Strengthening International Climate Governance: The Case for a Sectoral Approach

Combating climate change requires a fundamental simultaneous transformation of various sectoral systems that are key to the functioning of our economies and societies, such as energy, industry, transport, housing, and agriculture. A new policy brief by the COP21 RIPPLES project examines sector-specific challenges to decarbonisation and what contribution international governance could make to overcoming these challenges.

The policy brief by Sebastian Oberthür (Institute for European Studies at the Free University Brussels, IES-VUB), Lukas Hermwille (Wuppertal Institute), Gauri Khandekar (IES-VUB) and Wolfgang Obergassel (Wuppertal Institute) discusses which barriers inhibit the deep transformations that are required at sector level, and specifies the resulting key governance functions to be fulfilled by means of international cooperation/international institutions. On this basis the policy brief develops proposals for strengthening the sectoral perspective in international climate governance.

The policy brief is a summary of the key results from the recent project report "Key Concepts, Core Challenges and Governance Functions of International Climate Governance".