Rescuing the Paris Agreement: Improving the Global Experimentalist Governance by Reclassifying Countries

Abstract

The Paris Agreement design follows the Global Experimental Governance mode, which once achieved success in ozone protection. However, the implementation of the Paris Agreement encountered difficulties, as it inherited the traditional dichotomy country classification established at the 1992 Rio Summit. Still, over time, the capability and motivation in Annex I and non-Annex I countries developed so differently that incentive and constraint policies do not encourage more ambitious mitigation commitments using the previous classification. For this reason, according to a country’s capability and motivation, this research divided these countries into four categories: Leader, Reserve Force, Waverer, and Obscurity, and proposed a potential climate action roadmap for different types of countries to mobilize their internal forces by dynamically classifying a country’s character and to improve overall global climate governance.

1. Introduction

The Paris Agreement was considered to be an imperfect practice of Global Experimentalist Governance (GEG) [1]. GEG is a flexible organizational structure used to tackle any long-term uncertainty challenges via continuous learning, ground-level experimentation, and mutual correction. The goal of GEG is to encourage grassroots’ tentative practices for an open-ended goal [2] and institutionalize the flexibility found in governments, the markets, and society, as the public interest requires it [3,4]. In the Paris Agreement, GEG promoted a four-stage building block strategy by decentralizing grand climate actions and adopting voluntary adaptation and mitigation measures that would best suit local conditions [2,5] and combining both top-down and bottom-up governance [6].

GEG previously worked well for global ozone layer governance, as exemplified and then promoted as important toolkit in international practice [2,7]. Through an open-ended goal, individual implementation with sufficient national flexibility, circular assessment, and continuous revision of a macroscopic goal, the Montreal Protocol, which was designed to protect the ozone layer, is described as “a remarkable success story” and also “an example of international cooperation” [8]. However, The Paris Agreement, as the latest achievement of Global Climate Change Governance (GCCG) [9], was less of an accomplishment, particularly in terms of mitigation, as the Green actors intended to revitalize a depressed climate practice rather than undertaking a political grandstanding and reaching a multilateral compromise for this global wicked problem [10]. Given the gap between expectations and reality, why then has the GEG model encountered difficulties in its actual application? How can the experimentalist governance model be modified positively to achieve a more effective GCCG?

By dismantling a long-term temporal dimension problem with significant potential negative externalities (the Grey Rhino) [11,12], the Paris Agreement also tried to provide stakeholders with ample freedom for further discussion, and give each country (as grassroots practitioners) certain flexibility to fulfill the carbon mitigation target as country-based initiatives [13,14]. However, unlike global governance for the ozone layer, the Paris Agreement did not meet public expectations [1,9]. On the one hand, until the most recent COP 27 in Sharm el Sheik, there has been no more ambitious carbon mitigation goal that will support limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius based on the pre-industrial levels [15] and only lead to a significant decarbonization target miss in the near future. On the other hand, the slice-by-slice adaptation method towards greenhouse gases (GHG) was no better than sticking a plaster over that mitigation commitment because insufficient funding [16] hampered achieving the 2C upper limit, e.g., a new loss and damage fund with an unclear donor [17].

By comparing global ozone governance to climate change governance, we can see that the same GEG theory produced different governance results. Given the gap between expectations and reality for GCCG, it is beneficial to examine what difficulties the GEG encountered in the Paris Agreement, why the GEG encountered these difficulties in the Paris Agreement, and how can the Paris Agreement be modified to achieve a more effective GCCG?

As a representative and significant outcome of GCCG, the Paris Agreement was indulging in global policy “involution” [18], which jeopardized the effectiveness of the GEG performance. This paper first focuses on that current predicament in the Paris Agreement. After analyzing two rounds submitted to the NDC from 196 countries, our methodology developed a 2 × 2 grid of national capability/motivation that could break the shackles of the old classification on the grassroots practitioners, aiming to strike at the internal forces of these countries to rescue Paris Agreement without penalty default policy. Based on a more flexible country classification, we then provide a potentially more effective and positive climate action roadmap to better promote GHG mitigation and develop the GEG theory further.

Section 1 of this paper is the introduction. Section 2 examines the reasons behind GEG dysfunction in the Paris Agreement. Section 3 offers a rectified national classification strategy to enhance the performance of the Paris Agreement. Section 4 presents conclusions and discussion.

2. The Paris Agreement GEG and Its Predicament

2.1. The GEG in the Paris Agreement

The essence of GCCG is to resolve the supply problem of global public goods [19]. International society has explored the supply effectiveness of carbon mitigation for decades. Since climate change became a quintessential North-South issue in the 1990s [20], the GCCG has experienced different governance stages under the scientific guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), namely, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Conference, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, and its newly developed 2015 Paris Agreement.

Although a top-down governance approach with a certain “penalty default” was the “first best” option [21], the climate action nearly stalled, as a succession of withdrawals by some of the treaty’s important players occurred it the same time as the final wave of the 2008 financial tsunami [22,23,24,25]. International society had to embed a top-down macro-policy into a bottom-up legally binding self-commitment as a “second best” approach to maintain climate cooperation and save the GCCG [26,27,28]. The Paris Agreement is the latest international negotiation outcome using the guidance of this GEG idea.

The GEG model was first proposed in business management to try and adapt to the rapid birth of new technology and unforeseeable market development in 1997 [29], but it was once regarded as stable in the 1980′s [30]. In the field of global governance, Sabel and Zeitlin first proposed the GEG theory by giving flexibility to grassroots policy practitioners with a sacrifice of stringency and compliance offered to the original governance system [31,32]. Since then, the concept of experimental governance has been applied to global governance [33]. According to Sabel and Victor, the GEG relied on top-down goals and then reviewed, revised, and promoted changes during bottom-up implementation [5].

The GEG in the Paris Agreement starts with top-down governance (see Figure 1). In the first stage, the countries are responsible for carbon mitigation (according to Fifth assessment report of the IPCC, mitigation is defined as the “human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases”. For further information, see: IPCC. 2014. Annex II: Glossary, Available online: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/glossary, accessed on 10 February 2022) and adaptation efforts, and should recognize sustainable development by setting up an open-ended framework to achieve the goal of limiting global temperature increase to well below 2 °C, while still pursuing efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 °C. The long-term goal is based on having a broad consensus on carbon emission reduction via broad policy advice consultation, e.g., asking for viewpoints from the stakeholders.

The second and third stages are bottom-up governance. In the second stage, applying the principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities” (CBDR), each country shall independently pledge to reduce their carbon emissions. Each country shall also submit its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) before the 21th Conference of the Parties of UNFCCC (COP21) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) after the Paris Agreement was approved.

In the third stage, the internal institutions of the country are given autonomous rights [31], but still need to be monitored under different levels of technical review using certain technical guideline, as classified by the Annex I and non-Annex I countries. Annex I countries are industrialized countries (developed countries) and are legally bound to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Of these, some developed countries that belong to Annex II have a responsibility to offer financial and technical support to non-Annex I countries. Non-Annex 1 countries are mainly developing countries and thus based on CBDR, need not abide by mandatory carbon reduction requirements.

As another part of this top-down governance, the fourth stage emphasizes the requirement that the international community shall periodically undertake a retrospect on the previous goal and update the long-term national ambition and its expected contribution. Based on the actual practice of the Paris Agreement, these four stages have been implemented from being a top-down governance to now a bottom-up governance (see Figure 1).

2.2. The GEG Predicament in the Paris Agreement

Unlike the positive “veto power” participation present in global ozone governance [34], the great powers in both the developed and developing countries have disagreed on the fundamental governance principles and, therefore, have been reluctant to join the GCCG [35]. Annex I countries tended to establish a contractual model for a punitive and legally effective climate agreement, but also tried to pursue a “symmetrical” treaty application for the developing as well as the developed countries under which the actual polluter pays in principle [36]. Non-Annex I countries, on the other hand, preferred to adopt a policy in which historical emitters pay [37] with the conception of climate justice, thereby correcting historical pollution injustice as a precondition for further constructive climate action (This assumption is mainly held by emerging countries, e.g., BASIC group, in the non-Annex I countries; however, for most small island developing states (SIDS) and the least developed countries (LDC), as another part of the non-Annex I countries, a legal binding carbon reduction treaty is preferred that is similar to that of Annex I parties, especially in the EU). However, this prescriptive assumption was considered unacceptable for Annex I countries and thus dysfunctional without a global government.

Global ozone governance has provided a package of resolutions for the participants’ conflicts of interest [38,39] under a multilateral fund, and also exerted a “penalty default” to eliminate the trading of controlled ozone depleting substances between the contracting parties and the non-contracting parties [40]. However, in the GCCG, carbon emissions are reflected everywhere in the global supply chain, and the climate fund is thus always in a state of shortage. The scope of mitigation and adaptation is also too broad for governance. In order to reach a broader consensus, the Paris Agreement had to cancel the “penalty defaults” [9], as one of the preconditions of having an effective GEG [2,32]. The different governance performance also reflected the divergence in their problem structures. Compared to the GCCG, the problem of global ozone governance is simpler and the boundary is clearer, while the problem seen in the GCCG is more complex and its boundaries for the different issues are more vague [10].

Admittedly, the GEG in the Paris Agreement provided greater openness and more policy space for national, regional, and civil society actors to pursue common goals [41]. Under the international policy environment of full autonomy and no punishment, ambitious commitment cannot easily transform into operable decarbonization [1], credible practice [42], or deep cooperation [43]. Currently, the ability to “break down the big climate change problem into small solutions” [5] is becoming a hypocritical vision. The gap between the current GCCG performance and the macroscopic objectives set at the beginning of the Paris Agreement is only widening [44].

2.3. The Mismatch of Capability and Motivation in Paris Agreement

The pledge-led Paris Agreement failed to further promote the autonomous climate actions for each type of country. Beyond this circumstance, the divergence in principle and the disagreement of interests also reflected the uneven national capabilities and motivations in both Annex I and non-Annex I countries in the current uncertain international environment.

2.3.1. Annex I Countries with Strong Capabilities, but Highly Diversified Motivation

Currently, Annex I countries are the mainstay of the GCCG and are the key to successfully achieving GHG mitigation. However, due to internal and external factors, the differences in policy paths are worsening.

These endogenous factors have also brought uncertainty to the policy choices of Annex I countries. The policy options of left-wing and right-wing political forces are quite different. According to the left-wing in the U.S., positive and promising political action toward the GCCG will increase the employment rate as well as international competitiveness and leadership [45]. However, the right-wing believes that Annex I countries lost 7% of GDP due to their participation in the Kyoto Protocol [46]. The Paris Agreement would cost the United States 6.5 million jobs in secondary industries and cause 0.73% of total GDP loss by 2040 (US$3 trillion or approximately US$150 billion per year) [47]; however, inactivity will lead to a loss of only 0.622% of the US GDP (loss is calculated based on the fact that the global temperature is 3 °C higher than the temperature before the Industrial Revolution; the Paris Agreement aimed to maintain 2 °C and strive to reach 1.5 °C) [48].

The EU has been the most active group in the fight against climate change, having implemented the European Green Deal in 2019 and the European Climate Law in 2020. Through the Circular Economy Action Plan, the EU has planned to reduce net carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2050. However, there has been great divergence within Europe on the European Green Deal. Poland refused to sign the European Green Deal, and Czechia and Hungary signed it “very reluctantly” after the EU compromised on the use of nuclear energy technology. Germany opposed the use of monetary policy to leverage Green investment and Green asset legislation, and announced it would not attempt to change consumer preferences in industries, such as petrochemical energy vehicles. Such divergence reduced overall ambition and the contributions toward GEG.

In addition, Annex I countries have faced challenges from the emerging countries. They have been worried that these countries will erode their economic advantages by benefiting from a looser environmental policy. They thus intended to impose the new emission reduction responsibilities on the world’s largest emitter, China. According to Johnston, the total pledged emission reductions of the United States have accounted for 21% of the total emission reductions under the Paris Agreement [49]. Without the efforts of the United States on emission reduction, the global expected temperature will be about 0.3 °C higher than the temperature promised in the Paris Agreement [50]. When the United States reduces its emissions reduction efforts by 20%, 13% and 0% compared with 2005, China will need to produce an additional 1.7%, 2.8%, and 5.0% emission reductions, respectively [51], which will cause a loss to the Chinese economy of $21.98 to $71.1 billion [52] and also lower the mitigation pressure in the Western world.

This exogenous factor is also considerably influenced by the uncertainty in energy policy in each country, and is mainly a geopolitics issue based on the financial instability of different countries.

The Russia-Ukraine war seriously affected the supply of fossil fuels from Russia and has also made the energy policies of European countries swing. Whether this tense geographical relationship will encourage or hinder carbon emission reduction is still full of controversy [53]; however, there is a consensus that the uncertainty of any positive environmental policy is increasing. Some scholars have pointed out that in the long run, the Russia-Ukraine war will accelerate European energy transformation, which will benefit the GCCG [54]. On the other hand, due to the fact that 40% of the natural gas required for household heating and electricity in Europe came from Russia, any ambitious Green policy will suffer a backslide on any pledge so as to hedge on the systemic economic risks brought about by inflation. For example, Germany and Denmark have abandoned their recent goal of eliminating coal. Since the energy crisis brought about by the Russia-Ukraine war has spread, these avant-garde countries have had to ‘swallow the hard pill’ and temporarily halt their previous ambitious commitments. Meanwhile, the cyclical return of US dollars has increased the burden of global economic development, which indirectly has also influenced the GCCG. Under such a background of increasing downward pressure on the domestic economy, a new collective, quantified goal for climate financing may be indefinitely delayed [55].

2.3.2. Non-Annex I Countries with Uneven National Capacity and Diversified Motivation

Each country’s NDC submission is the most important part of the voluntary implementation of GHG mitigation; still there is a big gap between the pledge and actual practice. According to the median of the simulation scenarios that run up to 2100, such insufficient global climate action will increase the global temperature by 2.6–3.1 °C above the average temperature that was present before the Industrial Revolution [56,57,58]. This rise is much higher than the 2 °C global temperature control target promised in the Paris Agreement.

Unbalanced power among non-Annex I countries has also led to an inaccurate estimation of GHG emissions reduction in NDC. These inaccurate reports have included inaccurate classification statistics due to a lack of national infrastructure and by using artificially selected standards so as to exaggerate the ongoing work on mitigation [59].

Due to the inconsistent emission reduction coverage caused by insufficient capacity, some departments were not measured, for example, international air transport (at present, there is only one convention initiated and signed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) regarding carbon emissions due to international air transport; however, this convention is outside the UN Framework Convention on the Climate Change system). Some non-Annex I countries also failed to provide data on non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases and emissions in Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) [60].

This incomparable standard of GHG mitigation is caused by insufficient national motivation. A comparison in NDC is one of the “core elements of the Paris Agreement’s climate mitigation architecture” [61,62], but non-Annex I countries lack a uniform standard. Some non-Annex I countries, such as China and India, have chosen an indicator that will not harm economic growth—emission intensity (CO₂/GDP)—to indicate their emission reduction efforts. Other non-Annex I countries have chosen the business as usual (BAU) benchmark (BAU is a hypothetical scenario for future activity patterns. It assumes that there will be no major changes in the country’s attitudes and priorities, or there will be no major changes in technology, the economy, or policies, and thus normal conditions can be expected to remain unchanged. BAU is the most commonly used indicator to measure the degree of future carbon emissions in the NDC. As a frame of reference, BAU provides bottom-line goals for future potentially uncertain decisions, while still “comparing the economic and social costs of a series of low-carbon strategies” [41]), linking emissions reductions to future economic and population growth to reduce the emissions reductions pressure. Morocco is an example; Morocco’s BAU scenario was overestimated, namely, an emission reduction that ranged from −13% to −42%, which in contrast covered up the real intensity of that emission reduction (for more information, see: Morocco 2016 NDC Report, https://unfccc.int/NDCREG, accessed on 15 January 2022). For GHG mitigation targets, 74 countries have used the BAU route for estimating future carbon emissions and accounting for 15.6% of global GHG mitigation; for non-CO₂ GHG emission targets, such as methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases, 72 countries have not shown themselves to be ambitions, accounting for only 48.9% of the total emission reduction ratio [63]. About 30 countries have used only qualitative information to support their emission reduction targets, which is approximately 6% of global emissions [57].

Neither have countries endorsed these hypothetical emissions scenarios, nor have they explained the difference between the greenhouse gas emission path shown in their government reports and scientific research. Another 18% of the contracting parties have not set specific emission reduction standards [64]. In addition, each country has its own standards for calculating historical emissions, especially when converting non-CO₂ GHG emissions into CO₂ equivalents, such as for Mexico’s “black carbon problem”. In Mexico’s NDC plan, “Mexico promises to unconditionally reduce greenhouse gas and short-term climate pollutant emissions (below BAU) by 25% in 2030”. “Short-term pollutants” are referred to as “black carbon”. Although this black carbon contained a high concentration of equivalent CO₂, its atmospheric life span is only a few days or weeks. In contrast, normal CO₂ could affect global warming for decades or even centuries. Therefore, these two pollutants are not interchangeable. Mexico did confuse them, thereby weakening the effectiveness of its established mitigation targets.

The huge gap between an unconditional target and a conditional target in the NDCs is another problem. According to the second round (2020–2021) submitted NDC, unconditional GHG reduction targets are significantly lower than the conditional target, which means that these countries will need a larger proportion of international financial assistance; otherwise, they will fail to reach the target. Typically, in some small island developing states (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDC), the conditional target of carbon reduction was 5 times more ambitious than the unconditional target, leaving a huge amount of pressure for international support. In some countries, this gap even increased by 10 times.

2.4. Summary: The Classification of Annex I and Non-Annex I Failed to Mobilize Countries to Join GCCG

In Annex I countries, the principle of CBDR was being abused by using sufficient capacity but differentiated policy path choices and was thus unable to meet the demands of the developed countries for global concerted action. Non-Annex I countries, who possessed sufficient enthusiasm but lacked the necessary capacity, were meeting the challenge of offering a different explanation toward CBDR. Thus, the countries’ original classifications could not meet the current governance demand.

Worse still, without penalty defaults, Stage 2 became a completely voluntary contribution and led to dysfunction in Stage 3 (see Figure 2). Efforts of bottom-up independent dedication could not evoke global concerted action, and rough country classifications could not further promote individual climate action.

To theorize, the flow chart in Figure 1 shows how the GEG can be divided into four steps. Currently, the GEG is facing trouble in the second stage, as part of the bottom-up stage, which also is the core of progress in the GEG. Without any penalty default, simply imposing a robust review process cannot achieve more. The only hope to save the GEG is to use each country’s own endowment and spontaneous action under a club-based framework using a different penalty default (see Figure 2).

Due to the lack of a penalty default, and because of both the inaccuracy and the uncertainty of promised targets, the Paris Agreement is transforming into “a deadlock and a dodge” framework [65] and the stated commitments may become only political propaganda to escape responsibility. Since it is difficult to establish an universal penalty default on all countries because of the setback in the Kyoto Protocol, in order to break that stalemate, we can only optimize Stage 2 to hopefully guarantee the broad international consensus and a club-based penalty default by reconsidering the national characteristics to cultivate both opportunity and improve capability. Thus, we need to find new ways to improve its practical effectiveness by fixing the CBDR principle through a more detailed national classification and more precise emission reduction measures.

3. Reclassifying Countries Based on Their Capability and Motivation

The successful implementation of international soft law [66] depends on effective incentives and punishments, so called carrots and sticks. At present, the Paris Agreement lacks both sticks (i.e., a penalty default and trade agreement) [67] and carrots (i.e., international assistance, technology transfer, and key climate discourse).

One way to ensure an effective GCCG is to add consensus punishment by setting an ambitious legally-binding mitigation target while adding a penalty default; however, such a top-down governance model has already been proven to be invalid. Another way is to increase incentives, which then boosts the internal forces to drive mitigation performance. This is clearly the direction that the Paris Agreement and the GEG hope to achieve. It is also apparently the wisest development route after reviewing and summarizing the previous failures.

The current dichotomy country classification has failed to reasonably and appropriately discover the internal driving forces of that countries at different development stages. To galvanize climate action and stimulate the independent contributions of various countries, it is important to understand those countries’ endowments clearly, and provide both necessary and suitable institutional support by deeply analyzing countries’ capabilities and motivations based on the current classification system and their individual commitment, namely NDCs report.

3.1. Criteria for Identifying Countries’ Capabilities and Motivations

The Paris Agreement adopted the Annex I and non-Annex I countries classification criteria, which was set up at the 1992 Rio Summit. The capability and motivation of the Annex I and non-Annex I countries have changed, but the original classification still remains. Annex I countries have high capability, but differ in their motivation. In contrast, non-Annex I countries have large differences in both capability and motivation. Given the background of further deterioration of the global economy, a more precise mitigation policy is urgent and needs to be promoted. Given that the current classification criteria do not reflect the capability and motivation of countries, a new division was designed by the authors of the current paper.

Based on the current UNFCCC country classification system, we marked all of the Annex I countries’ capabilities as “high” and most of non-Annex I countries as “low”. Notably, some non-Annex I countries’ capability, however, were “high” because of their top ranking in the GDP, Environmental Performance Index (EPI) (EPI summarizes the environmental index data of 10 categories and 24 subcategories for ecosystem vitality and environmental health, and finally obtains relevant capability scores. The 10 categories are: air quality (household solid fuels, PM2.5 exposure, PM2.5 exceedance), water and sanitation (drinking water, sanitation), heavy metals (lead), biodiversity and habitat, forests (species protection index, global biome protection, national biome protection, national protected areas, tree cover loss), fisheries (fish stock status, regional MTI), climate and energy (total CO₂, CO₂ from power, methane, B.C., N₂O), air pollution(NO_X, SO₂), water resources (wastewater, treatment), and agriculture (sustainable management index)), and Fragile States Index (FSI) (FSI comprehensively scores national capabilities using 12 dimensions: demographic pressures, the number of refugees and displaced persons relative to populations, the extent of group grievance, the incidence of human flight, the degree of uneven development, the condition of the national economy, the extent of withdrawal of the legitimacy of the State, the condition of public services, the extent of human rights violations, the power of the security apparatus, the extent to which political elites are factionalized, and the degree of external political intervention). According to their national GDP, we designated the top 70 countries as “high”, and marked the others as “low”. According to the EPI indicator, the top 70 countries were marked as “high” and the others was marked as “low”. According to the FSI indicator, we labeled the Stable Countries as “high”, the others as “low”. If a non-Annex I country had two or more “high” marks, it was marked as having a “high” capability, otherwise, it was marked as “low”.

In terms of national motivation, the evaluation benchmark is treated differently. To measure the Annex I parties’ motivation, NDC is not a good indicator to use for reflecting individual motivation since the EU’s NDC is a collective opinion. Thus, we considered the 2018 Carbon Pricing Score (CPS) published by OECD [68] as the main indicator for measuring motivation with the 2013 and 2015 Carbon Pricing Gap (CPG) [16] as supplementary, which calculated the gap between the country’s package of emission reduction policies formulated in accordance with the Paris Agreement and the promised reduction target. It nearly covered all Annex I countries. If the CPS of an Annex I country exceeded 40%, then the motivation would be sorted to “high” and if was lower than 40%, then its motivation would be “low”. For non-Annex I countries, we compared the submitted NDC to calculate their motivation. If a country failed to update their NDCs report or their ambition was shrinking, then its motivation was set to “low”; otherwise, it was set to “high”.

We rated the capability and motivation of 196 UNFCCC parties. Following the classification rule, a 2 × 2 grid with capability and motivation could be obtained. All parties were divided into four groups for individual capability and motivation. The revised classification system divides the original Annex I and non-Annex I countries into Leader, Reserve Force, Waverer, and Obscurity for participation in the GCCG (see

Table 1. The New Country Classification System.

	High Capability	Low Capability
High Motivation	Leader	Reserve Force
Low Motivation	Waverer	Obscurity

).

A Leader has the ability and intention to formulate global climate governance rules and also share their best practices. These countries are the mainstay of the GCCG, and the link between the developed and the developing countries. A Leader is expected to continue to promote its own energy transition and global climate governance.

The Reserve Force has a positive attitude toward climate governance and is eager to shape a responsible national image by participating in global climate governance, but still is in the development stage due to limited national capacity.

A Waverer has a higher capability, but has lowered its commitment targets or abandoned compliance in light of its own global competitiveness and geopolitical circumstances.

Obscurity countries have neither the ability nor the motivation to participate in GCCG. These countries may have long periods of low carbon emissions, but at the same time, they are reluctant to use the international community to speak out on their behalf. Some Obscurity countries have robust capability, but nearly reach net-zero GHG emissions, so this category could not set more ambitious goals for carbon mitigation.

3.2. Four Country Types Based on Capability and Motivation

Based on the new classification standard, 28 countries belong to the Leader group, accounting for approximately 14.3% of the total number of parties, and of these countries, 17 are Annex I countries, and 11 are non-Annex I countries. These countries not only have strong motivation to join the GCCG, but also have the ability to coordinate their goals of environmental protection and sustainable development. Regrettably, most of the emerging economies that have rapidly increasing emissions (excluding South Korea) have not entered the Leader group (emerging economies include most of the BRICS countries and some Next-11 countries. The BRICS countries are, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The Next-11 countries are Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam). For some Leaders, the contradiction between the higher emission reduction targets and their industrial structure (there is still a considerable secondary industrial sector) produces a disparity between the current policy and the promised emission reduction expectations. For example, the United Kingdom is facing a hollowing out of industry and its revitalization of the manufacturing industry, and thus may lower its own emission reduction expectations.

The Reserve Force totals 69 countries, which account for approximately 35.2% of the total. All are from non-Annex I parties. Among them, 36% are not in the list of SIDS, LDC, or Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDC) that are expected to transition to Leader countries in the coming decades. Some of the BRICS and ASEAN countries belong to the Reserve Force. Usually, the Reserve Force may face a sharp increase in carbon emissions due to economic development. The Reserve Forces are also the biggest beneficiary of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and relevant assistance funds. Although these countries are likely to account for most of the world’s carbon emissions in the next 10 years, some of their climate actions have brought about these countries’ peak emissions as early, and they have played a positive role in the GCCG.

The composition of Waverer countries is rather messy, because negative externalities have not yet produced a clear attitude toward global climate governance. There are 39 Waverers, which account for approximately 19.9% of the total countries. Of these, 25 are from Annex I countries, demonstrating the great divergence of climate action in Annex I parties, especially as a result of the Russia-Ukraine War, which is regarded as the worst hot war since World War II in Europe. The other 14 parties are from non-Annex I countries, and most of them are rich SIDS. The reasons behind being a Waverer in the GCCG are rather diversified.

Waverers in the GCCG are worried about their national interests under any strict limitation of carbon emissions. Specifically, some are worried national industry structures, especially manufacturing industries, account for a large proportion of these national economies (for example, Germany, which is an old industrial power with a secondary sector that accounts for more than 20% of their GDP, will also face internal and external trouble on the road to emission reduction under the increasing aggravation caused by geopolitical issues), some are worried that energy transitions will influence fossil fuel exports, some are worried about the lack of intellectual property rights protection for Green technology during the technology transfer [69], and some are worried that carbon mitigation will disturb their national strategic plans (for example, the Northern Sea Route (NSR) could be an alternative to the Suez Canal route for Russia and will be the key to Russia’s rise again; however, the NSR will also produce increased black carbon emissions, air pollution and potential oil spills, and other loss and damage to the environment, including biodiversity diminishment and glacier melting). Under current environmental policies, these countries can only partially fulfill their own commitments or they simply give up on them entirely. Even if the conference representatives of these countries do make a positive statement at the UNFCCC, they will face heavy pressure to keep their commitments in actual domestic practice. Some of the rich SIDS, e.g., Singapore, have already set an ambitious goal (achieve net zero via the Long-Term Low-Emission Development Strategy) and have done well in energy transition (natural gas constitutes more than 95% of their electricity generation), so they only have limited space for further mitigation.

There are 60 Obscurity countries, all of which are non-Annex I countries, and they account for about 30.6% of the parties. In this group, more than 83% of the countries also belong to a SIDS, LDC, or LLDC group, and most are low-income and politically unstable countries. They have suffered more intense loss and damage than any other countries involved in global climate change, and they need external funding to promote their GCCG projects for both adaptation and mitigation. These Obscurity countries are limited by their economic development and domestic political issues. Their main goal is to end poverty. It is difficult to avoid crude economic development models in these countries, such as Afghanistan, Rwanda, and Somalia.

Particularly, some SIDS in Obscurity have not actively participated in the global climate governance system. As mentioned by Corbett et al., small countries benefit from maintaining a low position in the international hierarchy of bigger countries being stronger than smaller ones [70]. Therefore, many small island countries have chosen to remain inactive: although climate change is closely related to their survival, they are still classified as Obscurity. Ironically, Bhutan, which has abandoned its Anthropocene ideology, insists on a negative carbon strategy, and has constitutionally protected its forests, has not participated in the Paris Agreement system, which shows the urgent call to improve the GEG as soon as possible. Surprisingly, there are a minority of Obscurity countries that already have such ambitious emission mitigation targets that they cannot contribute more under current the GEG, such as Mexico, Guyana, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

3.3. Climate Action Roadmap for the Different Characters

Carbon mitigation and its adaptation not only requires establishing a new classification standard, but also creating a cooperation opportunity by initiating a precise climate action roadmap with different levels of penalty default (see

Table 2. Detailed Climate Action Roadmap for Different Characters.

Character	Mitigation Responsibility	Adaptation Responsibility	Credibility	Open-Ended Goal	Original Classification
Leader	Energy, agriculture, IPPU, LULUCF, waste; transparency report every 2 years	Loss and damage fund; transparency report every 2 years	Domestic Review every 4 years	NDC every 5 years; carbon neutrality achieved around 2050	Annex I countries (e.g., Switzerland) and some non-Annex I countries (e.g., Uruguay)
Reserve Force	One specific mitigation field every 5 years with the same measurement caliber as Leader; transparency report every 2 years	Transparency report every 2 years	Different level of review every 4 years based on the results of NCSA and CfT	NDC every 5 years; carbon neutrality around 2050	Non-Annex I countries (e.g., China)
Waverer	Transparency report every 2 years	Transparency report every 2 years	Central review every 4 years	NDC every 5 years; FMCP every 2 years; carbon neutrality around 2050	Annex I countries (e.g., Australia) and some non-Annex I countries (e.g., Singapore)
Obscurity		Transparency report every 2 years	Desk review every 4 years	NDC every 5 years; FMCP every 2 years; carbon neutrality around 2050	Non-Annex I countries (e.g., Afghanistan)

). Under the Paris Agreement, open-ended goals were set for a five-year cycle. According to the 2006 IPCC guideline, carbon mitigation was divided into five fields: energy, agriculture, Industrial Processes and Product Use Sector (IPPU), LULUCF (in the 2006 IPCC guideline, in order to avoid a double counting issue, agriculture and LULUCF have been combined into AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use), previously separated in the 2003 Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry. Here, we separated AFOLU into agriculture (including liming and urea application, direct and indirect N₂O from managed soils, biomass emission burning, enteric fermentation, manure management, rice cultivation and other) and LULUCF (including forest land, grassland, cropland, settlements, wetlands, and harvested wood products) by using the 2006 IPCC guideline) and waste. This new climate action roadmap supports the voluntary principle, which is the cornerstone of the GEG. Once selected for contribution, parties shall follow the IPCC procedure under the ETF (enhanced transparency framework) with comparable MPGs (modalities, procedures, and guidelines) criteria (typically, the ETF in the Paris Agreement contains three parts: reporting, technical expert review, and facilitative multilateral consideration of progress (FMCP). Reporting, which mainly refers to the NDC, is updated every four years with national communication and includes data collection, the checking of uncertainties, methodological choices, key categories, and time series consistency. The technical expert review is conducted every two years with the same update frequency of a transparency report. FMCP, also updated every two years, discusses the implementation and achievement of climate action), as further evolution of the MRV (measurement, reporting, and verification) framework, for each sectoral guideline. At the same time, individual commitment, such as the NDC, and the CBDR principle shall be embodied in the roadmap. By setting best practices and receiving monetary and non-monetary return from mitigation and adaptation affairs, the high motivation parties could inspire the low motivation parties to become increasingly interested in sustainable development and ultimately rejoin the GCCG.

Specifically, the policy path of the Leader in the Annex I countries was to set a worldwide example of Green and sustainable development in all five mitigation fields. Leader countries could have more decision-making power to formulate sustainable development strategies in an open-ended framework and enjoy the highest discursive power in the GCCG. As the high credibility had already been achieved by these countries [53], an in-depth expert review (the current expert review mechanism is divided into three levels: a desk review (the least rigorous), central review (experts can use the resources of the review center to review reports that have been submitted, and a review intensity that is medium), and domestic review (the highest level of review, which is the highest requirement for transparency and has the highest cost)) shall continue to be conducted by the strictest level every 4 years. A transparency report of mitigation and adaptation shall be conducted every 2 years. The incentive mechanism for Leaders includes leading the process of global climate governance, promoting standardized reporting, and providing a platform for sharing best practices, mastering the right to speak on the field of climate governance, linking Green development with bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, providing a more convenient way to technology transfer, and a more transparent funding system [67].

The policy path for the Leader and Reserve Force in non-Annex I countries is to look for breakthroughs in reducing emissions by narrowing down the scope of emission reduction coverage and adopting higher measurement standards. This group shall implement more commitment in a certain mitigation field every 5 years by using the same measurement standard as the Annex I countries. An in-depth technical expert review and a mitigation transparency report should also use the same caliber level as the Leader Annex I countries. Incentive methods for these parties includes improving the platform for sharing best practices and high-quality and sufficient funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and participating in the decision to implement and verify policy standards and regarding the GCCG as a condition for a global free trade agreement. Non-state actors, companies, and civil society organizations, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), will become verification agencies of the ETF to hedge the inevitable difficulties encountered by these parties in the process of actual practice and make the data more accurate and transparent [13,71,72]. As a constraint policy, stricter expert reviews with certain flexibility shall be used to enhance credibility and serve as an entry requirement for the allocation of climate funds (under the new GEG framework, the UNFCCC technical expert evaluates the records of National Self-Assessment Capability (NCSA) and Capability of Transparency (CfT), and then determines the rigor of the expert review level for submitting reports. After the experts have reviewed and verified the corresponding funding requirements, the funds for the establishment of CfT will then be automatically allocated).

For the Waverers among Annex I countries, the current GCCG did not conform to their national interests; instead, participating in current climate governance will weaken their global competitiveness. Due to changes in domestic and international situations, Annex I Waverers will require more leeway in fulfilling their contributions. Finding suitable institutional arrangements is indispensable to resolve any mitigation and adaptation gap, such as providing a better technology transfer mechanism, an international intellectual property supervision platform, and providing room for energy transition. The Waverers in Annex I countries need to see the benefits of Green technology transfer and promote the benefits of Green transformation for certain industries. Thus, the international community should create more channels and multilateral discussion platforms through a Facilitative, Multilateral Consideration of Progress (FMCP) every 2 years to determine the recognition gap and offer a potential solution package. Furthermore, both necessary transparency and a credibility review should be conducted in both the mitigation and adaptation fields.

For the Waverers in the non-Annex I countries, the current GEG does not benefit them. Most of these parties have done well from the bottom-up, but lack the motivation for further progress, or did not have much room to reduce future GHG emissions. These countries need further top-down guidelines on specific issues and a platform where they can compare notes.

For Obscurity countries, the current GCCG reporting requirement was already a burden. The countries needed to focus on environmental adaptation rather than planning their own abilities to reduce emissions. The top priority for Obscurity countries was to construct an actual climate infrastructure. According to the classification of countries, there were some SIDS whose survival was at stake because of global warming. So far, they have lacked the capabilities to participate in the GCCG system.

It is necessary for Obscurity countries to open more precise dialogue channels and demonstrate the benefits from energy transition, so that the emission peak can be reached as soon as possible. Particularly for LLDCs that must rely on other countries for foreign trade and international communication, regional collective cooperation is the only way that these countries can truly participate in the GCCG. Thus, we need to encourage SIDS, LDCs, and LLDCs to engage in environmental diplomacy to convey their opinions on the need for adaptation and governance obstacles [70] by using the FMCP mechanism every 2 years. Non-Annex I Waverers and Obscurity countries could be recommended to report on climate adaption and seek help from the international community.

The ultimate goal of the GCCG is to realize carbon neutrality. The four kinds of characters based on Annex I and non-Annex I countries have individual responsibility for carbon mitigation by using the unique climate action roadmap toward achieving carbon neutrality (see Table 2).

3.4. Discussion and Valuation of New Classification

With the predicament of mismatch between national capability and motivation, the improved national classification system could be a better way to reduce emissions accurately as well as better functionalize the GEG.

It should be emphasized, however, that although the standard of a new classification is fixed, the specific character of a country is more dynamic, and the country division map (see

Table A1. Global Climate Governance Division Map for Annex I countries. Source: made by authors.

	High Capability	Low Capability
High Motivation	Leader: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom	Reserve Force: N/A
Low Motivation	Waverer: Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Malta, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, United States of America, Liechtenstein, Russian Federation	Obscurity: N/A

and

Table A2. Global Climate Governance Division Map for non-Annex I countries. Source: made by authors.

	High Capability	Low Capability
High Motivation	Leader: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Brunei Darussalam, Israel, Kuwait, Mauritius, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay	Reserve Force: Angola, Argentina, Belize, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde (Republic of), Central African Republic, Chad, China, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Jamaica, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, North Macedonia, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Sudan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Syrian, Tajikistan, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Zimbabwe
Low Motivation	Waverer: Albania, Andorra, Bahamas, Bahrain, Chile, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Niue, Oman, Palau San Marino, Seychelles, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago	Obscurity: Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Comoros, Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Palestine, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Republic of Moldova, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia

) only reflects the circumstances of the last two NDC submissions. This new classification aims to create inter-country mobility while participating in the GCCG, which allows all climate actors shift their characterizations freely.

However, categorizing countries by their character is only required as a means to provide ideas for creating a platform that can flexibly utilize its national endowment and optimize the allocation of international resources that relate to successful climate mitigation.

Indeed, in the current international political circumstances, one Presidential election could change a country’s policy orientation abruptly toward the GCCG. For example, there is a huge contrast between the U.S. Presidents Trump and Biden toward climate policy. Changing from Bolsonaro to Lula, Brazilian climate policy experienced the same positive change. A position change also occurred in the United Kingdom, however it was a negative, moving from Boris Johnson’s carbon neutrality ambition to Truss’ and Sunak’s unraveling climate leadership. In this turbulent era due to conflicting goals and scientific uncertainty [73,74], it is such flexibility practices wherein the idea of adaptive governance, resilience thinking, and collaborative networks in the GEG [11] will give more leeway for sudden changes a climate actor’s position and thus ultimately benefit carbon mitigation [75].

This new classification also assists in fostering a “climate club” by dynamically understanding different countries’ capabilities and motivations toward the GCCG, which have been proven to be a better way to deepen mitigation efforts and temper the risk of unilateralism [1,5,43,73]. Further, promoting a flexible carbon emission market needs to be based on similar national motivations and endowment [76]. As a climate club, SIDS could be given more relevant room to speak out in the international community, and thereby shoulder the moral leadership of the GCCG [70,77], which will further mobilize their enthusiasm and make them a potential internal force.

Subdivision of a country’s character to promote the Paris Agreement is only the process, not a result. This program has opened a door—a door that can indeed fully excavate the internal force of a country under its current economic background and stage of technological development. Dynamic country classification also helps to “frame an issue and select an arena in which to conduct negotiations” [78,79] thus improving the success rate of institutional bargaining and promoting the effectiveness of the GCCG. However, this policy adjustment is far from the end. The GEG should also further introduce the penalty default for a specific mitigation field at the appropriate time and reactivate the top-down governance model [21] for more guaranteed self-contributions to the GCCG.

In this way, still guided by the GEG, we can ultimately decompose a long-term grand goal into short-term micro goals, so that each party can find a suitable role that best matches its own development and thereby contribute positive action to the GCCG in both the near and the long term.

4. Conclusions and Final Thoughts

In light of the geopolitical deterioration and increasing imbalance of world economic development, whether such limited resources can be allocated correctly will determine whether a GEG-based GCCG can be promoted successfully. Less hierarchy and a more flexible system will become the panacea to embrace the planetary challenge.

The original GEG in the Paris Agreement overemphasized the independent contributions of actors and failed to build up enough effective governance based on different capabilities and motivations. Influenced by both endogenous and exogenous factors, some parties did not behave well in the Paris Agreement.

This article has tried to break down the original party classification barriers and stimulate the countries’ internal forces by establishing a new climate club with certain penalty defaults based on both capability and motivation, creating the Leader, Reserve Force, Waverer, and Obscurity classifications. Under this new character, the GEG could partially overcome the problem of voluntary implementation by introducing an equitable roadmap that has certain incentives and constraints for specific mitigation fields according to the different characteristics.

With these changes in national capabilities and motivation, the role of each party in the GCCG is also changing to maximize the potential support from current UNFCCC parties. Therefore, the new classification standard is a dynamic one, adjusted to the voluntarily climate action of a country. The policy toolkits of the dynamic characters as well as the research on the credibility of climate action under such dynamic roles, need to be further supplemented by later scholars.

Last but not least, we hope that this new classification standard could serve as a policy alternative for consideration by the UNFCCC and its parties in practice, although various political and economic concerns of different countries may become obstacles for its achievement. Nevertheless, we retain the faith in global experimental governance. As long as the Paris Agreement remains the key global framework for addressing the challenges of climate change, such a great experiment of self-contribution commitment needs more explicit country classifications as safeguard.