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  • Rethinking Authority in Global Climate Governance: How Transnational Climate Initiatives Relate to the International Climate Regime by Thomas Hickmann
  • Laura Iozzelli
Hickmann, Thomas. 2016. Rethinking Authority in Global Climate Governance: How Transnational Climate Initiatives Relate to the International Climate Regime. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Increasingly, a variety of substate and nonstate actors perform authoritative functions in world politics that previously rested solely with national governments and international institutions. Filling regulatory gaps through governance arrangements beyond central governments has been particularly evident in the field of global climate policy-making. This has led numerous authors to speak of an increasing shift of authority away from state-based forms of regulations to more decentralised, transnational institutions.

In Rethinking Authority in Global Climate Governance, Thomas Hickmann joins this discussion. He convincingly makes the case that while transnational initiatives launched by different types of substate and nonstate actors have acquired important forms of rule-making authority in global climate politics, their development by no means signifies a weakening of the intergovernmental level. To the contrary, in light of their limited operational capacities, newly emerging transnational governance arrangements require a solid international regulatory framework negotiated by nation-states to effectively tackle climate change. In his endeavor, he moves beyond debates on the rise of innovative transnational forms of climate governance to investigate the often-overlooked impact that rules and decision-making procedures established at the inter-governmental level exert on initiatives launched by substate and nonstate actors.

After reviewing the current state of research, Hickman discusses relevant theoretical approaches addressing the concept of authority. Recent approaches highlight how the authority of nation-states and international organizations in world politics has been gradually eroding, as an emerging diversity of substate and nonstate actors seem to be better equipped to cope with the challenges [End Page 158] posed by global politics. The illustration of innovative approaches allows Hickman to hypothesize that transnational governance arrangements either conflict with, complement, or depend on the international climate regime. These three different perspectives form the analytical lens through which he evaluates the cases chosen for the empirical analysis: Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI), a transnational city network created by public subnational actors; the Gold Standard (GS), a private certification scheme created by nonprofit actors; and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GGP), a business self-regulatory initiative created by business actors.

Hickman identifies similar patterns in all three cases using cross-case comparison. First, he finds no conflict between the modus operandi of the three transnational initiatives and the international climate regime. Second, he finds that all three initiatives serve as catalysts in the promotion and implementation of the rules stipulated in international climate agreements. In particular, ICLEI complements international norms and rules by developing local climate policies that deliver significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. GS enhances both the environmental and societal integrity of the market-based instruments for carbon offsetting established by international climate agreements. GGP's Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard filled a regulatory gap by providing individual companies with a tool to comprehensively account and report their GHG emissions.

Third, transnational climate governance arrangements are highly dependent on existing modes of interstate cooperation. ICLEI relies heavily on the financial support of central governments and international institutions. It consequently has oriented its efforts towards enhancing the capacities of local governments to access financial aid from national governments, and has urged the international community to set more stringent GHG emission reductions targets. Similarly, GS's rules and procedures for the voluntary offset market are largely built on the regulatory framework of the international compliance market. In fact, GS's operations are restrained by the lack of an international mechanism that obliges national governments to meet GHG emission reduction targets. Hickman enriches this argument by referring to the pressure exerted by GS at international conferences for the establishment of a stringent market-based instrument to secure a stable demand for the generation of carbon offsets. Finally, the success of GGP relies heavily on the evolution of the international process. The lack of ambitious national GHG emission reduction targets has rendered multinational corporations reluctant to bear the costs associated with GHG measurement and management, hampering the work of GGP.

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