Ronald Mitchell
Ronald Mitchell, Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies
University of Oregon
"Norms, Interests, and Strategies to Get Countries to Fulfill their Paris Climate Commitments"
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, most countries made commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Whether countries meet their commitments will depend, in part, on the strategies countries develop under the Paris Agreement. Many are interest-based and seek to convince countries that reducing emissions is “in their interests.” Others, however, are norm-based and seek to convince countries that reducing emissions is “the right thing to do.” This seminar explores what we know about how much these different strategies will motivate countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The seminar looks at the Paris Agreement in terms of the mix of interest-based and norm-based strategies being used and turns to both prior environmental and human rights treaties to see how well each has worked in the past.
Ronald Mitchell is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on the influence of international environmental treaties on the behavior of states and their citizens, the influence of science on international environmental policy, and the importance of interdisciplinary understanding to fully understanding and responding to international environmental problems. He received a PhD from Harvard University in 1992 and has been a professor at the University of Oregon since 1993 as well as a visiting professor at Stanford University (1999-2001). He has received major national grants, including three National Science Foundation grants was the University of Oregon’s commencement speaker in 2008.
He has published four books and over 40 articles and book chapters on topics related to international environmental issues, particularly the effects and effectiveness of environmental treaties.He developed the International Environmental Agreements Database (http://iea.uoregon.edu/) that contains date related to all known multilateral environmental treaties and corresponding performance indicators. From 2003 through 2014, Mitchell served as co-director with C. Susan Weiler of Whitman College of the Dissertation Initiative for the Advancement of Climate Change Research (DISCCRS). The DISCCRS initiative helps new scientists working on climate change develop interdisciplinary skills to improve their understanding of, and ability to help solve, the problem of climate change. He has served as a member of numerous international scientific committees and sits on the editorial boards of International Organization, Global Environmental Politics, and Journal of Environment and Development, among others. He teaches courses on international relations, international environmental politics, and international organization. His website is at: http://rmitchel.uoregon.edu/.
Student Host: Ashley Denton
Watch the video of Dr. Mitchell's Seminar Presentation
(Seminar begins at 1:30 into the recording)