International climate policy: does it matter? An empirical assessment

Abstract

This paper is about the impact of international climate policy on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction. We focus on the time before the official GHG emission reduction phase according to Kyoto (before 2008) and the hard and soft law elements of the agreement. We find that expectations on future GHG emission reduction had significant impacts on climate policies by studying the relationship between GHG emission reduction and stages of the Kyoto Protocol process (signing, ratification, entry into force). This observation applies to Annex I and non-Annex I countries. Moreover, approaching ratification, the initially observed difference between both country groups becomes less significant.

Keywords:

• climate change policy
• international environmental agreements
• Kyoto Protocol

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Andreas Freytag and the anonymous referees for valuable comments. We gratefully acknowledge the research assistance provided by Christina Klose and Sarah Langlotz.

Notes

t statistics in parentheses.

⁺ p<0.10, *p<0.05, **p<0.01.

t statistics in parentheses.

⁺ p<0.10, *p<0.05, **p<0.01.

t statistics in parentheses.

⁺ p<0.10, *p<0.05, **p<0.01.

1. Following countries are defined as Annex I countries by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of America (UNFCCC 2013).

2. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1998, Article 25.

3. For the CDM and JI-mechanism, von Stein (2008) uses data from the pilot project Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) to project expectations about the implementation of CDM- or JI-programs (von Stein 2008, 251).

4. ‘A country’s carbon footprint accounts for all carbon dioxide (CO ₂) emissions that the country’s residents cause by consuming or investing a specific vector of goods. Whether these goods are produced domestically or imported does not matter. […] With international trade in goods, a country’s carbon footprint and its domestic CO ₂ emissions need not to coincide, the difference being the carbon content of net trade’. (Aichele and Felbermayr 2012, 336)

5. The results can be made available on request.