Upscaled climate change mitigation efforts

Sustainable development is dependent upon the successful attainment of climate change mitigation targets, with failure to meet these targets threatening existing and future development gains. The need for every region ¹ to contribute to reaching the target of limiting global temperature rise to 2⁰C or below provides a strong imperative for action (IPCC 2014a). As a global environmental and social development challenge, mitigation of climate change requires a global solution, yet regions through the coordinated actions of countries could effectively play an important complementary role to such efforts as regional similarities and differences can enable more efficient and appropriate mitigation measures to be implemented (IPCC 2014b). The regional dimension of development is recognized as being critical for an effective and coordinated response to an ever growing number of development challenges (UN 2011). However, as global agreement to address climate change has proved difficult to achieve, regional cooperation ² may provide useful opportunities to further accomplish global mitigation objectives, at least partially (IPCC 2014a). While the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) as a global climate agreement with its own targets and mechanisms has been necessary, it has been hampered by divergent views on its design and powers both in the past and for future implementation. The Paris Agreement is a significant achievement in terms of global efforts, building to a large extent on the voluntary plans and actions of countries at the national level (UN 2016). Developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change could initiate vital action at a regional level, contributing to the protection of the collective good in the absence of a strong top-down regime (Ostrom 2010) on climate change mitigation. However, country level plans in developing countries in Asia are struggling and a regionally coordinated approach to taking strong, ambitious and rapid collective action on climate change is still lacking (Anbumozhi 2015). The submission of national plans (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs) in advance of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) 21 Paris climate talks reinforced the role of nation states as key actors in realizing climate change targets. However, it is still only in the European Union (EU) ³ that there exists a strong regional approach to future climate change action in the form of the EU-wide INDCs (EU 2015). Regions can thus play an important role in delivering a coordinated approach toward global climate change response objectives. In the context of Southeast Asia, existing cooperation on energy, technology 363and other trans-boundary issues could potentially link with enhancing greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation in order to support wider development goals.