Orchestrating the Transnational Networks? The Reconfigured Relationship between Global Corporations and International Law in the Era of Paris Agreement

In a time when the climate change crisis manifests intersectionally, international law moved gradually towards a reconfiguration that centers stubborn optimism, partnered networks, and corporate participation. Different from the previous approach of the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol that centered bifurcated climate actions among developed and developing countries with stronger international procedural control, international climate law in this new era became more ‘asymmetrically fragmented’, in its gesture of orchestration. As this chapter seeks to show from an account of institutional history of climate change law after Kyoto Protocol, international climate change law in this era functions in the ‘parallel system’ of interstate negotiations and corporate-driven transnational markets on the one hand, and mobilizes a solution of climate change crisis that depends on the every-growing sophistication of carbon markets legitimized through the co-production between the ‘parallel system’ on the other hand. This formation of international climate law, as argued by this chapter, allowed corporate actors to gain more authority in regulatory space.

Zhonghua Du is a PhD researcher based in the research centres of SGEL (Sustainable Global Economic Law) and ACIL (Amsterdam Center for International Law) at University of Amsterdam. She is finishing her PhD thesis that focuses on the historical development of the international legal discourse on transnational corporations and its implications on the positionality of TNCs in the context of climate change. She is supervised by Professor Ingo Venzke and Professor André Nollkaemper. From August to November 2024, Zhonghua was a Kathleen Fitzpatrick visiting fellow at the Laureate Research Program Global Corporations and International Law at University of Melbourne, led by Professor Sundhya Pahuja. Previously, she has been one of the organizers of the 2024 SGEL summer school. She has obtained her undergraduate law degree (L.L.B) from Peking University, China, and her master’s degree in law (MJur) from University of Oxford, the United Kingdom.