Russian climate policy: Domestic dynamics and international ramifications

This project aims at identifying the conditions for change of Russia?s international climate position by exploring the main factors behind it. These include the argumentations and justifications of the domestic actors, reflection of these as international negotiation tactics, and Russia?s emission trend until 2020. The domestic climate debate revolves around the benefit, threat, rationality and fairness discourses, while environmental argumentations are almost completely absent. The same elements appear as justifications of the political leadership?s decisions, but the dominant views do not seem to direct decision-making. The failing domestic climate mitigation policies have little influence on emission trend, which mostly depends on economic growth. Thus, the current economic slowdown is likely to facilitate Russia achieving its 2020 target. However, prospects for change of Russia?s international position are low as the domestic consensus on its cornerstones is strong.

Russia is a key player in the international climate regime: the fourth largest emitter in the world and a leading energy exporter as well as a traditional veto player in climate talks and holder of environmentally questionable surplus emission permits. Ho wever, the marginality of climate policy in domestic debate and fears of emission caps limiting economic growth make Moscow reluctant to commit to meaningful emission targets. This research explores the internal constraints and dynamics in Russian policy formation in order to understand the conditions for change in Russia's emissions trends and the development of negotiation positions with implications for future international climate agreements. First, the drivers of emission trends are analysed and dome stic interest groups acting as veto players hidden in the 'black box' of Russian policy-making process explored. Second, this knowledge is applied to explain Russia's position and tactics in climate negotiations, and evaluate the attractiveness of potenti al compromises in climate negotiations to Russia. Russia is compared with other key players, the US, China and the EU, through the same theoretical approach applied in FNIs CHANGE project funded by Norklima.