International Environmental Cooperation: Determinants, Interlinkages, and Impacts

国际环境合作：决定因素、相互联系和影响

• 批准号: 518604731
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Mario Larch
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Faculty of Economics and Business
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/518604731?language=en
• 关键词: International; Environmental; Cooperation; Determinants; Interlinkages

What are the determinants of international environmental agreements (IEAs)? Which country pairs are particularly likely to agree on environmental cooperation? Is the parallel surge in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and IEAs a coincidence or are these related patterns? And what can we learn from the evaluation of specific IEAs? The number of IEAs has surged over the last decades. At the same time, economic theory suggests that such agreements face an uphill battle in actually tackling or solving the environmental concerns they are designed for, among others due to a lack of enforceability. How can the increase be explained then? As a first step, we set up a theory-founded empirical investigation of the determinants of IEAs. Importantly, we will focus on the bilateral dimension, i.e. which country pairs agree on environmental cooperation with each other, rather than on the unilateral dimension of which countries sign a large number of agreements. This bilateral view mimics the large literature on the determinants of RTAs. The number of RTAs has seen a comparably steep increase over the last decades, raising the question of whether country pairs may link the negotiations cooperation in different policy areas, a concept known as issue linkage. In the second part of the project, we investigate whether there is evidence for issue linkage. Developing countries may e.g. link their signing of an environmental agreement brought forward by a developed country to the conclusion of an additional trade agreement that ensures better access to the developed country’s market. Besides the agreement level view, we will also consider weaker forms of issue linkage in which an IEA may e.g. not be linked to a full-blown RTA, but rather to some specific trade facilitation measures. While the first two parts of the project hence take a bird’s eye view on international environmental cooperation, trying to identify general patterns based on data on a large number of IEAs, the third, and last, part of the project instead focusses on two specific international environmental agreements that are currently under debate, but have not yet been agreed upon: a supply-side climate agreement and the World Trade Organization’s Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA). In the former, countries that supply fossil fuels would agree on limiting fossil fuel extraction, complementing the traditional demand-side approach of climate policy taken e.g. in the Paris Agreement. In the EGA, countries would liberalize e.g. the trade of goods relevant for renewable energy production, making the energy transition cheaper. The methodological approach in the third part of the project relies on quantitative theory models instead of econometric methods. Specifically, we will develop quantitative models that allow the counterfactual simulation of the two agreements to investigate whether they are effective in supporting the fight against man-made climate change.

国际环境协定 (IEA) 的决定因素是什么？哪些国家特别有可能就环境合作达成一致？区域贸易协定 (RTAs) 和 IEA 的并行激增是巧合还是这些相关模式？过去几十年来，国际能源署的数量激增。同时，经济理论表明，此类协议在实际谈判或解决其旨在解决的环境问题方面面临着一场艰苦的战斗。缺乏那么如何解释这种增加呢？作为第一步，我们对国际能源署的决定因素进行了一项基于理论的实证调查，我们将重点关注双边层面，即哪些国家对相互同意进行环境合作。这种双边观点模仿了有关区域贸易协定决定因素的大量文献，而不是关注哪些国家签署了大量协定。区域贸易协定的数量在过去几十年中出现了相对急剧的增长，从而引发了以下问题：无论国家对可以将不同政策领域的谈判合作联系起来，这一概念称为问题联系。在该项目的第二部分中，我们调查是否有证据表明发展中国家可以将其签署的环境协议联系起来。除了协议层面的观点外，我们还将考虑较弱的问题联系形式，例如，国际能源署可能不与发达国家建立联系。吹了RTA，而是一些具体的贸易便利化措施，而该项目的前两部分因此对国际环境合作进行了鸟瞰，试图根据大量国际能源机构的数据确定一般模式，第三部分也是最后一部分。相反，该项目的一部分重点关注目前正在讨论但尚未达成一致的两项具体国际环境协议：供应方气候协议和世界贸易组织的环境产品协议（EGA）。供应化石燃料将同意限制化石燃料开采，补充《巴黎协定》中采取的传统需求方方法，各国将自由化与可再生能源生产相关的商品贸易，从而使能源转型更加便宜。该项目第三部分的方法依赖于定量理论模型而不是计量经济学方法，具体来说，我们将开发定量模型，对这两项协议进行反事实模拟，以调查它们是否有效支持应对人为气候变化。 。