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.

国际环境协议（IEAS）的决定者是什么？哪个国家对环境合作特别有可能达成共识？区域贸易协定（RTA）和IEAS的平行激增是偶然的，还是这些相关模式？我们可以从对特定IEA的评估中学到什么？在过去的几十年中，IEA的数量飙升。同时，经济理论表明，由于缺乏可执行性，此类协议在实际解决或解决它们设计的环境问题时面临着艰苦的战斗。那么如何解释增加呢？作为第一步，我们对IEAS的决心生成了理论创建的经验研究。重要的是，我们将重点放在双边维度上，即哪个国家对彼此的环境合作达成共识，而不是在哪个国家签署大量协议的单方面维度上。这种双边视图模仿了RTA的决定符的大型文献。在过去的几十年中，RTA的数量增加了相当大的增加，这提出了一个问题，即国家对是否可以将谈判合作在不同政策领域（称为问题联系的概念）联系起来。在项目的第二部分中，我们调查是否有问题链接的证据。发展中国家可以例如将他们签署了一项发达国家购买的环境协议的签署，以达成一项额外的贸易协定，以确保更好地进入发达国家的市场。除了协议级别的观点外，我们还将考虑IEA可能会有更弱的问题链接形式。与成熟的RTA无关，而与某些特定的贸易设施措施有关。虽然该项目的前两个部分因此，鸟类对国际环境合作的目光看法，试图根据大量IEAS的数据来识别一般模式，而该项目的一部分则集中在目前正在调试的两项特定国际环境协议上，但尚未达成共识，但尚未达成共识：一项供应方面协议和世界贸易组织的环境商品和世界环境商品协议（世界环境商品协议）（EGA）。在前者中，供应化石燃料的国家将同意限制化石燃料的提取，从而完成了采取的气候政策的传统需求端方法，例如在巴黎协议中。在EGA中，各国将自由化，例如与可再生能源生产相关的商品贸易，使能源过渡更便宜。项目的第三部分中的方法论方法依赖于定量理论模型，而不是经济方法。具体而言，我们将开发定量模型，以允许对两项协议进行反事实模拟，以调查它们是否有效支持对抗人造气候变化的斗争。