5 - International Coordination of Climate Policy

Summary

Introduction

The climate is an indivisible public good at world level. The current leaders of the international coordination of mitigation – Japan and the European Union (EU) – are already unable to exert a decisive influence on annual net global emissions, regardless of their willingness to do so and regardless of the costs of doing so. In the longer term (up to 2050) these two leaders will have a steadily declining direct influence. The same applies for the member states of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a whole. Effective climate policy can thus only succeed if it is a global policy. European and Dutch climate policy only make sense if they are embedded in a global approach.

This chapter first describes the global coordination problem in more detail and explores the conditions for effective coordination (section 5.2). Section 5.3 looks more closely at the starting points of global negotiations: structural and short-term interests and existing climate policy. Section 5.4 focuses on the institutional and substantive aspects of global coordination.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE GLOBAL COORDINATION PROBLEM

DEFINITION AND CHARACTERISATION OF COORDINATION

In chapter 1 the coordination problem was divided into three components: the development path of countries that are currently still poor, the distribution of costs and the allocation of efforts. The coordination problem is first and foremost concerned with mitigation, since this is where the need to eradicate ‘free rider’ behaviour is most urgent. Adaptation problems will mainly be solved regionally and only require international coordination where they go beyond the capacity of a single country or region. The development path of growth countries takes priority in climate issues. Roughly three-quarters of the world population live in developing countries, half of them in countries with a relatively low per capita income. The primary ambition of these countries is to grow.

The development problem demands solutions to the following global coordination issues:

• a. Which strategies and options can be developed to bring about a more rapid fall in energy intensity and carbon intensity in developing countries, without undermining their economic growth?