Governing embodied emissions: informational institutions and the evolution towards consumption-based approaches in climate policy

The failure to include greenhouse gas emissions embodied in trade is one of the biggest stumbling blocks on the road to more effective global climate governance. The thesis traces how the combined informational effects of a diverse set of environmental policies and initiatives have enabled the emergence of institutions facilitating the production of reasoned estimates on the carbon embodied in products and services. The availability of information on the emissions embodied in products allows novel actor coalitions to emerge and advocate for a variety of different policies utilising such information in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The thesis analyses how differences in policy design lead to variation in business support. Embodied emissions policies can be seen as a way of imposing decentralised graduated sanctions on non-cooperative actors which promises to profoundly improve the prospects of polycentric climate governance. The thesis provides an original contribution to scholarship on global environmental governance and environmental policy by analysing the institutional and political dynamics of the emerging ensemble of institutions that provide the informational basis for governing the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in trade. It demonstrates that complex informational and political effects need to be taken into consideration in the valuation of individual policies. It concludes with concrete policy advice for decision-makers