Climate Governance

One of Donald Trump’s first acts in his second US presidency was withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement. The US has historically played the role of ‘rulemaker’ yet is notoriously fickle in its ratification and participation. This paper highlights this history of (non-)cooperation, how this second withdrawal differs from the first, and what the potential consequences, both good and bad, are for global climate governance. It shows how US withdrawal may not lead to a crippled regime but can rather pave the way to a more robust and engaged Paris Agreement.

Using spatial regression analysis, this paper analyses whether countries’ climate ambition levels are related to those of their peers. It finds that countries’ ambition levels converge with that of countries with similar levels of democracy, geopolitical affinity, and region, whereas ambition levels diverge between peer groups based on level of development.