ASEAN’s role expectations and the diffusion of common but differentiated responsibilities principle in the climate change context/
Gauangyu Qiao-Franco
- 2021
This article examines the diffusion of the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR) from the United Nations (UN) to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Despite its varying interpretations in international negotiations since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), CBDR’s meaning hardly experienced any change in ASEAN. ASEAN’s different interpretation of CBDR from the UN matched the unchanging internal and external role expectations of ASEAN, which were a product of member states’ learning and conditioned by cognitive priors in the region. Cognitive priors in the climate change context included the ‘ASEAN Way’ of collaboration and member states’ deep-seated aspirations for development.