A Conversation about Climate Change Law and the 'International Community'

Abstract

As international climate change law approaches its third decade of existence, the field continues to evolve and prove resilient in the face of daunting political, technical, and economic challenges. Moving forward with efforts to structure effective responses to climate change requires scholars and policymakers to engage with the reality that international cooperation on climate change continues to lag. Early efforts to address climate change presumed the existence of an international community that would facilitate the level of cooperation needed to structure effective solutions to a massive and complex collective-action problem. This vision of the international community, however, is an illusion the reliance on which may hamper efforts to think critically about how to address the causes and consequences of climate change. Here, we deconstruct the idea of a cooperative, international community as an operative basis for international climate change law, with the hope of facilitating increasingly open conversation around effective and sustainable modes of cooperation in the future.

Keywords: conflict groups, international community, cooperation, collective action, Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agreement