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Relying on complex interdependence as a theoretical approach, this paper investigates the hypothetical damage that the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could represent for Africa in terms of climate finance. In June 2017, President Donald Trump publicly declared the U.S. intention to withdraw from further participating in the multilateral Paris Agreement. To keen followers and analysts of the U.S. climate policy beyond its borders, such unilateral action was never a surprise. Rather, it is nostalgic of the experience of the Kyoto Protocol, particularly how more or less similar move unduly prolonged the global climate negotiations up till late 2015 when the Paris Agreement came about. Although the Paris Agreement is remarkable as it represents the first states-wide climate deal, it however left a number of issues unresolved. Notable among which is climate finance which has remained the most contentious and of critical concern to developing countries, particularly in Africa. Pitted against the fact that Africa contributes less to climate change and, ironically, the hardest-hit by the phenomenon, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement aggravates concerns around climate finance and, indeed, portends additional burdens for a continent that is still struggling to cope with the untoward fallout of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change move towards developing 'a Protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force' in Paris in 2015, they are also addressing the question whether and in what form to include a compliance mechanism in the Paris agreement. This article explores options for incorporating a compliance mechanism into a 2015 climate agreement [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international community has been trying to find a comprehensive and effective solution to the problem of anthropogenic climate change for well over two decades. The fundamental problem posed by climate change is that any solution, if it is to be effective, requires collectively agreed upon global initiatives. If enough countries do not take sufficient action, any collective endeavors to mitigate the problem will be less effective or may even fail. As a result, mitigating climate change requires a high level of international cooperation. In the climate change arena, negotiators spent much of 2007 searching for common ground and securing universal participation in a new global regime to take effect when the first commitment period under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. This article examines one of the strategies used to address this challenge in the lead up to the December 2007 Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia: a variation of track-two diplomacy, where climate change was addressed at numerous workshops and high-level meetings to enable parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to create space for building trust and exploring innovative solutions in determining whether or not to embark on negotiations on a post-2012 regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint Implementation (JI) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) provided for in the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provide a possibility for states parties to modify their quantified emission reduction commitments under the Protocol by means of emission reduction of sink enhancement projects undertaken in other states. Generally cost-effectiveness – achieving the environmental goals with the least possible cost – has been seen as the most significant quality of these mechanisms, and the main motivation of using them has seemingly become the possibility of cost-savings in climate policy. This, however, entails a challenge to international law, notably the sovereign equality of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the causal mechanisms through which domestic policies and underlying domestic structural and institutional factors influenced the Netherlands' leadership-taking capability during climate change negotiations leading up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Two causal mechanisms are prominent. One is the importance and necessity of building domestic capacity before the negotiation, and the other is the role of the "power devise" for a middle power to become influential in the negotiation. In this case, a regional organization provided the framework for a middle power to materialise its leadership potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]