countries, that provide export markets, vote with Japan, and where the effects of climate change are gradual. Importantly, we find that public support is not influenced by benchmarking of Japan’s or peer G7 countries’ past aid or immigration levels.