The Global Governance of Climate Change: G7,G20,and UN Leadership by John J. Kirton and Ella Kokotsis

Reviewed by: Miranda A. Schreurs (miranda.schreurs@hfp.tum.de), Technical University of Munich, Germany

Just how important have the G7/8 and the G20 been in creating a global climate regime? John J. Kirton and Ella Kokotsis argue that their role has been not only crucial, but defining. Contrary to most accounts in the literature that see global climate governance as the purview of the United Nations, Kirton and Kokotsis go as far as to argue that with their 1979 summit communiqué—a consensus statement of the leaders of the world’s most powerful economies—a climate regime was born, long before the United Nations began to address the matter. At the urging of German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the G7 leaders called for an expansion of alternative sources of energy to prevent further pollution, and especially increases of carbon dioxide and sulphur oxides. Kirton and Kokotsis claim that this set in motion the world’s first climate regime in the form of G7 climate governance. Only later, they argue, did the G7 shift the responsibility for climate governance to the United Nations—urging the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and supporting the formation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and later the Kyoto Protocol.

This “retreat” from G7/8 climate governance was, however, only temporary. The United Nations, the authors argue, failed to create an effective international climate regime. There were many reasons for this, including the organization’s size and diverse interests; its persisting north–south divide; and its predominating interest in economic development, now cloaked in the terminology of sustainable development. With the failure of the Kyoto Protocol to check the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, and the later failure of the Copenhagen climate conference to develop a meaningful global agreement, the G8, working through different configurations (including the G5 and the G20), took global climate governance back into their own hands, forging their own targets and agreements to abate greenhouse gas emissions. At the time the book was completed, it was still uncertain whether there would be a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. Regardless, Kirton and Kokotsis suggest that what is really important are the decisions these smaller clubs make about climate governance.

The focus on the significance of the G7 as a climate regime is perhaps over-played in some parts of the book, especially for the period of the early 1980s when there was barely any mention by G7 leaders of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. Rather, this might be considered a period when G7 environmental or energy governance as opposed to climate governance, per se, began to take form. The significance of the United Nations as a forum for bringing in the voices of states that are most vulnerable to climate change is also largely overlooked with the book’s focus on the big players.

Still, Kirton and Kokotsis draw much-needed attention to the agenda-setting and decision-making power of the informal (albeit now highly routinized) international G-meetings. At these gatherings, world leaders are setting targets (e.g. the G8 agreement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050); creating new institutions (e.g. the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change); and pressuring each other into action.

Given that the G7 accounted for approximately 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2013, the G8 over 31%, and the G20 over 80%, ¹ it makes sense that the G-clubs have the power to shape global climate governance when they choose to do so.

The authors provide several reasons for why they think the G7 took up climate governance in the first place: shock-activation (e.g. oil shocks and drought); failure of multilateral organizations led by the UN; growing equality of the members of the G-clubs; a growing adherence to democratic norms; domestic factors (especially the conviction of specific political leaders); and growing environmental awareness. They then suggest there was a period of climate governance retreat by the G7 as more climate governance responsibilities were shifted to the United Nations. This changed again when it became clear the UN was incapable of managing this complex problem effectively. The G7/8 and the G20 then again began to take on an increasingly important role with their own commitments and their push to create a global climate agreement.

The volume is encyclopedic in its detailed coverage of all of the G-meetings through 2014, and what they had to say about climate change and related issues of acid rain, desertification, alternative energy, and ozone depletion. It is theoretically guided and methodologically ambitious. Readers will appreciate the work that went into the rich appendices which assess the level of attention to climate change in the G-communiqués and complements; individual country compliance with commitments made by the G7/8 or 20; attention paid to specific climate change issues in the communiqués (e.g. awareness, capacity building); commitments made in the communiqués (e.g. financing/funding, forests); the role played in developing other climate governance institutions (e.g. Global Environment Facility, International Energy Agency); changes in world oil prices; the prevalence of natural disasters and people affected by natural disasters; as well as much other useful information.

As with any good book, this one raises as many new questions as it answers. It opens a field of inquiry that will keep many researchers busy long into the future. It will also deepen debates about where the centres of global climate governance really lie, and make us pay more attention to what goes on in the run up to, during, and after the meetings of the various G groupings. For those countries not part of the G-clubs, it may raise questions about how best to have a seat at the table—or at least how to be heard. In an age of growing populism, it also remains to be seen how future meetings of the various G groupings will evolve and what this could mean for global climate governance.