Harvard Project to Co-Host Panel at COP-19 on the Durban-Platform Process

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements will co-host an official side-event panel at the Nineteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-19) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Warsaw, Poland. We cordially invite all of our friends and colleagues attending COP-19 to join us. Details:

"Identifying Options for a New Climate Regime Arising from the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action"
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
3:00 – 4:30 pm
Room Torun

Speakers will be:

• Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, and Director of the Harvard Project: Overview of options for a new international climate-policy regime based on the Durban Platform;
• Ottmar Edenhofer, Director, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC): Can a hybrid global climate regime anchored in national policies deliver ambitious mitigation?
• Andreas Löschel, Head, Department of Environmental and Resource Economics and of Environmental Management, Centre for European Economic Research: Report of a survey among climate negotiators on the distribution of GHG emissions reduction targets and institutional frameworks for an international climate agreement

The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, adopted by COP-17 in December 2011, provides an opportunity for all key greenhouse-gas-emitting countries to engage in a new international climate regime that could bring about meaningful emissions reductions within a feasible timetable and at acceptable costs. The Platform calls for a new agreement to address climate change by COP-21, to be held in Paris in late 2015, which would go into effect in 2020.

This side event will review a number of options for a new international climate regime, based on social-science research, that might be embodied in the 2015 agreement. It is based in part on a research workshop conducted by the Harvard Project and MCC in Berlin in May 2013—and on an Issue Brief that draws from and extends the discussion at the workshop. The side event will address, in part, two major dimensions of a possible 2015 agreement: 1) The degree to which the agreement reflects "top-down" direction to national governments, "bottom-up" policy initiatives from national governments—or both; and 2) How the new agreement might enable increasing ambition over time with regard to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, on the part of national governments.

Joining MCC and the Harvard Project as co-hosts are the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Centre for European Economic Research.

 We look forward to seeing you on November 20 in Warsaw.