The Hard Choice for Soft Commitments in the Climate Change Regime

Abstract

This chapter (Chapter 7 of Advocating Social Change through International Law) explores the evolution of the commitments to reduce greenhouse gases under the global climate change regime and the associated struggle with whether these mitigation commitments should be binding. Although in theory all stakeholders favored binding mitigation commitments, the trade-off became increasingly clear in terms of participation (whether the United States or China, for example would remain in a binding instrument) and substantive strength of the commitments. The adoption of nationally-determined (voluntary) commitments in the binding 2015 Paris Agreement resolved this tension with an interesting hybrid of interlocking soft substantive mitigation commitments nestled in a hard law regime of reporting and verification.

Keywords: climate change, soft law, Paris Agreement, mitigation

JEL Classification: K33, K32