Conclusions

Abstract

Even though the 2015 Paris Agreement has been commonly said to be a success for providing a framework for international action on climate change in the post-2020 period, it does not solve the underlying incentive problem of international cooperation on transboundary pollution issues. Instead, the newly introduced ’pledge and review’ process resulting from the UNFCCC’s move towards a bottom-up approach could in fact be understood as a coordination mechanism for individually rational climate strategies. Climate Action Tracker Partners (2018) have shown that those national pledges are - at least according to the status quo - insufficient to prevent a considerable increase in the average global temperature.