September 2008

"Industrialized-Country Mitigation Policy and Resource Transfers to Developing Countries: Improving and Expanding Greenhouse Gas Offsets"

By Andrew G. Keeler and Alexander Thompson

"The role of developing country commitments and actions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions is central to worldwide progress in reducing the risks of anthropogenic climate change. Industrialized-country governments and publics are increasingly concerned that their emissions reduction commitments are unrequited by action in some of the world's largest emitters, especially India and China. Developing countries respond by pointing to the historical responsibility of the global North and stressing their desire to avoid measures that could undermine economic development. This paper offers a proposal for partially resolving this impasse by enhancing existing mechanisms for greenhouse gas offsets, which allow rich countries to finance developing country actions and thereby transfer resources to poorer ones...."

September 2008

"Justice and Climate Change"

By Eric A. Posner and Cass R. Sunstein

"Climate change raises complex issues of science, economics, and politics; it also raises difficult issues of justice. Poor nations are especially vulnerable to rising temperatures, in part because they are poor. Wealthy nations have less at risk, in part because they are wealthy. It is both tempting and plausible to suggest that for either emissions reductions or adaptation, wealthy nations owe special obligations to poor ones. In this paper, we address this general question by focusing on a much narrower one: how should permits be allocated in a global cap-and-trade system?"

September 2008

"A Proposal for the Design of the Successor to the Kyoto Protocol"

By Larry Karp and Jinhua Zhao

"The successor to the Kyoto Protocol should impose national ceilings on rich countries' greenhouse gas emissions and promote voluntary abatement by developing countries. Our proposal gives signatories the option of exercising an escape clause that relaxes their requirement to abate. This feature helps to solve the participation and compliance problems that have weakened the Protocol. We support the use of carefully circumscribed trade restrictions in order to reduce the real or perceived problem of carbon leakage."

AP Photo

September 3, 2008

"The Role of Technology Policies in an International Climate Agreement"

By Joseph Aldy, Co-Director, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements and Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Member of the Board

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements has agreed to help the Office of the Danish Prime Minister, in its role as incoming President of the 2009 Conference of the Parties, to prepare background papers and on-site briefings for a series of very high-level dialogues on climate change policy, hosted by the Prime Minister. These dialogues will each include about 25 participants, including CEOs of European and U.S. corporations, key officials from national governments and intergovernmental organizations, and leaders of major environmental NGOs. This paper on the subject of technology policies was prepared by the Harvard Project leadership for the second dialogue.

August 2008

"The EU Emission Trading Scheme: A Prototype Global System?"

By A. Denny Ellerman

"The European Union's Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the world's first multinational cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases. As an agreement between sovereign nations with diverse historical, institutional, and economic circumstances, the EU ETS can be seen as a prototype of an architecture for an eventual global climate regime."

July 2008

"Toward a Post-Kyoto Climate Change Architecture: A Political Analysis"

By Robert O. Keohane and Kal Raustiala

"Any international agreement to address climate change must rest on broad public support in developed nations for mitigation actions. We propose an international climate architecture that builds on such public support — which we hope will be forthcoming — and uses multilateral international institutions to extend its effects to countries without such "green" publics."

May / June 2008

"Climate Policy Architectures for the Post-Kyoto World"

Environment, issue 3, volume 50

By Joseph Aldy, Co-Director, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements and Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Member of the Board

"The global climate has changed and will continue to change as a result of greenhouse gas emissions from a broad variety of human activities. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined that 'most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.' If greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow unabated, the global average temperature will likely increase between 1.1°C and 6.4°C. This warming will unleash a myriad of impacts, the vast majority of which will adversely affect water availability, agricultural and forestry productivity, the spread of infectious diseases, extreme weather events, unique ecosystems and rare species, and the built environment in coastal areas. The risks of global climate change clearly necessitate an international effort."