Summary

The difficulty of achieving and implementing a global climate change agreement has stimulated a wide range of policy proposals designed to favour the participation of a large number of countries in a global cooperative effort to control greenhouse gas emissions. This significant book analyses the viability of controlling climate change through a set of regional or sub-global climate agreements rather than via a global treaty.

The authors argue that the principal challenge in devising a truly global architecture is in providing sufficient incentives for all party participation whilst also ensuring compliance, which raises global governance issues. The main purpose of this study is not to trace in detail the process of negotiation and implementation of international regimes, but rather to evaluate whether a series of regional or sub-global agreements is more likely to achieve climate change control than a global agreement attempted from the outset. From a political science perspective, the focus centres on institution building and governance. From an economic perspective it concentrates on incentives used to encourage participation in a global and non-fragmented agreement. Lessons from EU integration and actual global and regional trade agreements are employed in order to analyse the future prospects of climate change negotiations.

The focus on climate change and more generally the management of environmental and resource problems will make this book essential reading for participants, observers and analysts of the public policy process as it concerns climate change and more generally the management of environmental and resource problems. In addition the rich combination of international relations theory and economic literature with findings from the policy process will appeal to both general readers and the academic community.