Naming And Shaming Paris Agreement

4 It has been empirically shown that the threat of disapproval (i.e. employment) could lead to increased cooperation at the individual level; See (Jacquet et al. 2011; Jacquet 2015). One could argue that the ideal is to introduce legally enforceable obligations for companies. Assuming that “the cancellation of a serious global catastrophe is a moral and legal imperative,” a group of jurists and practitioners published the Oslo Principles, in which they affirm that “all states and companies have a direct moral and legal duty to prevent the adverse effects of climate change” (Spier et al. 2015, 1). Climate negotiations over the past two decades have focused on the extent of the state`s legal obligations. The moral and legal obligations of companies are a much less discussed topic. The authors of the Oslo Principles explicitly included companies as a second entity (besides states) because they are able to implement the GHG reductions necessary to avoid climate change.2 It is particularly important to consider the duties of these two most qualified parties, namely states and companies, because of a relevant interaction between these two parties; That is, states could play an important role in imposing certain restrictions on companies (legally binding or otherwise). Some scientists argue that the (legal) obligations of companies could be better interpreted as a direct responsibility of companies under the auspices of international law (e.g.B. Adeyeye 2007), but it is not the model chosen for the reduction of greenhouse gases at the international level, given that the Paris Agreement is an international agreement with nation-states as the only parties. States could also impose legal restrictions on companies in accordance with international agreements. This is to some extent the current practice, but, as we will discuss in the section “The inadequacy of the current approach: reluctance and incapacity of States”, it has serious shortcomings; That is, States may be unwilling and sometimes even unable to take action on NNMs; the phenomenon of the “race to the bottom” is also discussed in the section “The inadequacy of the current approach: the reluctance and incapacity of States”.

In the absence of effective legally enforceable rules, we need to look at alternatives such as incentives for voluntary commitments between companies and (non-mandatory) compliance mechanisms. In this regard, it is worth considering “Naming and Shaming” as one of the key strategies to sanction non-compliance with voluntary approaches. In a sense, Naming and Shaming is implicitly the strategy to ensure compliance between states. In the negotiations leading up to the Paris conference, it became clear that a legally binding agreement would not have a great chance of political success. . . .