Book Reviews

Sweet, William, 2016. Climate Diplomacy from Rio to Paris: The Effort to Contain Global Warming. New Haven: Yale University Press. Reviewed by Jen Iris Allan Carleton University Global efforts to address climate change started in a relatively straightforward manner, using a legally binding framework agreement. Today, however, the climate regime is a web of overlapping agreements, voluntary initiatives, and nonstate actions. The growth of activities and turbulent history of the climate regime make it a challenge to communicate the subject clearly and respect the context in which events occurred. William Sweet takes up these challenges. Using his training as a journalist, he shapes an accessible, analytical history of climate diplomacy. The book achieves accessibility without glossing over important issues that can be difficult to explain. Sweet includes both mitigation and adaptation issues, and explains flexibility mechanisms such as markets and the interconnected issues of land use, land-use change, and forestry, in a way that upper-year undergraduates, other journalists, and readers interested in global governance more generally would appreciate. The book’s strength is its wide-angle view of climate diplomacy, focusing on the broader economic and geopolitical context rather than a blow-by-blow of UN climate meetings. The first section, entitled “The Stakes,” constitutes a discrete primer on climate change science and possible technological responses. Sweet lays out the scope of the problem before considering various ways of thinking about how to govern the problem, from climate justice to top-down versus bottom-up approaches. Another important aspect of context that Sweet embraces is that countries have strong domestic interests that shape their international positions. The book carefully outlines the domestic constraints and interests of the “climate super- powers,” the US and EU, before turning to the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) as a group, albeit with most of the attention appropriately on China and India. All other actors are lumped together, from negotiation coalitions such as JUSCANZ (Japan, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and the Group of 77 plus China (G-77/China), to the Vatican, nongovernmental organizations, and the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Together, these actors are broadly construed as secondary players trying to pull heart strings to spur climate action.

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With the stage set and actors assembled, Sweet dives into international climate diplomacy. For those well-versed in climate politics, waiting until the third section to get to the history of events may feel too long. For others, the extended wait will be useful because it provides the background necessary to help understand the major milestones of the UN climate politics. Sweet selects four periods: the road to Rio, Rio and Kyoto, Copenhagen, and the road to Paris. Each section includes an account of key events and an assessment of the outcomes. This choice asks the reader to fill in events between the chapters, but it sufficiently represents the highs and lows of climate change diplomacy. While much of the analysis of outcomes and context is useful, several details remain overlooked, which makes for an unbalanced treatment of developing and developed countries. For much of the book, developing countries are lumped together. Often, Sweet ascribes all developing countries the views of China and India. Interviewees and authors from developing countries are a small fraction of the inputs that Sweet draws upon, which perhaps led to over- simplification. While positing developing countries as a roughly homogenous group largely holds in the early years of the climate diplomacy, the fragmen- tation of developing countries into multiple coalitions with differing views is adefining feature of climate negotiations since Copenhagen and a key reason why the negotiations have been so difficult. This is most notable in the treatment of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Despite the diplomatic power that the coalition wields as a moral voice in the negotiations, it is barely mentioned in the book (the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty has double the ink) and is accused of being “co-opted” by China. Neglecting the Alliance’s role misses a unique feature of climate diplomacy and an opportunity to communicate the consequences of catastrophic failure that can result from diplomatic failure. By contrast, the US point of view often permeates the analysis. Sweet assigns blame for the protracted negotiations to mobilized climate denial, reces- sions in developed countries, and global competition with emerging economies that led unions to support climate deniers. These explanations hold for the lack of action within the United States, but not for many other countries, and gloss over important reasons that global cooperation stalled. This slant wanes as the Paris conference approaches, underplaying the role of the US in getting its pre- ferred options in the Paris Agreement. Unfortunately, the book went to print before the Paris conference. Most of the analysis ends in Copenhagen; the “Road to Paris” chapter is a slim seven pages that focus on scholar’s expectations for an agreement, which the reader is left to compare with the description of the Paris Agreement in the epilogue. The description has significant gaps. It mistakes the decision that adopted the agreement for the preamble of the agreement, when the decision only outlines the work to be done and decisions required before 2020, when implementation begins. This misunderstanding leads to incorrect discussion of the long-term finance goal, the 2018 facilitative dialogue, and the loss and damage liability

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provision. The agreement itself is not discussed. Sweet does take steps to tie together some of the narrative strands by reporting the role and reactions of key countries to the agreement’s adoption. Sweet situates global climate diplomacy in its wider geopolitical context, including comparisons to other treaties such as the Montreal Protocol and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Those interested in the history of global governance may ﬁnd these comparisons particularly helpful for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Paris Agreement. While the book struggles with the details, it offers a view of climate diplomacy from a thousand miles above. Such a landscape view can complement accounts closer to the front lines of the UN negotiations and help reorient the detailed accounts in their wider context.

Hickmann, Thomas. 2016. Rethinking Authority in Global Climate Governance: How Transnational Climate Initiatives Relate to the International Climate Regime. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Reviewed by Laura Iozzelli Vrije Universiteit Brussel 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,ThomasHickmann joins this discussion. He convincingly makes the case that while transnational initiatives launched by different types of substate and nonstate actors have ac- quired 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

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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 con- ferences 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. There is a limitation to Hickmann’s analysis. On the one hand, he holds that transnational climate initiatives have adopted relevant authoritative functions, pointing to their capacity to “create novel means to cope with climate change” (pp. 184–185). On the other hand, he affirms that “the international climate regime continues to be the most important site of global climate politics” (p. 191). In seeking middle ground, he suggests that what we observe is

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“areconﬁguration of authority across various actors and multiple levels of decision- making” (p. 190). This conclusion secures him an in-between position, in which the capacity of substate and nonstate initiatives to stand alone is opposed but not utterly rejected. As a result, it is not entirely clear where he stands in the debate of how transnational intiatives relate to the international climate regime. Nevertheless, he builds his overall argument persuasively. Thanks to a clear-cut design, the book provides rich evidence that transnational governance arrangements do not replace the international climate regime. Hickmann moves with agility in a familiar terrain and delivers a coherent and to-the-point analysis from beginning to end. All in all, the book makes a valuable contribution to ongoing debates on changing patterns of authority in global climate policy- making, and will be of great interest for both scholars and policy-makers.

Preston, Christopher J., ed. 2016. Climate Justice and Geoengineering. Ethics and Politics in the Atmospheric Anthropocene. London: Rowman & Littleﬁeld International. Reviewed by Angèle Minguet La Sapienza University This thought-provoking collection of essays examines how the potential deploy- ment of climate engineering (CE) technologies could affect matters of global justice. Christopher Preston makes it his priority to underline the stakes associated with the controversial geoengineering debate – a debate that has been ongoing since Paul Crutzen’s historical article in Climatic Change (2006). In that article, Crutzen proposed what many consider to be a radical alternative towards reducing CO2 emissions causing climate change: that is, a way to cool of the Earth artiﬁcially. These technologies are generally referred to as “geoengineering” or climate engineering (CE), and they adopt one of two forms: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM). Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could, for example, involve fertilizing the oceans with iron, increasing the level of marine phytoplankton, which use (and thus capture) CO2 for photosynthesis. SRM, on the other hand, might involve injecting sulphur into the atmosphere, enhancing its albedo and thus reducing radiation from the sun. Prior to 2006, no climate expert or politician would have dared mention SMR or CDR, so as not to further exacerbate mass reluctance to reducing CO2 emissions. Preston notes that Crutzen’s paper changed all that, but it also raised new questions around the ethics of the potential consequences. First, the effects of these technologies on climate and climate change are still not clear. It is possible that their use could provide relief in some places, while worsening the situation in others. The crux of the problem, therefore, is how to ensure fair- ness in their implementation. In addition,climatechangeisaglobalissue, which in theory should necessitate global action. Concerns about who should

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be in charge and on what grounds tend to dominate the conversation. Needleless to say, geoengineering involves critical issues of justice that cannot be ignored. As Preston makes clear, the first wave of reactions to CDR and SMR focused solely on the ethical implications of each technique and, most of the time, found moral objections to their usage. The originality of Climate Justice and Geoengineering is that it sidesteps these analyses by questioning what else is out there. The authors contend that, as “repul- sive” as CE might be (p. viii), the absence of global political willingness to reduce CO2 emissions might engender even more injustices. Is it, then, not immoral to condemn them in the first place? Going one step further, the authors explore actual and hypothetical cases where geoengineering was found to be morally permissible or even obligatory. Prestonhascalleduponaninterdisciplinary team of experts: philoso- phers, discourse analysts, political scientists, economists, environmentalists, and physicists, who explore diverse and intriguing paths for reflection. Their approach is both expansive and exhaustive, considering topics such as whether the promotion of research on CE necessarily threatens political commitment to reducing CO2 emissions; whether industrialized countries that find CO2 reduction so difficult to implement should be exempt; whether compensation mechanisms resolve any injustices that CE might create; and whether CE should be considered a residual obligation to address climate change. Just as the questions raised by the contributors merge and diverge, so too do the conclusions they reach. Yet, although complex, the underlying messages conveyed in this volume are consistent: The general consensus is that reducing CO2 emissions is the most effective and legitimate solution to addressing climate change, and that action needs to be taken quickly and vigorously. Industrialized countries cannot avoid taking responsibility and must also work towards reducing their emissions. CE is not the “second best option” after mitigation: talking about it this way is counterproductive and dangerous. Rather, CE should be ap- proached as a supplementary tool providing more time to organize alternative ways of reducing CO2 emissions. Social and political obstacles that stand in the way of financing research on CE need to be removed, especially because, contrary to what is commonly agreed, CE “offers the best way to avoid unjust outcomes for the ‘global poor’” (p. 89). African leaders, in particular, should put into place “consistent climate protection mechanisms” (p. 170), and CE researchers must keep in mind the increasingly urgent issue of “food injustices” (p. 131). Also, global institutions, such as a World Council on Climate Engineering, should be created to coordinate international and regional interventions and avoid conflicts between states. Each chapter is stimulating in its own right, but chapters by Toby Svoboda, Marion Hourdequin, and Duncan McLaren, pertaining to matters of justice, are worthy of note. Svoboda masterfully demonstrates how implementing SMR is, in some cases, more ethical than any other available alternatives. He urges researchers to drop their Manichean (black-and-white) approaches and envisage

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hybrid solutions (such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions together with CE). Hourdequin’s contribution surpasses the traditional liberal framework that considers global justice an issue of distributional inequity among states. She argues that the political involvement of individuals and communities is crucial to ensure fair implementation of CDR and SMR. McLaren’s post-colonial approach to the climate engineering narrative and his call to bring justice to the centre of the debate proves indispensable to this collection. Preston’s volume raises burning questions and provides an array of different arguments and viewpoints that illustrate the complexity of geoengineering’s moral implications over the long term. It is a must-read for anyone interested in this emerging and delicate argument, an argument that concerns us all.

Reference

Crutzen, Paul J. 2006. Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections. A Contribu- tion to Resolve a Policy Dilemma? Climatic Change 77 (3–4): 211–219.

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