International climate negotiations are at an impasse because the world's two largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, the United States and China, are unwilling to accept binding emission-reduction commitments. At the same time, each blames the other for its inaction. This paper proposes a global "deal" for breaking the deadlock in a way that reconciles both countries' economic concerns with the imperative of reducing emissions. The deal has two core elements: (1) All major emitting countries agree to reduce GHG emissions by implementing significant, mutually agreeable, domestic policies and (2) The largest industrialized-country emitters agree to establish a global Carbon Mitigation Fund that would finance the incremental cost of adopting low-carbon technologies in developing countries.

Applying a framework developed in an earlier Harvard Project Discussion Paper¹, Valentina Bosetti and Jeffrey Frankel describe a system of formulas and country-specific emission targets that would stabilize atmospheric CO2 at 460 parts per million (ppm) by 2100. Their approach addresses the most serious deficiencies of the Kyoto Protocol: the absence of long-term targets, non-participation by the United States and developing countries, and lack of confidence in countries' willingness to abide by emissions commitments. This plan achieves a more stringent environmental target than the earlier Frankel proposal, which stabilized CO2 at 500 ppm, but also imposes higher costs.

Managing the dangers of global climate change will require developing countries to participate in a global climate regime. So far, however, those nations have been nearly universal in their refusal to make commitments to reduce growth in their greenhouse gas emissions. This paper describes how a set of international "Climate Accession Deals" could encourage large policy shifts that are in developing countries' interests and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This paper presents updated global emissions projections after taking into account recent trends in China. The results suggest that even the most up-to-date international forecasts may still underestimate potential emissions growth, especially among developing countries.

Developing country participation is an increasingly contentious issue—and a potential deal-breaker—in current efforts to forge new international agreements for addressing climate change. Emissions offsets, which allow rich countries to finance mitigation actions in developing countries, may offer a partial solution to the current impasse. This paper proposes a more expansive approach to offsets that would meet the different objectives of industrialized and developing countries while providing substantial support for long-term investments and policy changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the developing world.