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.

国际环境协定的决定因素是什么？哪些国家对特别有可能就环境合作达成一致？区域贸易协定和国际经济协定的并行激增是巧合还是相互关联？我们可以从具体的国际环境协定的评估中学到什么？在过去几十年中，国际环境协定的数量激增。与此同时，经济理论表明，此类协议在实际处理或解决其设计的环境问题方面面临着一场艰苦的战斗，其中包括由于缺乏可接受性。如何解释这种增长？作为第一步，我们建立了一个理论为基础的实证调查的IEAs的决定因素。重要的是，我们将侧重于双边层面，即哪些国家对彼此同意环境合作，而不是各国签署大量协议的单边层面。这种双边观点模仿了关于区域贸易协定决定因素的大量文献。过去几十年来，区域贸易协定的数量急剧增加，这就提出了一个问题，即国家对是否可以将不同政策领域的谈判合作联系起来，这一概念被称为问题联系。在项目的第二部分，我们调查是否有证据表明问题的联系。例如，发展中国家可将其签署发达国家提出的环境协定与缔结确保更好地进入发达国家市场的补充贸易协定联系起来。除了协定层面的观点，我们还将考虑较弱形式的问题联系，例如，国际能源机构可能不与全面的区域贸易协定联系，而是与一些具体的贸易便利化措施联系。因此，该项目的前两个部分对国际环境合作进行了鸟瞰，试图根据大量国际环境协定的数据确定一般模式，而该项目的第三个也是最后一个部分则侧重于目前正在辩论但尚未商定的两项具体国际环境协定：供应方气候协定和世界贸易组织的环境商品协定。在前者中，化石燃料供应国将同意限制化石燃料开采，补充巴黎协定等采取的传统需求方气候政策方法。在EGA中，各国将放宽与可再生能源生产相关的商品贸易，使能源转型更便宜。该项目第三部分的方法论方法依赖于定量理论模型，而不是计量经济学方法。具体而言，我们将开发定量模型，允许对这两项协议进行反事实模拟，以调查它们是否有效地支持了应对人为气候变化的斗争。