Abstract
The threat of climate change and the need for energy security pose serious challenges for policymakers. Part of the strategy to tackle these issues rests on multilateral initiatives increasing the momentum of global environmental governance efforts. Nevertheless, these problems create a further dilemma for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. On the one hand, the impact of climate change will heavily affect these countries and thus requires their active participation in mitigation efforts. On the other hand, the remedies against climate change mainly require a decrease in the consumption of fossil fuels, especially oil, which is the backbone of the GCC economies. Given this dilemma, as well as the interdependence of the GCC economies, the chapter questions to what extent the GCC has developed a coordinated and comprehensive approach to environmental issues among its members and to what extent they are involved in global governance efforts. The findings inform the direction of the policy efforts, as well as the practices of energy security and environmental performance that are in place to meet the climate targets, which in turn will affect the overall success of global efforts officially declared in the Paris Agreement.
This research is supported by the Qatar National Research Priority Program project, entitled “Governance of Natural Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa: Advancing a Qatari Perspective”, under grant NPRP # 6-1272-5-160 funded by Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.
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Notes
- 1.
Gulf Cooperation Council countries are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
- 2.
The rentier state theory suggests that oil wealth endangers the democratization process in resource-rich states, by contributing to the political stability of authoritarian regimes (Basedau & Lay, 2009). This view suggests that oil revenues strengthen authoritarian governments (Ross, 2015), through relieved taxes (low taxes vs. high spending), buying off the opposition, or repressing the opposition (Ross, 2001).
- 3.
Energy intensity is a way to measure how much energy is consumed for producing one unit of economic output. The World Bank calculates it as the ratio between energy supply and gross domestic product measured at purchasing power parity. High scores of energy intensity represent that high amounts of energy is used to produce one unit of economic output. Accordingly, low energy intensity scores signal better energy-efficiency records.
- 4.
The ecological footprint per capita is described as a nation’s total ecological footprint divided by the total population of the nation.
- 5.
The ecological footprint for the United Arab Emirates is not reported in the 2013 study. However, in 2006 the UAE was the first country in the list with highest score of 12 global hectares. Since then, the UAE increasingly focused on ecological transformation.
- 6.
The Environmental Performance Index is prepared by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy (YCELP) and Yale Data-Driven Environmental Solutions Group at Yale University (Data-Driven Yale), the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University. EPI consists of the country rankings based on the national performances regarding nine issue areas (health impacts, air quality, water and sanitation, water resources, agriculture, forests, fisheries, biodiversity and habitat, climate and energy) which consist of 19 indicators, addressing different aspects of the protection of ecosystems and human health. The evaluation of the country scores is made in reference to meeting internationally agreed targets or cross-country comparisons. With regard to the “climate and energy”, EPI report acknowledges the fact that the assessment of the policy implementation targeting measurable climate mitigation is an urgent yet difficult challenge. Accordingly, the indicators represent how the states are decarbonizing their economic growth by looking at the trends in carbon intensity, rather than the tangible effects of their climate policies. Higher scores in EPI indicators represent better performance, 100 being the highest possible performance score. According to the latest EPI report, the best performer among 180 countries for the year 2016 is Finland with a score of 90.68, and the last country on the ranking is Somalia with 27.66. These two scores are instrumental in revealing the standards for the sake of comparison.
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Sever, S.D., Tok, M.E., D’Alessandro, C. (2019). Global Environmental Governance and the GCC: Setting the Agenda for Climate Change and Energy Security. In: Pal, L.A., Tok, M.E. (eds) Global Governance and Muslim Organizations. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92561-5_8
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