The literature on global climate change governance frequently refers to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol as a “top-down” instrument, often in unfavourable comparison with the 2015 Paris Agreement, described as “bottom-up”. However, the meaning ascribed to “top-down” is often left undefined, contributing to a surprisingly widespread misunderstanding that the Kyoto Protocol, and in particular its emission targets, were imposed on governments. Against this background, this paper seeks to answer the following research question: To what extent can the Kyoto Protocol’s emissions targets be justifiably referred to as having been imposed through a “top-down” process? To answer this question, the paper reviews the literature on the Kyoto Protocol, with particular attention paid to the historical record and authoritative accounts of the negotiations. Having found evidence that denoting the Kyoto Protocol as “top-down” without further explanation is misleading, to the point of caricature and misrepresentation, the paper takes on a second research question: What factors lie behind the misleading characterisation of the Kyoto Protocol as “top down”? In answer to this question, the paper points to confusion between process and substance. It also invokes a wider tendency to unduly discredit the Kyoto Protocol, along with strategic efforts to emphasise differences between the Protocol and the Paris Agreement in order to legitimise the latter. The paper ultimately finds that the “bottom-up/top-down” metaphor obscures more than it illuminates, and that our understanding of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement would be best served by abandoning it.

有关全球气候变化治理的文献经常将 1997 年的《京都议定书》称为“自上而下”的工具，与 2015 年的“自下而上”的《巴黎协定》相比，通常是不利的。然而，“自上而下”的含义往往没有被定义，这导致了一种令人惊讶的普遍误解，即京都议定书，特别是其排放目标，是强加给政府的。在此背景下，本文试图回答以下研究问题：《京都议定书》的排放目标在多大程度上可以被合理地称为是通过“自上而下”的过程实施的？为了回答这个问题，本文回顾了有关《京都议定书》的文献，特别关注了谈判的历史记录和权威说法。在发现证据表明在没有进一步解释的情况下将《京都议定书》称为“自上而下”具有误导性，达到讽刺和歪曲的程度，本文提出了第二个研究问题：将《京都议定书》误导性描述为“自顶向下”？在回答这个问题时，论文指出了过程和实质之间的混淆。它还引发了过度诋毁《京都议定书》的更广泛趋势，以及强调《议定书》与《巴黎协定》之间差异以使后者合法化的战略努力。该论文最终发现，“自下而上/自上而下”的比喻模糊不清，而不是阐明，我们对《京都议定书》和《巴黎协定》的理解最好放弃它。