| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 法律系研究所 === 106 === It was admitted at the 1979 World Climate Conference that human activity was resulting in climate change that severely impacted the global environment; in order to stem the continuous deterioration of the global environment, nations across the world began to sign international environmental treaties in the hopes of cooperating to dampen global warming and solve the issue of climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed in 1992 was a critical milestone for regulating climate change through international law. However, while nations have a mutual understanding for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases, many nations are unwilling to guarantee a reduction of carbon emissions due to consideration to political or economic development. Current international treaties on climate change are unable to force countries into participating but furthermore, the agreement oftentimes is not legally binding and has preserved mechanisms to freely exit. This has resulted in limited effectiveness for state level governance towards climate change.
This paper conducts analysis on state-level international cooperation through the concept of multi-level governance as in the EU to explore the possibility of including local government to address the structural bodies in climate change systems. It is hoped that encouraging local governments to take initiative in establishing related policies and spreading them can fulfill and achieve solutions for climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Encouraging the multinational cooperation between local governments allows city governments to share policy information and share practice in execution to establish a mutually cooperative network that achieves horizontal cooperation and expansion; finally, the grassroots movement can affect state-level government and measures against climate change. This paper believes that as local government is closest to the people, their policies in climate change and a sustainable environment has the most evident impact on education, mobilizing citizens, and responding to the public; therefore, introducing multi-level governance into climate change models can effectively strengthen the effort to stem the deterioration of global warning and heeds the call of the 1992 Agenda 21 and 2015 Paris Agreement’s call to promote the importance of local action and non-agreement parties (non-nation members) participation in addressing climate change. In order to explore the practical application and viability of multi-level governance in addressing the issues of global warming, this paper also discusses California, San Francisco City and Kinmen’s efforts and experiences to address climate change and global warming through local government to explore the practical viability, advantages and disadvantages of applying multi-level governance.
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