The Turn to Market-liberalism: The Asia Pacific Partnership and Contestation Over the Shape of the Post-2012 Climate Regime.

This paper analyses fragmentation in the dialogue on the future of international climate regime by focussing on the US-inspired Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP). The APP is an international climate agreement formed outside the UN in 2005 that involves China, India, South Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia and the US. The APP is directed at using industry specific public-private task forces to remedy informational and coordination failures in markets for cleaner technologies and management practices. The APP fails to regulate to place a price on carbon emissions or provide binding national targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Significantly, the APP model offers a subtle retreat from the burden sharing principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) agreed between the developed and developing world in the UNFCCC. It favours a strengthened market liberal approach to international climate policy that recasts the relationship between developed and developing nations in responding to climate change in largely trade-based terms. The George W. Bush administration has heavily promoted the APP as a model for the future of the international climate regime. Key elements of the APP model were included in the APEC Sydney Declaration in 2007 and advocated by the US in the Major Economies Process during 2008. The strengthened market liberalism of the APP model signals a possible path for discussions on the post-2012 climate regime. However, a future climate regime based heavily on the APP model is unlikely to provide an effective global climate change response. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]