The History of Sinks: An Analysis of Negotiating Positions in the Climate Regime

The issue of terrestrial carbon sinks, officially labelled as Land use, Land-use change and Forestry (LULUCF) has been one of the most contentious and difficult issues in the international climate change negotiations. This study analyses the negotiation process on sinks from the third Conference of the Parties (COP 3) to COP 7 by using a multinomial logit model to identify factors influencing the negotiating positions on LULUCF of 166 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The results show that the importance of the forestry sector of a country does not seem to have affected the negotiation positions on LULUCF. However, the results suggest that the LULUCF issue was used by those Parties with a rather negative attitude towards international climate policy to reduce their Kyoto commitments. Pro-sinks Annex I Parties seem to have been motivated by the amount they were able to reduce their reduction target due to sinks, but not necessarily by the stringency of their target. By applying a zero-inflated count model, the study examines which factors influenced the participation in the submission process on LULUCF. Those Parties having taken a pro-sink position on Article 3.4 have been participating most in the submission process. The exact opposite is the case for the CDM, where the opponents of forestry projects have been the most active Parties in providing submissions. Delegation size has some, but rather modest influence on the participation in the submission process.