Selin Gives Talk on the U.S. and Climate Change Agreements

Henrik SelinDirector of Curricular Innovation and Initiatives and Associate Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was hosted by Civic Series on April 13, 2017 for a conversation on international climate change agreements, including the Paris Agreement of 2015.

You can watch the full talk below:

Selin discussed the Paris Agreement as the result of three prior international climate change agreements including The Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the Copenhagen Accord in 2009.

According to Selin, the Paris Agreement is largely enforced through political means including through the notion that adhering to the agreement lends leaders political credibility on the international stage.

Selin also discussed how the United States involvement in the agreement could change moving forward under the newly-elected President Donald Trump. President Trump recently signed an executive order that reversed the plans former President Barack Obama had put in place to keep the U.S. compliant with the Paris Agreement.

Henrik Selin conducts research and teaches classes on global and regional politics and policy making on environment and sustainable development. His most recent book is EU and Environmental Governance, by Routledge Press, and is also the author of Global Governance of Hazardous Chemicals: Challenges of Multilevel Management by MIT Press. Learn more about him here.