The International Politics of Carbon Dioxide Removal: Pathways to Cooperative Global Governance

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios that limit warming to 1.5°C require that, in addition to unprecedented reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, between 100 and 1,000 metric gigatons of CO2 be removed from the atmosphere before 2100. Despite this, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not yet firmly on national or global policy agendas. Owing to uncertainty about both technical potential and social license, it is unclear whether CDR on the required scale will even be feasible. This article asks what scholarship about the provision of global public goods can tell us about governing CDR. We identify four areas where new international cooperative efforts—likely performed by small clubs of motivated actors—could amplify existing CDR policy responses: development of CDR accounting and reporting methodologies, technological and prototype deployment for technically challenging CDR, development of incentives for CDR deployment, and work on governance and accountability mechanisms that respond to social justice impacts and social license concerns.

Paradoxes of Visibility and Preservation: Cultural Heritage Law and the Making of the City as an International Legal Category

The push for cities to be a part of international legal governance processes is tied to the promise of bridging international law’s democratic deficit. However, the exercise of cities’ personality in international law can end up replicating many of the same democratic deficits with which international law is usually charged. Therefore, cities as agents may be an unsatisfactory way of addressing international law’s democratic deficits. Instead, cities as objects can raise the visibility of cities and the local communities that live therein, but without giving agency to a State actor. This visibility can then pave the way for communities themselves to be directly involved in international legal governance processes. This article uses the example of international heritage law, where cities are very significantly represented in international heritage lists and even a specific instrument (the 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape) to showcase the limitations and possibilities of the project of cities in international law. I argue that there is a paradox of visibility and agency that permeates international legal possibilities for cities, and placing the city simultaneously in the registers of object and subject ultimately defers the central question of community involvement in international law on global public goods.

Beware the Kindleberger Trap in Global Health Governance

The Covid-19 pandemic is both a public health crisis and a stress test for global health governance. Effective health governance hinges on the provision of global public goods for health. Generally, the hegemon underwrites the operation and stability of the global public health architecture by ensuring the sustained supply of global public goods for health. But when the hegemon is unable or unwilling to shoulder this responsibility, global health governance may run the risk of falling into a Kindleberger Trap. The leadership vacuum that is opening up amid the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the process. At present, China should adopt a three-pronged approach to promote bilateral health cooperation with leading countries like the United States, strengthen regional institution-building with ASEAN, South Korea, Japan, and Belt and Road countries, and improve the performance, credibility, and integrity of global organizations like the WHO and G-20. The Kindleberger Trap in global health governance can be overcome by adapting regional health coordination to make it more agile and effective.

A Global Public Good? An Empirical Perspective on International Investment Law and Arbitration

The relationship between the concepts of international investment law and global public goods poses two essential challenges. The first is whether the international investment regime by design is a global public good. The second is whether the regime delivers benefits that are public and global in nature. This chapter addresses these two challenges through a largely empirical perspective. Drawing on three datasets, the authors seek to move beyond the current theorizing in the literature on this theme and base their findings on a comprehensive de jure and de facto analysis. After having discussed the idea of global public goods, they find that the regime high levels of de facto exclusion and in places rivalry, together with an uneven distribution of benefits, such that the international investment regime only partly fits the requirements for a global public good.

Enhancing ICJ Procedures in Order to Promote Fundamental Values

By developing international law, international courts – ‘intermediate Global Public Goods (GPG)’ – can also contribute to the protection and promotion of final GPG. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in particular, is capable of promoting GPG by adjudicating inter-state claims. However, one of the main obstacles faced by the World Court relates to the existing tension between the bilateral nature of its own proceedings and the multilateral nature of the conflicting substantive law. Considering that procedure may guide and shape the application of substantive law, it will be argued that it should itself be interpreted and developed in a manner to ensure community interests. This chapter argues that the Court should assume expanded procedural powers in order to ensure the effective application of substantive law whenever GPG are at issue. Most procedural rules can be adjusted and tailored for multiparty aspects with the aim of protecting community interests and enhancing the international court’s legitimacy.

The Protection of General Interests in Contemporary International Law

This book is aimed at analysing the notions of global public goods, global commons, and fundamental values as conceptual tools geared towards the protection of the general interests of the international community. After having provided the readers with a general overview of the abovementioned concepts, the book examines how international law has responded to what qualifies as global public goods, global commons, and fundamental values in a wide range of fields. Moreover, the work also investigates how global governance has improved (or worsened) this response. Authors have discussed which general interests have or have not been deemed to deserve the protection of international law in one or more of the categories under scrutiny, and why; they have also explored the legal foundation of such interests in international law. In addition, they have focused on whether and how it is appropriate that international law intervenes to regulate such interests, taking into account the interplay between the multiple actors of international law, ranging from states, international and regional organizations, and non-state actors. They have further explored how states and other actors have used international law to protect general interests, what lessons can be learned from these efforts, and what main challenges still need to be addressed. Looking at international law through the prism of global public goods, global commons, and fundamental values has also implied an in-depth examination of different substantive regimes, such as, e.g. those regulating human rights, the protection of the environment, and international economic law.

The Protection of General Interests in Contemporary International Law

This introductory chapter expounds on the characterization of the notions of global public goods (GPGs), global commons, and fundamental values (the objects of this book) as conceptual tools geared towards the protection of the general interests of the international community, with a view to providing a unifying perspective to read the contributions collected in this volume. In addition, this chapter explains why the notion of global governance is equally essential for the purposes of this inquiry.