Equity and Ambition in International Climate Negotiations – Is there a Trade-off?

Equity in international climate negotiations is a highly contested issue, in particular because of divergent views on the relationship between equity and ambition. Robert Keohane (2016) argues that “emphasizing equity in negotiations can generate serious tradeoffs with effectiveness”. This assertion is countered by Klinsky et al (2016), who argue that failing to address equity risks the collapse of the new regime. This paper will seek to shed light on whether such a tradeoff exists by assessing the relationship between countries’ expressed concern with equity and the ambition level in their pledged contributions to the Paris Agreement. To measure concern with fairness, we count the number of references to equity-related terms in all official submissions made during negotiations on the Paris Agreement. We furthermore subdivide references into three dominant equity principles – responsibility, capability, and rights. To measure ambition levels in pledged contributions, we draw on existing quantifications (Climate Equity Reference Project, 2016; Australian-German Climate and Energy College, 2016). Using regression analysis, we investigate whether countries who express the most concern with equity more or less ambitious than other countries, and whether the relationship with ambition varies across the three fairness principles. The broad, quantitative analysis is complemented with a more in-depth qualitative analysis. We conduct a narrative policy analysis (Wagenaar 2011) of key negotiation coalitions, including the High Ambition Coalition and Like-Minded Developing Countries, to analyze how actors perceive the issues of equity and ambition, and how the two are interrelated.