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Commitment failures are unlikely to undermine public support for the Paris agreement

Author

Listed:
  • Liam F. Beiser-McGrath

    (ETH Zürich)

  • Thomas Bernauer

    (ETH Zürich)

Abstract

Success of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is founded on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), hinges on whether domestic support for international environmental agreements would be undermined if countries that are crucial to the global effort fail to reduce their emissions. Here we find that citizens in China (n = 3,000) and the United States (n = 3,007) have strong preferences over the design of international climate agreements and contributions of other countries to the global effort. However, contrary to what standard accounts of international politics would predict, a survey-embedded experiment in which respondents were randomly exposed to different information on other countries’ behaviour showed that information on other countries failing to reduce their emissions does not undermine support for how international agreements are designed. While other factors still make large emission cuts challenging, these results suggest that the Paris approach per se is not posing a problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Liam F. Beiser-McGrath & Thomas Bernauer, 2019. "Commitment failures are unlikely to undermine public support for the Paris agreement," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 9(3), pages 248-252, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcli:v:9:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1038_s41558-019-0414-z
    DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0414-z
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    Cited by:

    1. Michael M. Bechtel & Kenneth F. Scheve & Elisabeth Lieshout, 2022. "Improving public support for climate action through multilateralism," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Aklin, Michaël & Buntaine, Mark T & Mildenberger, Matto, 2023. "Conditionality and the Politics of Climate Change," Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Working Paper Series qt3mb417zg, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California.
    3. Patrick Bayer & Federica Genovese, 2020. "Beliefs About Consequences from Climate Action Under Weak Climate Institutions: Sectors, Home Bias, and International Embeddedness," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 20(4), pages 28-50, Autumn.
    4. Kantorowicz, Jaroslaw & Collewet, Marion & DiGiuseppe, Matthew & Vrijburg, Hendrik, 2024. "How to finance green investments? The role of public debt," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    5. Håkon Sælen, 2020. "Under What Conditions Will the Paris Process Produce a Cycle of Increasing Ambition Sufficient to Reach the 2°C Goal?," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 20(2), pages 83-104, May.
    6. Yamane, Tomomi & Kaneko, Shinji, 2022. "The Sustainable Development Goals as new business norms: A survey experiment on stakeholder preferences," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    7. Michaël Aklin & Matto Mildenberger, 2020. "Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 20(4), pages 4-27, Autumn.

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