IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v17y2025i3p1230-d1582910.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Membership in Intergovernmental Organizations Effectively Reduce CO 2 Emissions?

Author

Listed:
  • Taocheng Huang

    (Montverde Academy Shanghai, Shanghai 201107, China)

  • Xiaoyan Li

    (School of Economics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China)

Abstract

Since the Industrial Revolution, emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO 2 have soared in various countries. Different kinds of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) were established after World War II, which aim for sustainable development. We want to investigate whether membership in IGOs can effectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The study uses global panel data of 168 countries from 1960 to 2014 to carry out the fixed effect regression. The results of basic regression show that there is a negative relationship between membership in IGOs and CO 2 emission. The greater the number of IGOs joined by the specific sample country, the lower the CO 2 emissions produced by that country will be. We use social network analysis and find that CO 2 emissions will be effectively reduced if the distance of the sample country from other countries in IGO networks is smaller. In addition, joining more social IGOs can reduce CO 2 emissions more than joining political and economic IGOs. Countries should be encouraged to actively participate in IGOs. IGOs provide a good platform for consultation, communication, and rule-making in environmental governance among countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Taocheng Huang & Xiaoyan Li, 2025. "Can Membership in Intergovernmental Organizations Effectively Reduce CO 2 Emissions?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(3), pages 1-17, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:3:p:1230-:d:1582910
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/3/1230/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/3/1230/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Fraser & Pinar Temocin, 2021. "Grassroots vs. greenhouse: the role of environmental organizations in reducing carbon emissions," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 1-21, December.
    2. Yuegang Song & Feng Hao & Xiazhen Hao & Giray Gozgor, 2021. "Economic Policy Uncertainty, Outward Foreign Direct Investments, and Green Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from Firm-Level Data in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-16, February.
    3. Lars H. Gulbrandsen & Steinar Andresen, 2004. "NGO Influence in the Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol: Compliance, Flexibility Mechanisms, and Sinks," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 4(4), pages 54-75, November.
    4. Lisa Maria Dellmuth & Maria-Therese Gustafsson, 2021. "Global adaptation governance: how intergovernmental organizations mainstream climate change adaptation," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(7), pages 868-883, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher Pallas & Johannes Urpelainen, 2012. "NGO monitoring and the legitimacy of international cooperation: A strategic analysis," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 1-32, March.
    2. Francesca Colli & Johan Adriaensen, 2020. "Lobbying the state or the market? A framework to study civil society organizations’ strategic behavior," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(3), pages 501-513, July.
    3. Li, Xin & Li, Zheng & Su, Chi-Wei & Umar, Muhammad & Shao, Xuefeng, 2022. "Exploring the asymmetric impact of economic policy uncertainty on China's carbon emissions trading market price: Do different types of uncertainty matter?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    4. Prieur, Fabien & Zou, Benteng, 2018. "Climate politics: How public persuasion affects the trade-off between environmental and economic performance," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 63-72.
    5. Songping Zhu & Gaofeng Yu, 2022. "The Impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Industrial Output: The Regulatory Role of Technological Progress," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-18, August.
    6. Larson, Donald F. & Breustedt, Gunnar, 2007. "Will markets direct investments under the Kyoto Protocol ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4131, The World Bank.
    7. Mark Rhinard & Claudia Morsut & Elisabeth Angell & Simon Neby & Mathilda Englund & Karina Barquet & Heleen Mees & Jana Surian & Swapnil Vashishtha & Lisa Segnestam & Ole Andreas Hegland Engen, 2024. "Understanding variation in national climate change adaptation: Securitization in focus," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(4), pages 676-696, June.
    8. Xiang Tiange & Sultan Sikandar Mirza & Chengwei Zhang & ChengMing Huang, 2025. "Understanding sustainable growth in the face of economic policy uncertainties," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(8), pages 18899-18932, August.
    9. Jan Beyers & Marcel Hanegraaff, 2017. "Balancing friends and foes: Explaining advocacy styles at global diplomatic conferences," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 461-484, September.
    10. Wegge, Njord, 2015. "The emerging politics of the Arctic Ocean. Future management of the living marine resources," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 331-338.
    11. Du, Yanan & Wang, Qingxi & Song, Yan & Xin, Yueji, 2025. "How cross-regional collaborative innovation networks affect regional economic resilience: Evidence from 283 cities in China," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    12. Wan, Enze & Li, Zhezhou & Zhao, Liang & Zhang, Xiangjian, 2024. "Economic policy uncertainty and Chinese companies' overseas investment," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 96(PA).
    13. Nicole J. Wilson & Maria G. Lira & Grace O’Hanlon, 2022. "A systematic scoping review of Indigenous governance concepts in the climate governance literature," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 171(3), pages 1-23, April.
    14. Ho, Kung-Cheng & Shen, Xixi & Yan, Cheng & Hu, Xiang, 2023. "Influence of green innovation on disclosure quality: Mediating role of media attention," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    15. Katharina Rietig, 2014. "‘Neutral’ experts? How input of scientific expertise matters in international environmental negotiations," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 47(2), pages 141-160, June.
    16. Katharina Rietig, 2011. "The influence of academics as insidernongovernmental actors in the Post-Kyoto Protocol Climate Change Negotiations: a matter of timing, network and policyentrepreneurial capabilities," GRI Working Papers 58, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    17. Dinkneh Gebre Borojo & Jiang Yushi & Miao Miao & Luo Xiao, 2024. "The impacts of economic policy uncertainty, energy consumption, sustainable innovation, and quality of governance on green growth in emerging economies," Energy & Environment, , vol. 35(7), pages 3647-3672, November.
    18. Luhao Liu & Honglin Zhou & Jiaping Xie, 2023. "Dynamic Evolutionary Analysis of the Impact of Outward Foreign Direct Investment on Green Innovation Heterogeneity—From the Perspective of Binary Innovation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-15, April.
    19. Haoran Yang & Yaoben Lin & Yang Hu & Xueqing Liu & Qun Wu, 2022. "Influence Mechanism of Industrial Agglomeration and Technological Innovation on Land Granting on Green Total Factor Productivity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-17, March.
    20. Bai, Jiancheng & Han, Zhiyong & Rizvi, Syed Kumail Abbas & Naqvi, Bushra, 2023. "Green trade or green technology? The way forward for G-7 economies to achieve COP 26 targets while making competing policy choices," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:3:p:1230-:d:1582910. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.