Normative Climate Clubs: Mapping and Discussing 39 Cases' Core Features

As global efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C fall short, attention turns to other forms of climate governance, climate clubs, to increase climate ambition (Nordhaus, 2015; Unger et al., 2020; Falkner et al., 2021). So called “normative clubs” – minilateral groups of countries with a shared climate policy commitment (Falkner et al., 2021)– encompass a growing category that lacks empirical assessment (Unger et al., 2020). To address this gap and contribute a better empirical understanding of climate clubs, this paper asks: What is the nature and role of normative climate clubs in global climate governance? This paper conducts the first-ever comprehensive mapping of normative climate clubs, which represents an important empirical contribution. For a total of 39 cases, data was collected on clubs’ membership, sectoral focus, member benefits, legitimacy, monitoring and reporting, relationship with the Paris Agreement and overall function within global climate governance. The collected data is collated in excel and word and analyzed by creating tables, graphs and visualizations to identify similarities and differences between clubs as well as overall trends. Visualizing and discussing the collected data in light of debates in club scholarship about (a) their relationship vis-á-vis climate negotiations, (b) membership size and composition, (c) legitimacy and (d) benefits increases our understanding of normative clubs’ role in global climate politics. Preliminary findings show that the vast majority recognizes the Paris Agreement as a central authority in global climate governance and seeks to implement the Paris Agreement goals. Climate clubs, with a few exceptions, are multi-stakeholder clubs that incorporate various substate, non-state and supranational actors, which reflects a recurring aim to be an implementation network and to facilitate climate action with and beyond the state. Measuring legitimacy by who has joined the most clubs, there is a bias towards countries from Europe, North America, South and Latin America as well as English-speaking countries in the Asia-Pacific. Major emitter China, on the other hand, has only joined a handful of clubs. The term club has not been widely adopted as a name. Instead, “alliance” and “coalition” seem to be the most accepted descriptors. The final paper will present detailed discussions of all aspects and thereby contribute to our empirical knowledge of normative climate clubs as well as conceptual discussions.