Climate Team Suggests Post-Kyoto Ideas

A new report from the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements outlined several promising ideas for successors to the Kyoto Protocol. The report also provided guidance on the most intractable challenges facing global climate negotiators, including participation by developing countries, how to reduce deforestation, and how to prevent a "collision" between climate policy and international trade law.

The report -- an interim document produced for global climate negotiators who convened in December in Poznan, Poland, for the 14th Conference of the Parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change -- addressed some of the key issues that negotiators must tackle before reaching a global deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the cause of climate change.

The Harvard Project report synthesizes the work of 26 research teams from around the world. It highlights four credible approaches that could succeed the Kyoto Protocol, ranging from a top-down agreement similar to the Kyoto Protocol, but both stronger and more flexible, to a more decentralized framework that links national cap-and-trade systems. The project also examines an international system of national carbon taxes and a system of parallel international agreements that separately address different sectors and gases, as well as key issues such as adaptation, technology R&D, and remedies like geoengineering.

The team’s presentations can be downloaded on the Belfer Center website:

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/18690/