International Environmental Cooperation: Determinants, Interlinkages, and Impacts

国际环境协定(IEA)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(RTA)和区域经济协定的平行激增是巧合还是相关模式？我们可以从对具体IEA的评估中学到什么？在过去的几十年里，IEA的数量激增。与此同时，经济理论表明，由于缺乏可执行性，此类协议在实际处理或解决它们旨在解决的环境问题方面面临着一场艰苦的战斗。那又如何解释加价呢？作为第一步，我们对独立会计准则的决定因素进行了基于理论的实证调查。重要的是，我们将重点关注双边层面，即哪些国家对彼此就环境合作达成一致，而不是哪些国家签署了大量协议的单方面层面。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。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，这引发了一个问题，即国家对是否可以将谈判在不同政策领域的合作联系起来，这一概念被称为问题联系。在项目的第二部分，我们调查是否存在问题联系的证据。例如，发展中国家可以将其签署发达国家提出的一项环境协定与缔结另一项确保更好地进入发达国家市场的贸易协定联系起来。除了协议层面的观点外，我们还将考虑较弱形式的议题联系，例如，国际能源署可能不与全面的区域贸易协定挂钩，而是与一些具体的贸易便利化措施挂钩。因此，虽然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IEA的数据确定一般模式，但该项目的第三个部分，也是最后一个部分，转而侧重于目前正在辩论但尚未达成一致的两个具体国际环境协议：供给侧气候协议和世界贸易组织的环境商品协议(EGA)。在前者，供应化石燃料的国家将就限制化石燃料开采达成一致，这是对《巴黎协定》等气候政策传统需求侧方法的补充。在《环境影响评估》中，各国将放开与可再生能源生产相关的商品贸易，使能源过渡变得更便宜。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。具体地说，我们将开发量化模型，允许对这两项协议进行反事实模拟，以调查它们在支持抗击人为气候变化方面是否有效。

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.