Addressing Inequality and Building Trust to Secure a Post-2012 Global Climate Deal

The absence of an effective global climate treaty 20 years after the problem was identified-in the face of increasingly dire scientific evidence that we are spoiling our nest-raises broader questions about the factors that shape international environmental co-operation. Scholars and policy analysts have identified a broad range of factors that seem to influence outcomes in international environmental politics: material self-interest; bargaining power; international rules, norms and decision-making procedures; non-state actors, such as epistemic communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations; crises; political leadership; and domestic political institutions (Sprinz and Vaahtoranta 1994; Victor 2001; Young 1994; Wapner 1995; Haas 1990; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Levy and Kolk 2002; Meyer et al. 1997; Roberts and Parks 2007). Yet interestingly, one of the variables often singled out by policymakers from developing countries as a major impediment to co-operationglobal inequality-has not received a great detail of scholarly attention.1