Isolated policy interventions are unlikely to effectively address a highly complex and cross-cutting issue such as climate change. Such issues require more integrated or holistic approaches. The concept of searching for synergy across multiple objectives could then achieve better outcomes than a default position of trade-off and collision. This contribution construes a novel principle of synergy to structure integrated decision-making in global climate regulation through law. This article grounds its argument theoretically in the analysis of global regulation. It first develops the rationale of a regulatory principle justifying synergetic choices in rule-design and rule-application. It then sets out a typology of regulatory synergies – reinforcing, functional, and dormant or connecting – which can be arranged on a sliding scale and delivered with appropriate policy tools. It also suggests pathways for synergy-as-principle to advance beyond an effective strategy to acquiring legal bindingness within global regulation through law. Finally, this article tests the workability of this principle in four scenarios where climate protection and adjacent objectives intersect. Beyond this analysis of global climate regulation, this article points to the deeper normative foundations capable of supporting a non-exclusionary global community.
Policy Implications
- Climate protection should be seen as a regulatory challenge across multiple dimensions and objectives. The response is governed by regulatory principles that should be shared across the global governance system to ensure a harmonising effect.
- The existing single-dimensional principles, which all prioritise one objective over colliding others, are not effective in this complex context.
- In this situation, regulators should adopt a regulatory strategy that maximises synergies. Synergy-as-principle could across multiple objectives achieve better outcomes than a default position of trade-off and collision.
- Under a rationale of synergy, regulators should consider synergetic outcomes through action in three categories; reinforcing synergies, functional synergies, and dormant (connecting) synergies.
- The increasing formalisation and authorisation of synthesis-as-principle as international, regional, and domestic law will create pathways for synergy to move from regulatory strategy to binding legal principle.
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