China's rise to a great power and its increasing engagement with global governance have presented many empirical and conceptual puzzles to both academics and policy makers. What is China's own notion of its responsibility in global governance? And how does China understand its climate responsibility? Will China be able to take up the leadership in global climate governance?
Sanna Kopra's book attempts to address these questions through her examination of the ways in which the primary institution of great power management shapes the institutionalization of the international climate responsibility norm and China's role in this process. She argues that although China's climate policy is mainly driven by the domestic concerns of the Chinese Communist Party, China's evolving notion of responsibility has interacted with the international climate negotiations and has contributed to the institutionalization of international climate responsibility norm in the UNFCCC. However, she is less optimistic about the prospect of China taking up the climate leadership, as China attempts to downplay its climate mitigation obligations by seeking historical justice and the drivers of its climate policy are domestic interests. The possibility of China filling in the climate leadership vacuum is therefore small.
In this book, Kopra begins with the notion of responsibility, with regard to collective problem management in international society. Seeing the divide between the pluralist and solidarist camp within the English School, Kopra employs the state-centric solidarism proposed by Barry Buzan as her theoretical framework, acknowledging that the international society is still state-centric but also shares a relatively high degree of norms, rules, and institutions. She develops a new idea of responsibilization which indicates the process in which the conceptualization of responsibility is constructed during the social interaction between states. Her empirical cases illustrate the responsibilization process where great power management as the primary institution “constrains and enables” the institutionalization of the climate responsibility norm into the UNFCCC as the secondary institution. Specifically, she investigates how China's notion of climate responsibility has evolved and how this shift has changed the conceptualization of climate responsibility during climate negotiations. Finally, Kopra reaches the conclusion that great power management is critical to the change in international society.
Kopra's book bridges several gaps in existing literature. First, she makes a theoretical contribution in her application of the English School to global climate governance, noting that few English School theorists have looked at the environmental issue. Second, her book is also innovative, in the sense that she connects the idea of great power management to the non-traditional security issue of climate change. Empirically, she offers a comprehensive analysis of China's evolving notion of responsibility and climate responsibility, which provides valuable insights to the study of China's climate policy and China's approach to global governance. Tracing the evolving process of China's notion of climate responsibility since the Maoist period, she reaches the conclusion that China has contributed to the institutionalization of climate responsibility norm at the international level.
Climate responsibility and China's notion of climate responsibility serve as an excellent case to illuminate Kopra's idea of state-centric solidarism and responsibilization. Kopra acknowledges that climate change is an ethical issue, and she argues that the moral referent object of climate responsibility is not the citizens within one's territorial sovereignty but all of humankind. Nonetheless, she recognizes that the world society is limited in its capacity to address climate change. Thus, climate governance is an interesting case with which to examine the validity of state-centric solidarism. In addition, the change in China's notion of climate responsibility has accompanied the shift in the institutionalization of climate responsibility at the UNFCCC. Kopra argues that the shift in China's notion of climate responsibility is mainly driven by the CCP's concern of the regime legitimacy as China has been afflicted by air pollution and other environmental issues. On the other hand, at the international level, Kopra notes that China has contributed to the evolution of the norm of international climate responsibility.
However, Kopra's book is by no means perfect. First, as she argues that great power management is essential to institutionalizing the international climate responsibility norm, the concept of great power management suffers from the lack of conceptual clarity and the difficulty of operationalization. The author could have bolstered her theory, had she laid out the clear definition of great power management and made a conceptual distinction between great power management, cooperation, and recognition. Second, she argues that identity matters to China's climate policy. Apart from its persistent identity as a developing country, China begins to claim itself as a responsible major power. In China's collaboration with the US and the EU on the Paris Agreement, China stresses its identity as a responsible major power. Yet prior to 2014, China kept reiterating its identity as a developing country. At the end of the 28th BASIC Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change, China joined other BASIC member countries, calling for developed countries to “undertake ambitious actions” to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It might be an interesting question to ask what has led to the change in China's identity and how the duality of identity has impacted China's approach to climate governance.
Despite these minor issues, this book is a valuable contribution to the growing studies of global governance. The insight from this book sheds light on the intersection between domestic politics and international politics in the study of China's approach to global governance, and it is a must-read for anyone interested in climate governance and China's foreign policy.
