Country targets, institutions and vulnerability - is there a pattern?
Short description
The emission reduction targets of countries as outlined in the INDCs (intended nationally determined contributions) vary widely between countries. In this project we will investigate if there exist patterns (correlations) between countries ambitions in terms of emission reduction targets and contextual and country specific characteristics.
The main factors that we hypothesize can explain differences in the ambition in the INDCs between countries are firstly vulnerability to climate change and endowment of fossil energy resources. But also factors such as degree of democracy and levels of corruption and general wealth (GDP per capita) could play a role.
Further, many developing countries have conditional reduction targets (conditional on receiving financial transfers) and we will also investigate if there are potential systematic differences between countries’ conditional and unconditional targets. The conditional targets are often conditional on receiving financial aid for mitigation and adaption. There are normally no specific amounts of aid specified in the INDCs, but we hypothesize that countries that have a bigger gap between the conditional and the unconditional target expect more financial transfers. Further, we will investigate whether country characteristics such as wealth (the poorer a country, the larger the difference), percentage of foreign aid received (the higher the share, the higher the difference), and the quality of institutions could have an impact.
Researchers (länkas till nya katalogen)
Åsa Löfgren and Simon Felgendreher, Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, Niklas Harring, Department of Political Science