ABSTRACT
The cooperation between the European Union (EU) and China on climate change issues significantly contributes to global efforts on climate-resilient development (CRD). CRD refers to managing the unavoidable consequences of climate change while, at the same time, proactively changing existing political, social, and economic systems or, at least, recombining already-evolved structures (Smit and Wandel 2006; Adger et al. 2011). As major emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs), the EU and China can engage in innovative and context-specific problem solving, which brings about cooperation mechanisms that are flexible, problem-oriented, and go beyond current negotiations for a single post-Kyoto treaty. This ‘hybrid’ or ‘quasi-interregional’ relationship, defined as either a strategic ‘region-to-state’ partnership such as EU–China relations or a cooperation in intercontinental forums like the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) (Hänggi 2006: 41ff), supports CRD by providing a platform for agenda-setting, institution-building, rationalising, collective identity building, and policy diffusion, which are in addition to (soft-) balancing the classic functions of interregionalism (Dent 2004; Roloff 2006; Rüland 2010; Carrapatoso 2011). Interregional relations foster knowledge- and information-sharing and can more easily take local sensitivities into account, compared to multilateral cooperation.
