Exclusive Minilateralism: An Emerging Discourse within International Climate Change Governance?

Abstract

Over the past five years there have been a series of significant international climate change agreements involving only elite state actors. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, APEC Sydney Leaders Declaration and US Major Economies Process all displayed a shift towards a model of international climate change governance involving a small group of economically powerful states, to the exclusion of less powerful states and environmental NGOs. The modest result from the UNFCCC COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009 and subsequent UNFCCC meetings has strengthened calls for international climate governance to be pared down to smaller decision making forums of key states only. This article argues that these developments evidence an emerging discourse of ‘exclusive minilateralism’ in international climate policy that is challenging the inclusive multilateral discourse that has formed the bedrock of international climate change governance since the inception of UN climate regime in the early 1990s. The exclusive minilateralism discourse offers a significant challenge to both the cosmopolitan and discursive democratic aspirations of international climate change governance. One response to the exclusive minilateral discourse is to reform the UNFCCC consensus-based decision making rule to provide the COP with greater ease of decision making on key issues relating to mitigation and adaptation. Another response is to more formally include the exclusive minilateralism discourse within the UNFCCC COP process. This could be achieved by forming a small peak body of states and key NGO groups to act as an influential advisor to the COP process on key issues requiring expedition and resolution.

Climate Change Fiasco: What Multilateral Arrangements Have to Offer?

“…In short, for climate clubs to emerge feasible, they should reconsider their current configuration and attach greater importance to economic incentives like trade, investment, financial support, and labor transfer to drive players to commit. Minilateralism is prospective of, according to commentators and policy makers, strengthening even more and is believed to shape the entire global climate change governance (McGee, 2011). Multilateralism has spread its wings to the entire globe and has included almost every country in the process.…”

Global governance

“…Building on these individual state actions, some have speculated that small clubs of countries or coalitions of the willing could evolve, which provide the collective good of climate stabilization without waiting for the international caravan to join in (McGee 2011;Eckersley 2012). The question most debated within this stream is whether clubs should replace the UNFCCC process (Victor 2011) or whether they would provide transformational input that would then be uploaded to the global level (Weischer et al 2012).…”

Climate change mitigation: a role for climate clubs?

“…At the 2009 Conference of the Parties at Copenhagen, an attempt by the Danish presidency to broker a deal among a limited number of countries outside the usual UNFCCCC preparatory meetings was eventually condemned as "undemocratic and unfair" (For example, see McGee, 2011). 5 See Sandler (2013: 265).…”