Collage illustration on a dark background showing waste items including a slice of pizza, a T-shirt, a cow, a fish, a plastic bottle, a coffee cup, a smartphone, a TV, a pill bottle, and construction machinery. Blue outline of the Earth in the background. Text overlay reads: ‘Waste Pollution 101. A primer on how unsustainable production and consumption habits have escalated the waste pollution crisis.’ UNEP logo in the corner.

Waste is piling up, harming people and the planet.

Our Waste Pollution 101 interactive shows where it comes from, what it does, and how we can fix it.

Explore the solutions and join the effort to #BeatWastePollution: www.unep.org/interactives...

What a match

The Power of Peers: a spatial analysis of nationally determined contributions

A country's NDC (Nationally Determined Contribution) ambition is influenced by the ambition levels of its peers, finds ‪@herminevc.bsky.social. #Climate ambition converges among peer countries based on democracy levels, regional location and geopolitical affinity 👫

Read more ⬇️

Thank you @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social for making this research possible

Image of the first page of the article, with the title: 'The Power of Peers: A spatial analysis of nationally determined contributions' Abstract: The Paris Agreement’s pledge and review process was designed to ramp up climate ambition through norm-setting and repeated interactions. Yet this peer influence dynamic remains underexplored in analyses of the determinants of climate ambition. To address this gap, this paper examines whether the climate ambition of peer countries can explain climate ambition in subsequent rounds of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). This paper builds on and contributes to research on the Paris Agreement, the drivers of climate ambition, and the broader literature on soft governance. Using spatial regression models, the analysis incorporates peer pressure into spatial lags of first-round NDC ambition to assess patterns of convergence and divergence in the second round of NDCs. The results show that climate ambition for peer groups with high geopolitical affinity, similar levels of democracy, and regional similarity converges, while countries with similar income levels exhibit diverging ambition trends. These results underscore the interdependent nature of climate ambition and suggest that leveraging peer networks could enhance global climate cooperation under the Paris Agreement.

I'm very happy to see my paper on peer groups and climate ambition published in @climate-policy.bsky.social
I analysed whether there is a relationship between a country's NDC ambition, and the ambition levels of its peers. (spoilers: there are some!)
doi.org/10.1080/1469...

Congratulations! Welcome to Bluesky

🔥 New How Green Is Your Deal? episode out! 🎙️
@earsomj.bsky.social and @franziskapetri.bsky.social discuss how EU climate leadership and climate diplomacy might be affected by geopolitical shifts and the new Trump Presidency
Available on Spotify and Apple Podcast - even with video!
Links 👇

I have all of my notes and to-do lists in Obsidian. I’ve been using it for about 3 years now and I’m very pleased
It’s very customisable

Are you interested in following updates of research on international and European studies?

GIES (Ghent University) just joined BlueSky: @giesugent.bsky.social !

Find out more about the team of researchers at: www.ugent.be/ps/politieke...

Congratulations! Tremendously well-deserved 🎉

Can EU trade agreements bolster climate action?
@carolinebertram.bsky.social & @herminevc.bsky.social examine how commitments to effectively implement the Paris Agreement raise costs,strengthen duties &foster ambition.

Will dispute settlement mechanisms deliver?👉 www.greendealnet.eu/Strengthenin...

🌎🌡️ Big news: The EU-Mercosur trade agreement was finalised yesterday—despite pushback from member states and environmentalists 🌱 @herminevc.bsky.social & I have just published research on the legally binding commitment to effectively implement the Paris Agreement present herein (1/4) 👇

What to make of COP29? Join this excellent roundtable to get a better understanding of COP29 outcomes and what they mean for tackling the climate crisis!

This provision is therefore another tool in the #climate toolbox. Time will tell if/how consequential it may be.

The important caveat is this, however: you can see the linkage in terms of "legal potential": The commitment CAN play a role in strengthening the Paris Agreement, but fulfilling this potential is conditional on actual political backing.

This is especially so for the most recent agreements: the commitment itself has evolved from a non-binding statement of shared intent in the trade agreements with Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam into a legally binding obligation in the EU-United Kingdom, EU-Kenya, and EU-New Zealand trade agreements.

It is now more costly to withdraw from the Agreement. The linkage also strengthens their procedural duties such as submitting timely climate plans (NDCs), the expectation that they increase their climate ambition, and the expectation that perties implement NDCs to their best efforts

We set out to investigate what this means: what are the obligations under the Paris Agreement and does this linkage make a difference for the involved trade partners?
We argue that it does make a difference, though with an important caveat!

Since 2019, EU trade agreements have included a commitment to "effectively implement the Paris Agreement" in their trade and sustainability chapters. Including ongoing negotiations, 14 trade agreements will commit the EU and its trade partners - 45 countries in total - to this clause.

Strengthening the Paris Agreement through trade? The potential and limitations of EU preferential trade agreements for climate governance - International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Ec... Since 2019, a commitment has been included in the European Union’s (EU) preferential trade agreements to effectively implement the Paris Agreement. This commitment now exists in nine ratified or pendi...

Caroline Bertram and I just published a new paper! In this open access article, we explore the role of EU trade agreements in bolstering the Paris Agreement's obligations (a wordy🧵) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

1. Here's why I'll never use AI to assist my research or writing:
A. I don't want to know exactly what I'm looking for.
I mean that when I start researching a topic, I want to remain open to its contradictions and paradoxes, and to the unexpected paths that might lead off it. 🧵

👂what's that? You want to start your week with a thread about how the Jevons Paradox is often misused to imply that technological innovations will necessarily result in greater environmental damage?

I got you covered!

THREAD!

Does information change public support for climate mitigation policies? Carbon pricing policies can play an important role in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. However, policymakers often cite the lack of public support as a major obstacle to adopting and expan...

Highlighting the efficacy and revenue recycling potential of carbon pricing increases support, especially in emerging market economies. Moreover, people adopt more negative views of subsidies for renewable energy and low-carbon technologies when the salience of their costs is increased.

nice paragraph on environmental impacts in this!

It is the aggressive, panicked and wide-eyed force-injection of chatbots into literally everything that is driving the ballooning energy depravity of this technology.

As many of us are moving to this platform, I've created a list of researchers active in global environmental governance. It might be a useful starting point, and I'll continue adding to it as I discover more go.bsky.app/7sZRvzU

Time for the @bsky.app community to see one of my favorite visualizations of climate change...

"Shifting Distribution of Land Temperature Anomalies" by svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5211/ ⚒️🧪

What is causing the atmospheric CO2 concentration to growth (light blue bars)?

It is all the fossil CO2 emissions (brown) we dump into the atmosphere (a little LUC too), with the land (green) & ocean (dark blue) sinks struggling to keep up.

More figures: robbieandrew.github.io/GCB2024/

Reframing the climate debate: The origins and diffusion of net zero pledges Achieving net zero emissions has rapidly become the dominant long-term objective guiding national climate policies. At the end of 2018, only 24 countries were considering or had adopted long-term net....

As a taste, here is my first (open access) article on the norm origins and diffusion of net zero: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

It highlights the role of transnational advocacy groups and the IPCC in formulating and spreading norms like net zero

Finally jumping ship in search of a new algorithm!
I'm a PhD researcher working on global climate governance, the Paris Agreement, and climate ambition.
Looking forward to follow anyone working on climate, politics, or science communication in general!