Kyoto Protocol Countries Achieved Full Compliance with Targets

All 36 countries that committed to emission caps under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change complied with their commitments, according to a scientific study by Igor Shishlov and others published today in the Climate Policy Journal, which uses the final data for national greenhouse gas emissions and exchanges in carbon credits (which only became available […]

Climate Finance: Time to Know Who Gives What

As the first climate change negotiations after December’s landmark Paris Agreement open in Bonn this week, controversies around levels of funding for poorer countries to fight climate change may re-emerge. The absence of internationally-agreed accounting rules for climate finance makes it harder to establish whether promises are being met and which countries are doing their part. Most debates […]

How Transitional Justice Can Help Climate Negotiations

Transitional justice – a theory and practice enabling purposeful transitions from periods of deep injustices into more peaceful regimes – was probably not on anyone’s mind during the last days of COP21, the UN conference that led to the Paris Agreement in December 2015. However, Paragraph 52 in the Decision text – which specifically excludes liability by developed countries […]

Could Lessons from Transitional Justice Help to Realise a Fair and Effective Global Response to Climate Change?

By Joy Hyvarinen Many have welcomed the new Paris Agreement on climate change, but there is also recognition of its weaknesses. The new treaty includes an aim of holding the global temperature increase to well below 2° C and also to “pursue efforts” to limit the increase to 1.5 ° C. However, current emission reduction […]

Aviation, Shipping and Climate Change Policy

By Alice Bows-Larkin “All adrift” was many years in the making. My research journey started with a focus on aviation and climate change in 2003, and it would be fair to say that I was unceremoniously thrown in at the deep end. Looking back, perhaps this was for the best, because had I realised how unpopular […]

Adaptation and the Private Sector

By Pieter Pauw The issue of private sector adaptation and adaptation finance is hotly debated by researchers, climate negotiators, business and civil society alike, with a growing number of publications on the topic, including my ‘not a panacea’ paper in Climate Policy. The data collection for this paper was done in 2012; the final manuscript was […]

Developing a Sectoral New Market Mechanism

By Wolfgang Obergassel, Hans Bolscher, Jeroen van der Laan, Jelmer Hoogzaad and Jos Sijm At the 2011 COP in Durban, Parties decided to establish a ‘new market-based mechanism’ (NMM) to promote mitigation across ‘broad segments’ of developing countries’ economies. So far, they have only defined some broad outlines of how it is to function. The Doha […]

From Lima to Paris, Part 2: Injecting Ambition

By Michael Grubb, Heleen de Coninck and Ambuj D. Sagar In Climate Policy’s latest editorial, Editor-in-Chief, Michael Grubb, together with Climate Strategies Chair Heleen de Coninck and the director of Indian Institute of Technology Ambuj D. Sagar, reflect on the current state of play in the climate negotiations in the run-up to Paris 2015. They suggest that forming a plurilateral […]

Insights from South Africa

By Emily Tyler and Brent Cloete The Paris COP in November 2015 is expected to usher in a dramatic change in the international climate negotiations. A global climate agreement is on the cards that for the first time will require all countries, both developed and developing, to undertake actions to combat climate change. Exactly what form […]

The Political Economy of Readiness for REDD+

By Peter Minang and Meine van Noordwijk The REDD+ process is an internationally agreed mechanism whereby developing countries are rewarded for reducing emissions through various actions that include reducing emissions from deforestation, reducing emissions from forest degradation, conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of carbon stocks. The structure is such that […]