Renegotiating the Environmental Rules of Global Order

Abstract

This chapter outlines the ways in which China and the United States have been renegotiating the environmental rules of the global order since 2008/9. More specifically, since Clark’s purely state-based views do not reflect the hybridity of actors operating today (see Chapter 3), the global order’s environmental rules (e.g. UNFCCC) and their renegotiation need to be explored in light of this hybridity. Further evaluating the main argument of this book, the focus of this case study is on the degree to which the impact of TNAs has been limited by the disagreements prevailing among the great powers. In fact, it is the irreconcilability of the latter’s viewpoints which has led to the UNFCCC’s continued and overall failure to reach a legally binding treaty on reducing and limiting carbon dioxide emissions.¹ The great powers’ stances have powerfully undermined the goals that the UNFCCC’s head recently summarized (and repeated) for the Durban Platform since 2011: “To adopt a universally inclusive and legally binding agreement by 2015 (which is) to come into effect from 2020” (Figueres 2013:539).