Resumen de Climate Change and the ‘Big Three’: Preparing the ground for a post-2020 global climate regime?
There are big chances and expectations that this time a global climate agreement will come out of the Paris summit.
As the world’s largest carbon emitters, China, the US, and the EU have a special responsibility to lead the fight against climate change.
In the run up to the Paris COP21, the ‘Big Three’ are employing different alliance-building strategies. The US climate diplomacy targets China and India, as well as other rapidly developing countries. China promotes the interests of developing countries at large, but also accepted to negotiate a bilateral climate deal with the US. The EU promotes a legally binding treaty model, which is very unlikely to leverage the necessary consensus in Paris.
Although different, their alliance-building strategies could potentially be complementary to each other in facilitating the agreement of a new global climate regime.
It remains to be seen whether the future Paris agreement will establish at least a voluntary-type agreement that is backed by effective reporting mechanisms.
Implementation and compliance are the crucial benchmarks for success or failure of any Paris deal.
