Factors Influencing International Cooperation On Climate Change: Negotiating Blocs And Theoretical Approaches

Climate change is not simply an issue of global environment. Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as public goods relates directly to the political and economic interest of countries on the earth. All countries across the planet thus have to opt for strategies that serve them best, which have, to a great extent, influenced the success and failure of international cooperation.Short-circuited by the successive announcements by the US, Australia and Russia of defection from the Kyoto Protocol, global change negotiation is coming to a critical moment. Why does it happen in the process of international climate talks? How does the Kyoto Protocol fall into such a dilemma?This paper is an attempt to explore diverse factors from different perspectives that engender the dilemma in the international cooperation. The author first introduces the science of climate change and looks back on the negotiations, and then provides a comprehensive analysis of the positions of different negotiating blocs and the domestic dynamics in some critical countries that have swayed the climate cooperation. Then the author moves to Neorealism and Neoliberal institutionalism to examine factors influencing international cooperation and find that climate regime plays a limited role although Neoliberalism appears more persuasive. Finally the paper tries to explain with the help of Game models the rationale underlying several contradictions emerging in the climate negotiations.With the analysis, the author believes in the conclusion part that uncertainties in the climate science, deficiencies in the climate regime, cost-benefit consideration, the shadow of the future and domestic politics are the major factors that influence international climate cooperation. Several suggestions are offered thereafter in the paper in order that the optimal equilibrium outcomes can be expected in international climate cooperation. These suggestions are that countries-developed ones in particular-should invest more in scientific research to reduce the size and level of uncertainty in policy-making; the current climate change regime should learn from other climate regimes to make up for its own deficiencies; moderate reduction targets should be imposed at the preliminary stage of climate change regime to seduce more decisive countries into cooperation; an adequate post-2012 climate change regime needs to be designed to encourage developing countries to participate in the reduction on the basis of equity and "common but differentiated responsibilities" principle.