Climate Change And Global Policy Regimes

An analysis of the global climate talks and the key human systems threatened by increased greenhouse gas emissions including health, refugee management, energy production, carbon markets and local government.

The year 2015 will be a landmark year for international climate change negotiations. Governments have agreed to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris in 2015. The agreement will come into force no later than 2020. This book focuses on the prospects for global agreement, how to encourage compliance with any such agreement and perspectives of key players in the negotiations — the United States, India, China, and the EU. It finds that there is strong commitment to the established UN institutions and processes within which the search for further agreed actions will occur. There are already a myriad of local and regional policies that are helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build mutual confidence. However, the chapters in the book also highlight potential areas of discord. For instance, varying interpretations of the “common but differentiated responsibilities” of developing countries, agreed as part of the UNFCCC, could be a major sticking point for negotiators. When combined with other issues, such as the choice of consumption or production as the basis for mitigation commitments, the appropriate time frame and base date for their measurement and whether level or intensity commitments are to be negotiated, the challenges that need to be overcome are considerable. The authors bring to bear insights from economics, public finance and game theory. Contents:Introduction (Alex Bowen, Nicholas Stern and John Whalley)Global Cooperation and Understanding to Accelerate Climate Action (James Rydge and Samuela Bassi)The US and Action on Climate Change (Samuela Bassi and Alex Bowen)Challenges and Reality: China's Dilemma on Durban Platform Negotiation (Mou Wang, Huishan Lian and Yamin Zhou)Sustainable Growth and Climate Change: Evolution of India's Strategies (Ruth Kattumuri and Darshini Ravindranath)After Copenhagen and the Economic Crisis: Does the EU Need to Go Back to the Drawing Board? (Christian Egenhofer and Monica Alessi)The Scope for “Green Growth” and a New Technological Revolution (Alex Bowen)Negotiating to Avoid “Dangerous” Climate Change (Scott Barrett)Unilateral Measures and Emissions Mitigation (Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal, Sean Walsh and John Whalley)Compliance Mechanisms in Global Climate Regimes: Kyoto and Post-Kyoto (Sean Walsh and John Whalley) Readership: students and researchers in developmental economics and climate change; policy makers and decision makers; general public interested in climate change issues. Keywords:Climate Change;International Negotiation;Participation;COP21;UNFCCCKey Features:Timely and relevant for climate policy negotiators in the run-up to COP21 in Paris at the end of 2015Written by authors who have strong backgrounds in economics, both theoretical (e.g. game theory) and empirical (e.g. climate policy evaluation)

10 Climate governance accountability challenges: Lessons from multilateral climate finance -- 11 Co-producing climate-smart agriculture knowledge through social networks: Future directions for climate governance -- 12 International climate change policy and the contribution of civil society organizations -- Afterword: The long road to Paris: Insider and outsider perspectives -- Index.

This book follows the groundbreaking Kyoto Protocol from the time of its drafting in 1997 to analyze its viability as an environmental treaty. Dana R. Fisher uses a valuable combination of substantive interview data and country case studies to understand the complexity of the domestic and international debates taking place around the Protocol. With its unique blend of quantitative and qualitative data, this study presents compelling evidence that domestic interests are crucial in the formation of international environmental policymaking.

The fragmented state of global climate governance poses major challenges to policymakers and scholars alike. Through an in-depth examination of regime interactions between the international climate regime and three other regimes (on clean technology, b

Geopolitical changes combined with the increasing urgency of ambitious climate action have re-opened debates about justice and international climate policy. Mechanisms and insights from transitional justice have been used in over thirty countries across a range of conflicts at the interface of historical responsibility and imperatives for collective futures. However, lessons from transitional justice theory and practice have not been systematically explored in the climate context. The comparison gives rise to new ideas and strategies that help address climate change dilemmas. This book examines the potential of transitional justice insights to inform global climate governance. It lays out core structural similarities between current global climate governance tensions and transitional justice contexts. It explores how transitional justice approaches and mechanisms could be productively applied in the climate change context. These include responsibility mechanisms such as amnesties, legal accountability measures, and truth commissions, as well as reparations and institutional reform. The book then steps beyond reformist transitional justice practice to consider more transformative approaches, and uses this to explore a wider set of possibilities for the climate context. Each chapter presents one or more concrete proposals arrived at by using ideas from transitional justice and applying them to the justice tensions central to the global climate context. By combining these two fields the book provides a new framework through which to understand the challenges of addressing harms and strengthening collective climate action. This book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of climate change and transitional justice.

The regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation and maritime transport has proved to be a difficult task for international climate negotiations such as the Paris Agreement in 2015. Almost two decades prior, Article 2.2 of the Kyoto Protocol excluded emissions from international aviation and maritime transport from its targets, delegating the negotiation of sector-specific regulations to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), respectively. However, progress at these venues has also been limited. Regime Interaction and Climate Change maps out the legal frameworks in the Climate, ICAO and IMO regimes, and explores the law-making process for the regulation of international aviation and maritime transport through the lenses of fragmentation of international law and regime interaction. The book sheds light on how interaction between these three regimes occurs, what the consequences of such interaction are and how they can be managed to resolve conflicts and promote synergies. This book will be of great interest to scholars of international environmental law and governance, climate change policy and climate change law.

This book presents a comprehensive, authoritative and independent account of the rules, institutions and procedures governing the international climate change regime. Its detailed yet user-friendly description and analysis covers the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and all decisions taken by the Conference of the Parties up to 2003, including the landmark Marrakesh Accords. Mitigation commitments, adaptation, the flexibility mechanisms, reporting and review, compliance, education and public awareness, technology transfer, financial assistance and climate research are just some of the areas that are reviewed. The book also explains how the regime works, including a discussion of its political coalitions, institutional structure, negotiation process, administrative base, and linkages with other international regimes. In short, this book is the only current work that covers all areas of the climate change regime in such depth, yet in such a uniquely accessible and objective way.