Abstract

Climate change is causing a multilayered problem of spatial politics that encompasses the global, regional, and state level, and a complex countermeasure is required. Such complexity in the international environmental politics has been intensified due to the financial crisis at the end of 2008. It will be necessary to observe the effects the Global Financial Crisis has on the international politics of climate change and then analyze the confrontational structure that appeared after the 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Based on this analysis, it would be possible to predict how the international politics of climate change that has characteristics of both great power politics and world governance will develop in the future.

It is the general belief that overall, the Global Financial Crisis affected negatively on the efforts for dealing with climate change. First, the financial crisis has intensified and expanded the concerns about the negative effect a climate change regime will have on the economic recovery and growth by each state’s economy. Secondly, it has created a more complicated conflict between developing and developed countries, which has always been one of the greatest obstacles for creating a climate change regime. Third, it is impossible to overlook that the financial crisis has had a negative influence on the formation of leadership for the climate change regime.

In this case it is expected that establishing a climate change regime would no longer be a simple task. At the 2009 Copenhagen Conference, it was decided to settle the discussion on the post-Kyoto system until after 2012 as the conflicts between developed states and developing states and the United States and China were not resolved. Also at the 2010 Cancun Conference, there was no ground breaking achievement in the discussions on maintaining the Kyoto system, the legal format of a new consensus, the level of pan-global reduction, the participation of the United States and the other developed states, the monitoring system such as measurement, report, and inspection, and the improvement in checking compliance. This reveals that the UN-oriented political process to build a climate change regime has not yet reached the level of rule setting, surpassing the level of norm setting. In addition, it also showed that the conflicts among the coalition groups of the Copenhagen conference grew more serious so it will be essential to provide a new leadership in the political process of building a climate change regime and future environment governance.

In order to predict the future of the climate change regime, it is critical to analyze the positions of the major actors such as the European Union, the United States, China, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the G-77, and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). The European Union’s global leadership has been greatly strengthened since the United States has refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol, but it has been facing increasing skepticism following the Copenhagen conference. With the inauguration of the Obama administration, the United States is striving to exercise its leadership, but remains dissatisfied with the existing framework centered around the UN and is now trying to build a new kind of leadership, such as the AP6 (Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate).

China, on the other hand, is making an effort to use the process of international environmental politics as an opportunity to manifest its leadership against the United States by achieving higher effectiveness in energy use and developing clean energy technology. At the same time, Beijing is emphasizing the historical responsibility of developed states, calling for their primary action. The OPEC members form a group that is the most opposed to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and they are showing the characteristics of a defensive alliance in order to protect their national interests. As the effects of climate change are closely related to their survival, the AOSIS states are the strongest proponents of a climate change regime.

Considering the discrepancy of each actor’s standpoint and the stalemate of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), five scenarios for the institutionalization of the future climate change regime must be considered. First, it is possible that the work of the UNFCCC develops further and is institutionalized; second, building a new climate change regime through the approach of the great powers admitting the limitations of globalism; third, overcoming the limitations of globalism by diversifying the existing discussions in the UNFCCC; fourth, dealing with environmental issues through a market-oriented internationalism, within the World Trade Organization framework; and fifth, aside from the UNFCCC, creating a new Global Energy Organization and making it approach the environmental and climate issues from a resource-oriented internationalism. The first alternative currently earns the most support, but in the short to mid-term, the second and third options could provide a driving power for the establishment of a climate change regime. Eventually in a long term, all these efforts would lead to the formation of global governance on the environment.

The full text in Korean is available here