South Asia

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

The outcome of the December 2011 United Nations climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, provides an important new opportunity to move toward an international climate policy architecture that is capable of delivering broad international participation and significant global CO2 emissions reductions at reasonable cost. This paper addresses an important component of potential climate policy architecture for the post-Durban era: links among independent tradable permit systems for greenhouse gases.

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements hosted a research workshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 13–14, 2008. The workshop brought together key scholars and other thinkers working on international climate change policy from a variety of disciplines, including economics, political science, and law. Together, they addressed issues such as how to persuade developing countries — among them China and India — to sign on to an international agreement, how to link climate policy with international trade, and how to effectively address deforestation, which accounts for 20 percent of global emissions. Attendees presented their initial research findings and got feedback on their ideas. The workshop was preceded by a reception and dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club, which featured Todd Stern, a partner at the law firm WilmerHale, as a keynote speaker. The final drafts of the research will be published in early fall 2008.