The New Governance of Climate Change: Reconceptualizing Common Concern to Embrace Non-State Actors

The current global governance of climate change involves a wide range of state and non-state actors interacting in a variety of international and national processes. At its center is the global climate treaty regime, which, as an international treaty-making forum, is formally viewed as a primarily state-centered exercise. Yet, the Conferences of the Parties of the global climate treaty regime includes a wide and dynamic mix of non-state participants, including representatives from civil society organizations, youth coalitions, indigenous groups, academia, and the private sector. These representatives raise important perspectives on the disproportionate impacts of climate change and climate change policies. Amplifying these non-state voices and integrating them further into policy-setting discussions is imperative for addressing climate change and allocating limited resources in an effective, fair, and equitable manner.

However, during the last 30 years since the adoption of the first climate convention, and even as the evolution in global climate governance has diversified to other forums and reflected the engagement of such a wide variety of non-state actors, the climate change regime has formally remained a solely state-centered enterprise. The regime operates only on states’ participation—responsibility and accountability do not extend beyond the states. This narrow view, reinforced by the traditional view of international law, bifurcates the global response to climate change according to the outdated views of sovereignty and hard law.

To integrate non-state actors' participation in and contribution to climate mitigation and adaptation, this thesis argues that the boundaries of international climate law should be expanded through reconceptualization of the common concern principle. By analyzing the limitations of the state-centered approach and reinterpreting the narrative of international law-making through the lens of constructivism, this thesis clarifies the meaning and implications of common concern and introduces a conceptual model that harmonizes spatial (state actors), social (non-state actors), and temporal (future generations) elements. Whereas the current function of common concern assumes a traditional view of the concept as a call for states to cooperate towards a common objective, the conceptual model presented here further develops the concept of common concern into a socially constructed principle. Thus, redefined, common concern both explains and justifies the new governance of climate change, in which non-state actors play an equally important role as state actors in contributing and responding to the constant formation and deformation of what international environmental law is and what it should be.

The last chapter includes specific examples of how the common concern principle can serve as a guiding framework for the new governance of climate change. The thesis focuses on the private sector and civil society, highlighting the different roles they play; the private sector bears the responsibility to reduce business impact on the environment while civil society participates in global climate action to ensure that safeguards are in place and the rights and interests of vulnerable groups are protected. For the private sector, the author suggests establishing Corporate Determined Contributions (CDCs) to align and catalyze private climate efforts alongside the existing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Lastly, the chapter provides some practical recommendations to empower civil society under the new governance of climate change, including mobilizing non-state coalitions to respond to urgent environmental crises with global effects, strengthening the civil society's role in the UNFCCC reporting framework, and amplifying the voices of those affected by climate change within international institutions to ease plaintiffs' burden of proving standing in climate lawsuits.