Abstract
After withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, the US Bush Administration and the Australian Howard Government pursued an international climate change policy focussed on voluntary international agreements outside the UN climate negotiations. This strategy included the formation of several climate agreements directed at technology development, including the 2005 Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP). The APP provides a model for international climate change policy directed at voluntary national greenhouse gas intensity targets, technology development through sectoral public–private partnerships and technology diffusion through trade. This article situates the APP within these US and Australian inspired climate agreements formed outside the UN negotiations. Bäckstrand and Lövbrand’s (in M. Pettenger (ed.) The social construction of climate change: power knowledge norms discourses, 2007) discourse analysis in relation to the international climate negotiations is used to explore differences between the APP and UN climate treaties. We find the APP embodies a discourse of what we call ‘deregulatory ecological modernisation’ that promotes limited public funding to ease informational failures in markets for cleaner technologies and management practices. The deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse is a deeply intensive market liberal approach to international climate change policy, which contests binding emission reduction targets and the development of a global carbon market. The USA, Australia, Japan and Canada represented a core group of countries that used the APP to promote the deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse and thereby contest any deepening of developed nations' emission reduction targets for the post-2012 period. However, with changes of leadership and new parties in power in the USA and Australia, it appears that the deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse has lost ground compared to a reengagement with discourses supportive of developed country emission reduction targets and equity-based adaptation and technology transfer assistance for developing nations.
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Notes
A heuristic device is a procedure that ‘involves the use of an artificial construct to assist in the exploration of social phenomena. It usually involves assumptions derived from extant empirical research (…). Such devices have proved especially useful in studies of social change, by defining bench-marks, around which variation and differences can then be situated’ (Scott and Marshall 2009).
Greenhouse gas intensity is represented by greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic output. It is commonly expressed as tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent/per unit of gross domestic product, see McGee and Taplin (2006).
There is some recent evidence of a thawing in the attitude within the APP to NGO participation with an inaugural invitation in the USA to NGO and local government representatives for a ‘breakfast briefing’ on the APP. See US Department of State (2008).
Hybrid climate governance is climate governance managed by both state and non-state actors (Bäckstrand 2008).
From table in APP executive summary of task force action plans (APP 2006d, p. 2).
The protocol was viewed as representing Japan’s new global leadership, was negotiated in Japan and bore the name of a Japanese city (Tiberghien and Schreurs 2007, p. 81, 88).
Particularly in the UN climate negotiations during the period 2007–2008, see (Vihma 2009).
The US Senate was also a strong supporter of the Bush Administration decision to not ratify the Kyoto Protocol and may still prove a significant obstacle to the US ratifying a post-2012 treaty containing binding emission reduction targets for developed countries; see Skodvin and Andresen (2009).
Abbreviations
- APP:
-
Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate
- APEC:
-
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
- CBDR:
-
Common but Differentiated Responsibilities
- CDM:
-
Clean Development Mechanism
- COP:
-
Conference of the Parties
- EM:
-
Ecological Modernisation
- IPCC:
-
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- JI:
-
Joint Implementation
- MEP:
-
US Major Economies Process
- NGO:
-
Non-Governmental Organisation
- PIC:
-
Policy and Implementation Committee
- SBSTA:
-
Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice
- UNFCCC:
-
United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992
- UN:
-
United Nations
- US:
-
United States of America
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the excellent assistance that Harro van Asselt and Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen provided in finalising this article and in editing this special issue. The authors also thank the two anonymous reviewers of this article for their valuable assistance.
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McGee, J., Taplin, R. The role of the Asia Pacific Partnership in discursive contestation of the international climate regime. Int Environ Agreements 9, 213–238 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-009-9101-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-009-9101-2