ABSTRACT
Transnational governance initiatives—arrangements that include state and non-state actors and operate across national boundaries—have become an essential part of the climate governance landscape. This chapter explores their evolution, function, and effectiveness in governing climate change. Focusing on distinctions between those initiatives that involve only public actors, those which are hybrid arrangements of public and private actors, and those which involve only private actors, such as corporations and NGOs, the chapter explores how these initiatives have come to form part of the “complex” of climate governance. There remain important questions about the effectiveness and additionality of transnational governance initiatives, their accountability, and how far considerations of equity are being addressed. At the same time, transnational governance initiatives often reach the parts of the climate problem that others find hard to access—from value chains to city buildings—and as the scope of the climate issue expands, their role is perhaps ever more important. They also demonstrate that it is now impossible to conceive of climate change as a problem that can be governed solely through the institutions of the state and international organizations. Rather, both state-based and transnational governance will be needed to tackle the climate challenge.
