States’ Climate Governance Capacity: Concept, Indicators and Assessment / 国家气候治理能力研究：概念、要素与评估

International audienceStates are key forces in global climate governance, and state capacity is what really matters for effectively addressing climate change. Although the United Nations (UN) climate regime has always called for stronger capacity building, research progress on states’ climate governance capacity has been slow, and how to define and measure it remains to be explored. To this end, this paper first defines states’ climate governance capacity by combining three concepts, namely climate change, state capacity and global governance, and then builds a new standardized framework for assessing the climate governance capacity of 196 country parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change between 2015 and 2020. Addressing the three aspects in the establishment and improvement of the UN climate regime—norm setting, implementation and compliance, and action effectiveness, this evaluation framework measures countries in terms of 5 dimensions (intellectual contribution, contribution to treaty negotiation, level of governance, governance tools and effectiveness), using a total of 14 basic indicators that take into account comprehensiveness and balance, process and outcome, dynamic changes and static effects. This framework is then used to assess the capacity of all the countries during the transition of the UN climate regime from the “Kyoto model” to the “Paris model” with latest data from international institutions such as the UN, the World Bank and the International Renewable Energy Agency. The results show that countries in Western Europe, Northern Europe, East Asia and North America had strong climate governance capability; emerging economies were very close to the United States and Western Europe in terms of setting international norms; Small Island developing countries, despite a few good performers among them, generally ranked low overall, similar to most of the least developed countries. This research provides new perspective, concept and method for horizontal and vertical comparisons of different countries’participation in global climate governance.Space Governance: Contending Proposals, Cooperation Dilemma, and Implications for the Future by He Qisong & Huang Jiany. Space governance is an important area of global governance. The rules of space governance established in the Cold War era served to maintain the US Soviet bipolar dominance in space and built a global space order favorable to the two superpowers. However, with the post-Cold War proliferation of space technology, the Cold War-era rules could not meet the challenges of the commercialization, weaponization and military utilization of space. In response, several space governance proposals have been made by state and non-state actors, within or outside the UN framework. These proposals mainly revolve around the issues of space arms control and peaceful use of space. The competition for space governance rules, however, is ultimately an attempt by state actors to seek a space order that is beneficial to them. The establishment of UN-led multilateral, multi-level, fair and equitable space governance is the basis for building a stable global space order and is conducive to the construction of a community with a shared future in space