A Glimpse into the Future of the Climate Regime: Lessons from the REDD+ Architecture

• Author: Annalisa Savaresi
• Published date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12164
• Date: 01 July 2016

A Glimpse into the Future of the Climate

Regime: Lessons from the REDD+

Architecture

Annalisa Savaresi*

In 2015, parties to the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) formally

closed negotiations on measures to maintain and

enhance the carbon storage capacity of forests in

developing countries, commonly referred to as

‘REDD+’. This unusual and largely symbolic gesture

seemingly signals that UNFCCC parties consider the

international set of rules on REDD+a‘job done’,at

least for the time being. This article ref‌lects on the out-

come of these negotiations and on the related lawmak-

ing process, arguing that REDD+may be regarded as

the f‌irst ripe fruit in the pledge-and-review architec-

ture recently enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

REDD+is therefore used in this article as a lens to

understand how the new architecture for climate

change governance may work, as well as challenges

facing its implementation. In doing so, the article aims

to shine a light on the path ahead for the Paris Agree-

ment, making predictions on challenges likely to

emerge with its implementation, the solutions that

may be adopted, as well as areas where more interna-

tional rules may be needed.

INTRODUCTION

The Paris Agreement

1

adopted in December 2015

enshrines and perfects in treaty form the bottom-up

‘pledge-and-review’

2

architecture that emerged since

the ill-fated f‌ifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) to

the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change

3

(UNFCCC) in 2009.

4

This architecture relies

on parties unilaterally declaring the action they intend

to undertake to reduce their emissions, which is in turn

to be subjected to a review process. In this context, the

international climate change bureaucracy works as a

notary collecting, and eventually enabling the review of

the implementation of parties’pledged action. This

bottom-up architecture leaves a very wide margin of

discretion to States on how to contribute to the endeav-

our of tackling climate change. As such, there is a stark

contrast between this new architecture and the ‘targets-

and-timetables’one embedded in the Kyoto Protocol,

5

which contemplates specif‌ic emissions targets for some

parties, as well as timetables for their achievement, and

a procedure to sanction lack of compliance.

While the adoption of a new approach to international

climate governance was a matter of necessity, given the

toppling of the approach embedded in the Kyoto Proto-

col,

6

the recent adoption of the Paris Agreement calls

for a ref‌lection on the challenges that may be encoun-

tered in operationalizing a bottom-up pledge-and-

review architecture. In this connection, there is no need

to look much further af‌ield. Between 2005 and 2015,

UNFCCC parties have built a bottom-up, pledge-and-

review architecture to address emissions from the forest

sector in developing countries,

7

commonly referred to

with the acronym ‘REDD+’.

* Corresponding author.

Email: annalisa.savaresi@ed.ac.uk

1

Paris Agreement (Paris, 12 December 2015; not yet in force).

2

The conceptualization of a pledge-and-review approach to climate

governance is operated in the works of Daniel Bodansky; see

D. Bodansky, ‘The Emerging Climate Change Regime’, 20 Annual

Review of Energy and the Environment (1995), 425; D. Bodansky and

E. Diringer, ‘Towards an Integrated Multi-track Climate Framework’

(Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2007); D. Bodansky and

E. Diringer, ‘The Evolution of Multilateral Regimes: Implications for

Climate Change’ (Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2010);

D. Bodansky, ‘A Tale of Two Architectures: The Once and Future U.N.

Climate Change Regime’, in: H. Koch et al. (eds.), Climate Change

and Environmental Hazards Related to Shipping: An International

Legal Framework (Brill, 2012), 35; and D. Bodansky, ‘The Durban

Platform: Issues and Options for a 2015 Agreement’ (Centre for Cli-

mate and Energy Solutions, 2012).

3

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (New

York, 9 May 1992; in force 21 March 1994) (‘UNFCCC’).

4

UNFCCC, Decision 2/CP.15, Copenhagen Accord (UN Doc. FCCC/

CP/2009/11/Add.1, 30 March 2010).

5

Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Cli-

mate Change (Kyoto, 11 December 1997; in force 16 February 2005)

(‘Kyoto Protocol’).

6

As argued, for example, in D. Bodansky, ‘W[h]ither the Kyoto Proto-

col? Durban and Beyond’ (Harvard Project on Climate Agreements,

2011).

7

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-

mate Change (IPCC) estimates the share of anthropogenic green-

house gas emissions from the agriculture, forestry and other land use

sector at around 21%. IPCC, ‘Summary for Policymakers’, in:

O. Edenhofer et al. (eds.), Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate

Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment

Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cam-

bridge University Press, 2014), 1, at 7.

ª2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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RECIEL 25 (2) 2016. ISSN 2050-0386 DOI: 10.1111/reel.12164

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