Towards granularity in climate diplomacy research: hypothetical of U.S.-Bolivia lithium cooperation

Abstract

Since the Paris Agreement, an emergent body of scholarship has leveraged the data in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to analyze climate diplomacy systems, illuminating policy failures wherein the false assumption of consensus as to the purpose of a global climate regime culminates in efforts that are deemed illegitimate or unactionable on a global scale. This research explores the utility of the nation-scale lens for designing and analyzing novel climate governance systems responsive to the nuances of official climate ambitions through the construction and analysis of a conceptual systems model that depicts, as a hypothetical, the U.S. and Bolivia as they mutually explore a non-market approach to cooperation, centered on the industrialization of Bolivia's lithium resources, towards the furtherment of their respective climate ambitions. Analysis of this system reveals meaningful insights concerning the role of non-market cooperation toward global climate ambitions, identification of strengths and weaknesses in governance systems amid uncertainty, risks of maladaptation in the climate-aligned industrialization of resources, and the dynamics between industrialized and developing nations amid the climate crisis.