Can Membership in Intergovernmental Organizations Effectively Reduce CO2 Emissions?

Since the Industrial Revolution, emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 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 CO2 emission. The greater the number of IGOs joined by the specific sample country, the lower the CO2 emissions produced by that country will be. We use social network analysis and find that CO2 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 CO2 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.