Transnationalism

Conventional wisdom holds that global collective action problems such as climate change require global cooperation. Accordingly, the Kyoto Protocol, governing carbon emissions, has long been viewed as the ‘only game in town.’ But as progress on international negotiations has slowed, non-state actors have developed a broad range of transnational regulations. In this chapter we focus on these activities and examine how different forms of transnational climate governance interact with multilateral governance. We argue that these interactions are not simply random, but can be classified into different types, many of which can further intergovernmental policy. In sum, transnational climate governance inserts greater flexibility into global climate governance; at the same time the coordination of the plethora of transnational regulatory activities pose a challenge.