We’re really happy to announce the online publication of a new study by Oscar Widerberg & Philipp Pattberg, both core members of the CONNECT-project. The paper critically assesses the merits of nine alternative climate governance arrangements that in UN speak have been termed “International Cooperative Initiatives” or in short, ICIs. These non-UN climate mitigation initiatives taking place between actors such as states, cities, regions, NGOs, philanthropists, companies and others, have become increasingly viewed as a complement to the UNFCCC. Now people are discussing to what extent the UNFCCC could or should do more to activate these ICIs, for example by setting up a mechanism within the UNFCCC secretariat to at least record current actions.

Here is the abstract:

To close the gap between existing country pledges and the necessary ambition level to limit anthropogenic climate change to not more than 2°C average global temperature increase above pre-industrial levels, decision makers from both the public and private domain have started to explore a number of complementary approaches to the top-down targets-and-timetables approach of international climate change policy. Referred to as International Cooperative Initiatives (ICI), these governance arrangements are now also officially acknowledged under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. While proponents see ICIs as important bridging devices towards more ambitious climate policy, in particular up to 2020, critical observers note that the voluntary nature of ICIs makes it difficult to assess their contribution to climate change mitigation. This article scrutinizes the potential of ICIs to meaningfully contribute to closing the emissions gap along the criteria of effectiveness, legitimacy and institutional fit. As means of illustration, the analytical framework is applied to a random sample of nine ICIs (out of a total of 45 listed on the UNFCCC Secretariat’s website). We find that while potential technical effectiveness is high, legitimacy and institutionalfit should be improved with a view towards integrating ICIs into the emerging post-2015 climate governance architecture.

You can access the article here (behind pay wall)