Non Traditional Diplomacy Discussion Discussion prompt for reflection: To what extent can non-traditional diplomacy—from people-to-people relations, to com

Non Traditional Diplomacy Discussion Discussion prompt for reflection: To what extent can non-traditional diplomacy—from people-to-people relations, to commercial capacity building, and other cooperation types—help prevent U.S.-China conflict, or at least reduce the probability of it? How?400 wordAssigned readings:Benjamin Leffel, 2017, “Subnational Diplomacy, Climate Governance and Californian Global Leadership,” Center on Public Diplomacy Policy Report, March, 1-11.David Pak Yue Leon, “Economic Interdependence and International Conflict: Situating China’s Economic and Military Rise,” Asian Politics & Policy, vol. 9, no. 1, 2017, 9-30. VIDEO: Ben Leffel speaks about subnational U.S.-China relations, climate change, perception management and peace outcomes: https://vimeo.com/meragecomputing/review/273539195/71e32e7e75 Benjamin Leffel, “U.S.-China city diplomacy: Sister city contributions to peace, commerce and governance,” Sister Cities International https://sistercities.org/2018/05/03/u-s-china-city-diplomacy-sister-city-contributions-to-peace-commerce-and-governance/ Subnational Diplomacy,
Climate Governance &
Californian Global Leadership
Benjamin Leffel
About the Author
Benjamin Leffel is a Sociology Ph.D. student and Kugelman Research
Fellow for the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of
California, Irvine and co-creator of the Center for Innovative Diplomacy
Archive in the California Digital Library. His research on subnational
networking, city diplomacy and Sino-foreign relations has informed the
work of scholars and governments in the U.S., Britain and China.
About CPD
About CPD
The USC Center on Public Diplomacy (CPD) was established in 2003
as a partnership between the Annenberg School for Communication
and Journalism and the School of International Relations at the
University of Southern California. It is a research, analysis and
professional education organization dedicated to furthering the study
and practice of global public engagement and cultural relations.
USCPublicDiplomacy.org
USCPublicDiplomacy.org
March 2018
Subnational Diplomacy, Climate Governance
& Californian Global Leadership
Benjamin Leffel
INTRODUCTION
The traditionally nation-state-dominated arena of global climate change governance has become
increasingly populated by subnational governments and the coalitions and networks they form. Contra
the existing unitary, state-centric and top-down structures of the United Nations (UN), this has produced
a new international plane of climate mitigation activities where multiple centers of bottom-up power and
influence exist, a growing landscape of “polycentric climate governance.”1
While this new plane operates independently from and parallel to traditional global climate governance
structures, the two are also increasingly collaborating with one another, a trend being called “hybrid
multilateralism.”2 In both cases, subnational actors are demonstrating their crucial potential to reduce
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and thus directly contribute to climate governance goals pursued by
the nations of the world. Illustrative of this potential is the case of the State of California, its subnational
coalition building both globally and vis-à-vis the U.S. and China, and the resultant direct support for Paris
Agreement goals in the absence of U.S. federal leadership.
As the structures of global climate governance evolve, so too does the conduct of international
communication. Whereas the role of local governments in traditional public diplomacy was to
communicate the will of national governments abroad,3 the new public diplomacy involves subnational
authorities pursuing their own international policy communication goals.4 A live example is the ongoing
response by local authorities to U.S. President Trump’s mid-2017 announcement of intent to withdraw
the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, as leading subnational authorities in California and elsewhere are
using public diplomacy channels to communicate, inspire and recruit more participants to fill this federal
leadership gap. These dynamics are embedded in larger, broader contexts beyond just the issue of
environmental protection and the current era. Subnational diplomacy involves state/provincial and/or
local leaders claiming political authority in foreign affairs,5 which may be in opposition to national
policies and may fill the void of policy leadership left by ineffectual national governments, or may assist
national governments by adding capacity from below.
1
The late Cold War saw many examples of subnational diplomacy in opposition to national policies.6
Throughout the 1980s—fearing nuclear annihilation via the U.S.-Soviet arms races—nearly 4,000 locales
in 17 countries, including hundreds in the U.S., declared themselves nuclear-free zones, prohibiting
nuclear weapons production-related activities to take place within their jurisdictions.7 City governments
organized into broader efforts to advocate for nuclear abolition, through creating organizations such
as Mayors for Peace and convening meetings such as the World Conference of Mayors for Peace
Through Inter-city Solidarity in Hiroshima.8 After the Reagan administration and Congress failed to place
hard corporate sanctions on Apartheid South Africa, U.S. cities divested $450 billion worth of stock
in companies that did business in South Africa,9 and by 1990, 59 cities, 25 states and 13 counties had
enacted some type of legislation banning investments in South Africa.10 Civil war in Central America
induced by the Reagan administration’s funding of anti-communist forces resulted in several U.S.
cities establishing sister city relationships with Central American cities to send aid, as well as declaring
themselves sanctuary cities and states for refugees fleeing from the region.11 Even the State of Wisconsin
became a sanctuary state,12 reflective of California’s recent decision to do the same.13
Subnational diplomacy used for supplementing national efforts from below has been seen in its
application for peacebuilding. For example, after the war between Serbia and Croatia ended in 1995, a
range of Croatian municipalities via UN intervention cooperated to restore ethnically fair distribution of
public services, facilitated inter-ethnic trust building, and ultimately helped prevent ethnic violence in
the post-conflict period. The Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East was created via The Hague
in 2005, which used joint initiatives with the Association of Palestinian Local Authorities and the Union
of Local Authorities of Israel to facilitate municipal cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli local
authorities, and to contribute to much-needed trust building.14
The varied applications of subnational diplomacy have also found local actors assuming new roles
as sponsors, facilitators and communicators of public diplomacy, where “enhancing communication
between localities may result in better perception and understanding of the countries involved and
represented.”15 For instance, Taiwan faces difficulties in achieving economic and public diplomacy goals
due to lack of formal diplomatic recognition; however it bypasses these difficulties by using sister city
relationships and other city government international networking mechanisms to create new trade,
investment and branding opportunities.16
SUBNATIONAL COALITIONS & GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: CLIMATE CHANGE
As a means of adding subnational capacity to national policy efforts, subnational diplomacy can play
a prominent role in the global fight against climate change. The formal regime for global climate
governance, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), convenes UN member
states annually at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to advance the agenda for global climate change
mitigation, adaptation and resilience agenda. It is national government parties that are tasked with
2
carrying out emissions reductions, agreed to in state parties’ Nationally Determined Contributions
(NDCs) to the Paris Agreement. However, when calculating NDCs, national governments normally do
not fully take into account the emissions reduction capacities of their subnational jurisdictions, resulting
in NDCs that may not be as high as they otherwise would be.
The new public diplomacy involves subnational authorities
pursuing their own international policy communication goals.
It has therefore become increasingly apparent that for NDCs to more fully reflect national emissions
reduction capacity, subnational capacity must be better incorporated into NDC calculations.17 COP19
(2013) produced the decision to further engage cities and subnational authorities for this purpose, and
COP20 (2014) established the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA) to further incorporate
subnational entities’ commitments to help nation-state parties exceed the level of their current NDCs.18
The principal entity facilitating this incorporation is the carbonn Climate Registry®, which is run by ICLEILocal Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) and directly collects the emissions reduction commitments
of 1,019 reporting subnational governments from 86 countries, and serves as the prime data partner
of NAZCA. The Registry provides national government actors access to information on their respective
subnational governments’ emissions reduction capacity needed to more accurately calculate—and scale
up—their NDCs. The collective emissions reductions made by NDCs submitted by nation-state parties as
of November 2017 suffer from an “emissions gap:” They fall short by 22-26 gigatons of CO2 equivalent
(GtCO2e) of what is needed to limit global temperature rise to 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels by
2030.19 However, according to the Registry’s 2017 report, commitments by their reporting subnational
jurisdictions can reduce emissions by 5.6 GtCO2e by 2020 and 26.8 GtCO2e by 2050.20 These projected
emissions reductions provide a start to what could make the deciding difference on whether global
climate mitigation efforts succeed. That is, if enough new and additional subnational jurisdictions make
and report emissions reduction commitments to the Registry, and if these are successfully incorporated
into nation-states’ NDCs, the resultant scaling-up of NDCs could fill the emissions gap.
The key body within the UNFCCC facilitating the contributions of subnational authorities is the Local
Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) constituency, which is led by ICLEI, the largest existing
global network of city governments for environmental protection. ICLEI is a transnational municipal
network (TMN), or a formalized association of city governments that solve collective urban and broader
global problems, which exists alongside and often cooperates with other TMNs.21 Over time, LGMA has
incorporated other TMNs, such as the climate change-focused C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group
(C40) and Regions of Climate Action (R20), and the more broadly focused United Cities and Local
Governments (UCLG). At COP21 (2015), the Paris Agreement was adopted, replacing the Kyoto Protocol
as the world’s collective climate action accord, categorizing cities as “non-party stakeholders,” and
further calling on nation-state parties to work with subnational authorities to strengthen their climate
3
mitigation activities.22 COP22 (2016) further cemented the role of subnational governments as key
partners to nation-state parties in supporting and implementing NDCs.23 Even more concisely, COP23
(2017) produced the “Bonn-Fiji Commitment of Local and Regional Leaders,” in which subnational
authorities pledged to establish their own “Locally and Regionally Determined Contributions” to help
national governments achieve and exceed existing NDCs. This can act as a key mechanism driving
forward the scaling-up of NDCs by way of central-local contact and collaboration. The ultimate result of
scaling-up efforts will not be observable until state parties submit updated NDCs in 2020, per the Paris
Agreement. In the meantime, state parties, subnational leaders and other stakeholders are taking stock
of their emissions reduction capacities and pressing for increased ambition to that end via the Talanoa
Dialogue, a stocktaking exercise that will conclude at COP24 (2018).
The manner of inducing participation in the above begs attention. National governments can and are
encouraged to legally require subnational governments to join climate initiatives and networks, to make
emissions reduction commitments and to report them, but for various reasons this does not always
happen. This leaves a large margin in which subnational governments voluntarily join, commit and
report, wherein they are inspired rather than required to do so. Such recruitment by inspiration requires
effective and far-reaching communication targeting subnational actors, a role increasingly assumed
by TMNs and other subnational initiatives. This work of recruitment by inspiration perforce grants the
public diplomacy of subnational actors a directly functional role in the immediate climate change fight.
Following President Trump’s June 2017 announcement of his intention to withdraw the U.S. federal
government from the Paris Agreement, California Governor Jerry Brown and other likeminded American
subnational leaders forged the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of U.S. states and cities upholding the
U.S. commitment to the Paris Agreement from the bottom-up. In furtherance of these commitments,
they also established America’s Pledge, which aims to track and quantify the impact of U.S. non-federal
climate action, including local emissions reduction capacities. All of these efforts were designed to
enable these subnational authorities to quantify the contribution of their emissions reduction efforts and
capacities. Although the U.S. federal government did not open a pavilion at COP23, Governor Brown, in
his capacity as COP23’s Special Envoy for States and Regions, and a coalition of U.S. subnational leaders
opened their own unofficial pavilion under the banner, “America’s Pledge: We Are Still In.”
President Trump’s withdrawal of federal support for the Paris Agreement might have signaled to the rest
of the world that the United States as a whole no longer considered climate change mitigation to be a
policy priority. However, the ongoing efforts of organized subnational leaders like Governor Brown have
clearly communicated that this is not the case. Instead of communicating national government policies
abroad, per the traditional public diplomacy role of subnational actors,24 in this case local leaders are
communicating the policy ambitions of the national society, or a large portion of it. Brown’s efforts
speak to the capacity that subnational actors play a significant public diplomacy role.
4
CALIFORNIAN SUBNATIONAL DIPLOMACY
Another example of California’s climate action illustrates the use of subnational diplomacy to exercise
policy leadership in the absence of national intervention and to add capacity to nationally relevant efforts
from below. Under Governor Schwarzenegger, California passed the Global Warming Solutions Act of
2006, a GHG reduction measure with a cap-and-trade program placing a ceiling on statewide GHG
emissions, the first program of its kind on this scale in the U.S. It also achieved a linkage of California and
Quebec’s cap-and-trade program,25 the first of its kind in North America. In 2010, after judging COP15
to have been a failure, Governor Schwarzenegger launched Regions of Climate Action (R20), a climate
change-focused transnational network of subnational governments improving local emissions reduction
capacity the world over, which comprises more than 40 government members.
Schwarzenegger’s successor, Jerry Brown, led formation of the Under2MOU in 2015,26 which began
as a coalition of subnational governments committing to emissions reduction in advance of COP21,
and today has more than 170 subnational governments across 33 countries as signatories.27 In 2016,
Governor Brown convened an inaugural “Sub-national Clean Energy Ministerial” to bring new signatories
onto the Under2 agreement. The second iteration of the Ministerial took place in Beijing in early June
2017, and because this coincided with President Trump’s announcement of the U.S.’ withdrawal from
the Paris Agreement, the Ministerial turned into a platform on which several states and cities from the
U.S. and elsewhere would reaffirm their commitment to the Paris Agreement.28 The Under2 agreement
consequently gained several new endorsers, including subnational governments and the nation of
Denmark.29
Under the mantle of leadership that Brown assumed during the unofficial U.S. pavilion at COP23 and
the Under2 agreement efforts, Governor Brown and the State of California will convene the “Global
Climate Action Summit” in September 2018. At this summit the world’s subnational governments,
associated networks, private enterprises and NGOs will be invited to “spur deeper commitment from
all parties, including national governments.”30 The Summit’s goal is to “galvanize a global movement
beyond national governments, to the people to take on the threat of climate change.”31 Because the
Summit is also intended to build subnational capacity and momentum for COP24 in Poland to be held
later in 2018,32 it constitutes both a parallel and complimentary effort to the UNFCCC climate regime.
Sponsored by the UN, this Summit will be the largest convening yet of subnational leaders to help
national governments achieve and exceed their existing NDCs, yielding further structural capacity for
local authorities to contribute directly to global climate governance.
Equally interesting is what cannot easily be foreseen. Beyond helping nations exceed NDCs, what new
post-Summit subnational climate initiatives will emerge? And what form will they take within the LGMA,
city networks like C40 and individual subnational governments? Most of the answers will likely come
only after the Summit itself but will offer important considerations for city diplomacy discussion. Even
5
as California is leading global-scale climate action, it is also brokering between the world’s first- and
second-largest emitters of GHGs: China and the U.S.
U.S.-CHINA CLIMATE COOPERATION VIA SUBNATIONAL TIES
In 2014 U.S. and Chinese Presidents Obama and Xi agreed to a bilateral “U.S.-China climate deal”
through which both nations would engage in climate mitigation activities, including subnational
initiatives. This led to the establishment of the “U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group,” which
housed the U.S.-China Climate Smart Cities Initiative that spurred cities in both countries to make further
emissions reductions commitments and to mutually build climate action capacity.33 The Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab’s China Energy Group in California played, and continues to play, a crucial role
in the facilitation of knowledge flows. The Energy Foundation, which is headquartered in California,
also is a mainstay in the above initiatives, and further works with the Chinese national and municipal
governments to reduce carbon emissions through its Low Carbon Cities Program. In 2013, the State
of California, via Governor Brown, signed an MOU with China’s National Development and Reform
Commission, agreeing to cooperate on the exchange of policy planning and technology pertaining to
emissions reduction. This agreement was a result of California’s ambitious GHG limits and cap-and-trade
system, and was the first-ever agreement made between a Chinese national government entity and a
foreign subnational government.34
Arguably the largest critical mass of U.S.-China
climate change cooperation infrastructure outside of
Washington now rests in California.
Also in 2013, and also attributed to California’s emissions reduction-related policy expertise,35 the State
of California and the city of Shenzhen—arguably the most active low carbon innovator in China—
entered into an agreement whereby California and Shenzhen would exchange low-carbon policy
knowledge, mutually grow their low carbon technology markets, and further reduce GHG emissions.36
Former Governor Schwarzenegger’s climate network, R20, is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, but
nevertheless constitutes important connective network tissue in California-China climate cooperation.
Since 2014, R20’s Chief for China, Dr. Yufu Cheng, has made important strides for R20 efforts in China,
signing an MOU with Shenzhen’s International Academy of Low-Carbon Development to advance lowcarbon project development and financing in Shenzhen, and to build further cooperative capacity with
other Chinese cities.37
Further still, in 2017 the State of California entered into an agreement with China’s Ministry of Science
and Technology to establish the California-China Clean Technology Partnership, in which subnatio…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment