Asia & the Pacific

China recently launched the world’s largest emissions trading market, but it is just one component of the nation’s ambitious efforts to curb the rise in greenhouse-gas emissions. That was the message delivered on Thursday (July 22) by Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor Valerie Karplus during a Virtual Forum hosted by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA) and moderated by Robert Stavins, HPCA Director and A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development.

The Harvard Project conducted a research workshop in June 2021, “Prospects for Guangdong Province’s Emissions Trading System.” Guangdong Province ranks first in economic output among China’s provinces and will play a major role in achieving increasingly ambitious national emissions-reduction targets. Guangdong’s emissions-trading system is, in turn, a key policy instrument in the Province’s climate-action plan.

In order to fully appreciate the global climate-change challenge that the Biden administration will face, Robert Stavins reflects on the history of international negotiations that brought us to this point.

This discussion paper (available in English and Chinese) describes the evolution of decentralization over the reform period that began in China in 1978, different theories of institutional change in China, and how the empirical and theoretical literatures help scholars and policymakers understand the development of institutions for governing GHG-emitting activities.