This article explains why and how hydrofluorocarbon governance shifted from the UNFCCC to the Montreal Protocol through the Kigali Amendment. This shift of hydrofluorocarbon governance from the central climate regime to the ozone regime is surprising: while the Montreal Protocol had the institutions and expertise to regulate HFCs, it lacked a mandate over non-ozone-depleting substances. By contrast, HFCs fell squarely under the UNFCCC’s mandate and were already addressed through its institutions. Existing studies on inter-institutional interplay and climate governance offer several accounts of why states may prefer alternative venues, but do not fully explain how functional advantages can drive a durable shift in issue governance despite jurisdictional constraints. This article argues that states may initiate such a shift when the destination regime’s capability advantage is sufficient to overcome its initial jurisdictional constraints. Because such a shift is costly, proponents may first need to build and demonstrate to other parties the functional readiness of the destination regime before the legal authority can be adjusted. This article reconstructs the negotiations leading to the Kigali Amendment, focusing on the regime shift of HFC governance from the climate to the ozone regime. It examines the proponents’ motivations, strategies, and sequencing in advancing the regime shift against strong mandate-based objections from opponent states. The article shows how states can reshape institutional authority within overlapping regimes and how specialized international institutions can become venues for sectoral climate mitigation.
Through the Paris Agreement’s commitment to making financial flows consistent with emissions reduction pathways, large institutional investors, including pension funds, have been implicitly conscripted into efforts to leave fossil fuels underground. Yet despite the attention to finance from international climate agreements, finance continues to fund fossil fuel expansion. Drawing on the emergent literature on finance-climate governance interactions, I explore how the intersection of these governance regimes impacts a specific actor (pension funds) and a specific issue area (management of pension fund fossil fuel assets). By analysing policy documents and voluntary investor initiatives, I map the multi-level institutional arrangements governing major pension funds in the US, UK, and the Netherlands across three governance regimes: pension governance, climate governance, and sustainable finance governance and make use of the governance stringency framework to compare the ways governance arrangements shape pension climate action and their contribution to phasing out fossil fuels. Climate governance has normatively linked financial action and climate mitigation, yet adopted no mechanisms to shape investor behaviour, while conversely, pension governance has integrated attention to climate to the extent that it poses financial risk, shifting the attention away from aligning financial flows towards managing climate risk. Prescriptive governance for pension climate action and its management of fossil fuel investments has been dominated by voluntary sustainable finance initiatives. While these fill important governance gaps, resolving the tensions between climate goals and pension regulation is something policy will need to address to take seriously the challenge of aligning financial flows with climate goals.
Participation in multilateral negotiations such as those on climate change is key to understanding negotiation processes and outcomes. Despite its importance, participation – what negotiators actually do – remains understudied and ill understood. We address this gap by examining participation in UN climate negotiations. Specifically, we collect data across all 198 Parties and 58 negotiation sessions (subsidiary body meetings, SBs, and Conferences of the Parties, COPs) since 1995 on a total of six activities across both negotiation and non-negotiation spaces: oral interventions, written submissions, and services as chairs for negotiation activities; and press conferences, side events, and exhibits for non-negotiation spaces. Our analysis shows that participation spans different spaces, even if negotiations dominate. Nevertheless, non-negotiation spaces are growing in importance, with COP15 serving as a turning point. Non-negotiation spaces complement negotiations: Parties active in negotiations also tend to pursue non-negotiation spaces. Finally, Parties differ strongly in the extent to which they engage, with many Parties remaining relatively passive, sometimes despite a continuous presence at negotiation sessions. These observations already help to understand UN climate negotiations better, but invite further work, including more qualitative research – for which our data can provide a helpful starting point.
Over 70% of all historical CO2 emissions are attributable to the 78 largest fossil fuel corporations and state-owned entities; however, only 5.7% of all climate court cases have been filed against these very companies. While scholars have analysed individual court cases and some have provided an overview of different cases, there is a lack of information on trends in private climate litigation (PCL) against fossil fuel companies across different geographies in terms of arguments used and success rates. Hence, this paper asks: How do spatio-contextual factors in private climate litigation against fossil fuel corporations contribute to leaving fossil fuels underground? Using a mixed-methods research approach (systematic literature review, interviews, a case study of cases against fossil fuel companies, and mapping), we conclude that: (i) the arguments used in the 173 PCL cases can be clustered into 9 categories; (ii) yearly PCL cases have seen steady growth after the 2015 Paris Agreement; (iii) corporate misconduct/deception has been cited most often as an argument, followed by civil liability, specific non-compliance with treaties and national legislation, breach of procedural norms, and human rights. (We also see an increasing number of cases where shareholders (mostly in the U.S.) are filing cases against investors, arguing that investing in fossil fuel is a breach of fiduciary duty); (iv) although most cases are filed in the U.S., the percentage of cases against fossil fuel companies there is the lowest; (v) Europe has seen the most influential wins - in national courts, but also at the International Court of Justice located in the Hague. U.S. cases have been relatively less successful for plaintiffs and face counter-litigation; (vi) The presence of national laws, such as the Duty of Vigilance Law in France and the Queensland Human Rights Act of 2017 helps plaintiffs to support their arguments. In showing how court cases are developing across different jurisdictions we are hoping to enhance understanding of the role of the courts in implementing the Climate Change Treaty regime.
Understanding the limits of existing fossil fuel phaseout policies is key for clarifying the challenges of phasing out fossil fuels. In this article, I focus on Denmark as a prominent example of the tension between ‘fossil fuel leadership’ and ‘fossil-fuelled leadership’ due to the conflict between its self-positioning as a first-moving global climate leader and continued and new oil and gas production despite its phaseout policy. I examine the origins, appeal, and limits of Denmark’s climate and fossil fuel leadership claims and ambitions, using novel data from 27 interviews with key Danish climate and energy stakeholders. I argue that Denmark’s leadership ambitions contain major limitations, because despite its attempt to provide first-mover leadership, Denmark’s fossil fuel policy is insufficient. If even one of the most ambitious supply-side leaders falls short of its responsibility, this shows the need for more credible and extensive fossil fuel phaseouts in the global climate governance architecture to become a serious force for limiting the climate crisis. As climate leadership must be credible to be effective, the Danish case offers important cautionary lessons for policy-makers from other fossil fuel producing countries as well as climate and energy scholars.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are intended to be integrated and indivisible, requiring governance approaches able to account for synergies and tradeoffs in their implementation. However, while a growing body of literature discusses SDG interlinkages, it remains largely theoretical, and only a few offer empirical insights, most of which focus on the national or subnational level. This article shifts the focus to transnational, voluntary governance efforts on a global level by analyzing over 3400 actions registered on the UN SDG Action Platform that simultaneously address two or more SDGs. Using descriptive statistics and network analysis, we find that social and environmental SDGs are more frequently prioritized than economic goals, and that cross-domain combinations are relatively rare. These findings raise important questions about the capacity of multistakeholder governance to foster integrated implementation of the SDGs. The article contributes to the literature on SDG interactions and multistakeholderism by addressing a key empirical gap and identifying governance gaps to address SDG interlinkages.
In May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) published an advisory opinion on climate change. Many expected that this decision would help to clarify the balance between the paradigms of ocean protection and utilisation in the context of climate change. This is especially relevant for governing emerging marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) approaches being proposed to increase the carbon drawdown potential of the ocean to mitigate climate change. Does mCDR constitute marine pollution or marine protection in the face of climate change? To help answer this question, we analyse the advisory opinion and map the different emerging interpretations of the decision in relation to mCDR. We find that, although the resulting advisory opinion provided clarity on the responsibility of states to protect the oceans from “pollution” by atmospheric CO2, it left a lot of room for ambiguity about whether mCDR would constitute marine pollution or marine protection in the face of climate change. We show how this ambiguous decision could be used politically to either promote or prevent problem shifting of the climate problem to the marine environment. We caution that international treaty bodies and national regulatory authorities should be prepared for these different interpretations to play a role in ongoing climate and ocean governance processes.
The United Nations (UN) High Impact Initiatives (HIIs) have received limited attention since their launch at the 2023 SDG Summit. We conceive of these novel institutional innovations to accelerate implementation of the 2030 Agenda as orchestration mechanisms for overseeing and governing via multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs). Although initially framed as partnership-like initiatives in their own right to promote bottom-up action on sustainable development, we find that the HIIs are a culmination of efforts by the UN Secretary-General to assert greater authority in global sustainability governance. This article traces the development of UN discourse on orchestration and MSPs over the past decade to situate the HIIs in the context of this shifting approach. It also assesses the functions of the HIIs as orchestration mechanisms for delivering progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using MSPs as governance intermediaries. We discuss the HIIs in the context of evolving UN bureaucratic politics and argue that they constitute both a response to the shortcomings of past MSPs and an attempt to reassert authority over transnational governance in the face of geopolitical turbulence as the SDGs slide further off track. Yet we also suggest that the HIIs are not well positioned to deliver transformative change and raise questions about the appropriate governance approach for the UN in the face of growing transnational crises and fragmentation.
The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) not only focused on intergovernmental negotiations, but also called for partnerships between member states and non-state actors. To this end, the summit secretariat with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) pursued a governance mode conceptually known as orchestration, softly enlisting intermediaries, in this case initiatives by and between public and private actors, to indirectly govern targets, such as member states. Even though initial conditions were adverse, every UN summit on sustainable development since then has orchestrated initiatives. Therefore, this article examines how orchestration has evolved, and what shapes this. To examine how it has evolved, it conceptualizes orchestration as thin or thick, depending on the mode of support the orchestrator offers to enlist intermediaries. To analyze what shapes this structurally on the macro-level, it scrutinizes the initiation of orchestration. To study how actors shape this on the micro-level, it conceptualizes different orchestration styles. It finds that overall orchestration of initiatives at UN summits on sustainable development has remained thin, even though UN DESA has tried to make orchestration thick. On the macro-level, UN DESA is structurally constrained by mandates and resources. On the micro-level, UN DESA initiates thin orchestration to raise awareness of non-state actors, build momentum and legitimate UN summits based on high quantities of enlisted initiatives. This creates trade-offs between orchestration styles, with thick orchestration and managing node orchestration styles potentially enlisting less initiatives. This has important implications for research assessing orchestrated initiatives.
In this article, we use translation and legitimation as a framework to analyze how the Global Water Partnership (GWP) translates ideas of partnership at the global level into partnering practices at the country level in South and South-East Asia. The United Nation 2030 Agenda promotes multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) as important means of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which gain legitimacy with a dedicated goal, SDG17. Little attention has been paid to how the dynamic between partnering and legitimation practices plays out across governance levels. With a focus on legitimacy, we therefore ask: How is partnership translated into practices across different levels of governance? We use qualitative document analysis, participatory observations, and in-depth interviews to study the partnering practices in GWP at different levels of governance. The analysis shows that while GWP’s translation of partnership on the global level has enabled it to act as a partner in a complex network of global organisations, at the national level partnership translates into loosely connected networks of partner organisations providing bottom-up legitimacy to the network. Partnering practices reveal that the identification as a neutral convener was a common legitimation practice across levels, and that this identity was challenged by changing accountability measures and relations between governance levels. Furthermore, the movement of water management into the issue area of climate change widened the scope of interventions and partners globally, while national level water sectors maintained strong siloed identities, which inhibited change through partnering practices. Our analysis demonstrates that partnerships, exemplified by the GWP, vary across governance levels and that the nature of partnering practices is strongly shaped by the legitimation of the partnership.
There is great variation among multistakeholder partnerships for the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development with regard to their lead actor and membership composition. While most such partnerships are led by international organizations and have state membership, others are business-led and lack involvement of states. The legitimacy of the latter have thus far received scant scholarly exploration in studies of the 2030 Agenda. This article evaluates the legitimacy of a business-led multistakeholder partnership seeking to advance the Sustainable Development Goals in the domain of aquaculture, namely the Global Salmon Initiative. We define three legitimacy standards against which this business-led partnership is assessed: procedural legitimacy, market legitimacy, and policy output legitimacy. Our analysis suggests that while the GSI benefits from procedural legitimacy through increased transparency, it is weaker with regard to accountability to external stakeholders. Rooted in the promotion of collaboration under competitive market dynamics, its market legitimacy rests on a fragile basis. While the GSI operates under the assumption of alignment between profit and sustainability, its relatively limited market coverage indicates lower market legitimacy than if a larger share of major companies in the farmed salmon industry were GSI members. The increase in ASC certification over the past ten years brings output legitimacy to the GSI in the narrow sense of policy output. However, embracing a broader mission has mixed consequences for long-term GSI output legitimacy.
The adoption of the 2030 Agenda marked a global commitment to address interconnected challenges through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) – involving public, private, and civil society actors – have been widely promoted as vital instruments for achieving the SDGs due to their potential for pooling diverse resources and fostering cross-sector collaboration. However, empirical evidence of their effectiveness remains mixed. This study investigates whether MSPs are more synergistic and transformative compared to single-sector partnerships (SSPs), focusing on their integration of economic, environmental, and social dimensions, and their contributions to norm, regulatory, and behavioral change. Using a matched case selection design, we compare MSPs and SSPs registered on the Global Climate Action Portal (GCAP), analyzing their visions, outputs, and outcomes across different thematic areas: sustainable urban mobility, climate-focused finance, energy efficiency and sustainable land use. Findings indicate that differences in synergistic and transformative capacity are more strongly influenced by thematic area than by partnership type. While MSPs occasionally exhibit broader transformative capacity, SSPs – both public and private – also demonstrate significant normative outputs and normative and behavioral outcomes. Notably, integration of all three sustainability pillars is more apparent in stated visions than in realized outputs or outcomes. These findings challenge assumptions about the inherent superiority of MSPs, and underscore the importance of context and thematic focus in shaping partnership performance. By comparing MSPs and SSPs directly, and by evaluating both outputs and outcomes, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of what makes partnerships effective in advancing sustainable development.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) are expected to connect actors across sectors and levels of society to facilitate the implementation of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet their effectiveness is debated. Given the aspirational character of the SDGs and the lack of progress by UN member states, however, the ability of MSPs to translate global goals into context-specific solutions remains a salient puzzle. Combining the governance-through-goals literature with research on partnership effectiveness and aspirational politics, this article addresses whether and how MSPs’ lofty goals are effectively translated into action. The article thus examines the potential effectiveness of MSPs with vague but ambitious goals by applying the Function-Output-Fit (FOF) framework, allowing a comparison between intended governance functions (what they say they do) and outputs (what they do). Conceptually, the article discusses the characteristics of distinct goals in sustainability governance and their role in explaining the effectiveness of MSPs. The empirical contribution to the Special Issue lies in the original evidence of whether and how MSPs with lofty goals have a high level of potential effectiveness; however, this is limited to a small range of governance functions.
This article assesses the outcomes of international negotiations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for the prospects of achieving the 2030 and 2050 goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It analyzes CBD official documents and participant observations during the first and resumed session of the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16), which respectively took place in Cali, Colombia, in 2024 and Rome, Italy, in 2025. To what extent, we probe, do the negotiated outcomes of COP 16 represent meaningful progress toward the goals and targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework? We situate our analysis within the political economy of global biodiversity governance, as this context is essential for evaluating the outcomes of COP 16 and identifying productive ways forward. There were, we find, significant achievements, including the creation of a new subsidiary body for Indigenous and local peoples, new and more equitable financing, and additional technical and scientific support for implementation. Yet, we argue, progress remains too slow, incremental, and piecemeal to prevent widespread, irreversible biodiversity loss. Financing remains insufficient and inequitable. And corporate extraction and state policies continue to destroy biodiversity to spur growth. There is, moreover, uneven and unstable political support for the CBD, coupled with a persistent reluctance from some states and industry to take meaningful steps toward protecting biodiversity.
This article examines the concept of data federalization as an innovative legal mechanism designed to enhance ecosystem protection through the integration of global computational systems. As the world faces increasing environmental degradation, there is a pressing need for effective legal frameworks that leverage technology. The article explores the regulatory and social challenges associated with data federalization, including issues of jurisdiction, data privacy, power dynamics, and the harmonization of international laws. By investigating these challenges, the article highlights their significant impact on existing environmental law, underscoring the necessity for adaptable legal strategies that can address contemporary ecological threats. Furthermore, it discusses the potential benefits of implementing a data federalization framework, such as improved data sharing among nations, enhanced monitoring of biodiversity, and more effective response strategies to environmental crises. Through a comprehensive exploration of these themes, the article aims to propose elements for a future International Treaty as well as contribute to the ongoing discussion about the intersection of law, technology, and environmental stewardship, advocating for stronger legal solutions to safeguard our planet’s ecosystems.
Achieving sustainable environmental outcomes remains a pressing challenge for large economies, where structural, policy, and demographic factors interact in complex ways. This paper examines the determinants of environmental performance in G20 economies from 2000 to 2024, using the environmental performance index, a multidimensional measure covering climate change, air quality, biodiversity, and waste. Explanatory variables include the economic complexity, environmental regulation, economic growth, foreign direct investment, renewable energy, and urbanization to account for macroeconomic and structural dynamics. A cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model is employed. Results show that economic complexity, regulatory stringency, and renewable energy significantly improve environmental performance, while economic growth follows an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) trajectory. Additionally, urbanization demonstrates a positive long-run effect on environmental performance. Empirical findings from the augmented mean group (AMG) and common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) approaches further validate the robustness of the baseline results. The heterogeneous analysis reveals notable structural differences between advanced (G7) and emerging (E7) economies, with the magnitude and significance of the long- and short-run effects varying across the two groups. In particular, the positive impact of economic complexity and environmental regulation is more pronounced and consistent in G7 economies compared to E7 economies. The findings underscore the need for differentiated yet coordinated policy strategies within the G20 to enhance environmental outcomes and ensure alignment with global climate commitments.
This paper investigates whether Italian provinces converge toward national CO_2 reduction targets under a multilevel governance framework. Combining a theoretical model of provincial decision-making with Phillips and Sul’s club convergence method and multilevel regression controls, the study disentangles structural constraints from discretionary environmental behaviour. Results show that divergence largely reflects economic and institutional heterogeneity. Once adjusted, most provinces exhibit relative convergence, suggesting effective local strategies despite uneven starting conditions. These findings highlight the need for differentiated climate targets and tailored policy instruments to ensure a territorially balanced ecological transition. The analysis offers actionable insights for climate governance in decentralized systems.
How do lower income countries (LICs) shape multilateral environmental agreements’ (MEAs) dynamism, i.e., the introduction of new legal commitments into treaty frameworks? I argue that LICs often have incentives to pursue treaty amendments that strengthen environmental commitments. However, when LICs are more deeply integrated into global trade and reliant on environmentally intensive exports, structural constraints may discourage support for MEA adaptation. In such contexts, trade dependence can undermine environmental ambition, making MEAs with a larger number of LIC members less likely to be dynamic. Drawing on the most comprehensive quantitative dataset of MEAs since 1945, the analysis shows how global economic integration conditions environmental governance and highlights persistent barriers to treaty dynamism in the Global South.
Recent scholarship in global sustainability governance suggests that transnational multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) have the potential to effectively govern synergies and trade-offs among Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, there is limited empirical evidence on the extent to which MSPs address key interconnections among SDGs and the factors that shape MSPs’ effectiveness to address these connections. This paper develops a methodology to assess and explain the effectiveness of a sample of MSPs to address key SDG nexuses in an international development context through their output activities, by studying 50 MSPs registered in the SIDS Action Platform in 2019 that aimed at addressing climate change (SDG13) in Pacific SIDS (PSIDS). Using a novel measure of partnership’s output-SDG fit and descriptive statistics, the paper links scientific evidence on climate-SDG interactions with the demand for climate-SDG nexus governance in PSIDS, and compares it to the supply of MSPs with SDG-aligned outputs. Results suggest the sample of MSPs (which consisted mostly of transnational adaptation initiatives) addressed a narrow set of climate-SDG nexuses with a clustering of MSPs with outputs focused on the climate-ocean (SDG13-14) nexus and relatively few MSPs with outputs focused on the climate-development nexus (in particular, SDG13-1,3,5,9,10). The paper further adds by discussing factors that likely shaped MSPs' (in) effectiveness to address these nexuses at the meta-governance level, identifying supply-side factors such as UN conferences and (PSIDS limited) access to finance, and demand-side factors such as geography and development needs that help to explain observed supply and demand imbalances.
