The “top-down” Kyoto Protocol? Exploring caricature and misrepresentation in literature on global climate change governance

Abstract

The literature on global climate change governance frequently refers to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol as a “top-down” instrument, often in unfavourable comparison with the 2015 Paris Agreement, described as “bottom-up”. However, the meaning ascribed to “top-down” is often left undefined, contributing to a surprisingly widespread misunderstanding that the Kyoto Protocol, and in particular its emission targets, were imposed on governments. Against this background, this paper seeks to answer the following research question: To what extent can the Kyoto Protocol’s emissions targets be justifiably referred to as having been imposed through a “top-down” process? To answer this question, the paper reviews the literature on the Kyoto Protocol, with particular attention paid to the historical record and authoritative accounts of the negotiations. Having found evidence that denoting the Kyoto Protocol as “top-down” without further explanation is misleading, to the point of caricature and misrepresentation, the paper takes on a second research question: What factors lie behind the misleading characterisation of the Kyoto Protocol as “top down”? In answer to this question, the paper points to confusion between process and substance. It also invokes a wider tendency to unduly discredit the Kyoto Protocol, along with strategic efforts to emphasise differences between the Protocol and the Paris Agreement in order to legitimise the latter. The paper ultimately finds that the “bottom-up/top-down” metaphor obscures more than it illuminates, and that our understanding of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement would be best served by abandoning it.