Giving climate policy advice that makes a difference: targeting government agencies

The Climate Strategies and Climate Policy Blog is full to the brim with blog posts providing important scientific insights on how to fight climate change. Why does so little of this vast knowledge about what to do ultimately make it into real policy? In our recent outlook piece in Climate Policy, we argue that scientists […]

The Green Rebound: Thoughts on mobilising the COVID responses for climate action

Back in late March, when the corona crisis had finally forced us all from our offices and into our homes, Climate Strategies gathered our extraordinary membership of distinguished researchers (virtually of course) for a series of discussions on the “Green Rebound”. With the topic so well examined, and with so many opinions, reports, think pieces, […]

Consequences of adding ‘loss and damage’ as a third pillar of international climate change law

‘So what is your biggest concern going into Paris?’ Rolling Stone Magazine asked then US Secretary of State John Kerry in the run-up to COP 21 in Paris. Kerry answered: ‘I think [resolving the division between the] developed-and-developing-country piece is important. I think loss and damage will be complicated.’ John Kerry was indeed right, but […]

Usual and unusual suspects: what network analysis can tell us about climate policy integration

In one of the key scenes of the legendary film Casablanca (1942), Captain Louis Renault orders his police officers to “round up the usual suspects” instead of arresting the culprit, Rick Blaine. Those of us concerned with climate change are frequently doing the same. Even though policy action on adaptation or mitigation is not a […]

Climate justice is not a nice to have, it’s the heart of climate action

By Andrzej Blachowicz and Julie-Anne Hogbin, Climate Strategies Since the idea of a Just Transition first emerged from the labour union movement in the 90s, the concept of climate justice increasingly resonates across the world. Last year saw millions of people take to the streets to demand that principles of justice are placed at the […]

Climate Policy and Carbon Leakage: analysis and updated perspectives in Brazil

After COP 21, with the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015, the outlook for carbon pricing policies has been widened. While the agreement does not directly establish a global carbon pricing, the provisions accounted for in Article 6 have the potential to increase international cooperation in favour of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation through […]

What a small country’s successes and mistakes can teach about emission pricing

I’m from Aotearoa, New Zealand, and I really love its land and people, but I am fully aware that from a global perspective it appears pretty insignificant – that’s actually one of its charms. But being small doesn’t mean you can’t make big contributions including toward stabilizing the climate. Our paper in Climate Policy highlights […]

Lessons from six decades of hard coal production phase-out in Germany

Taking the Paris Agreement seriously, implies a coal phase-out for all industrialized countries by 2030. In our paper in Climate Policy we derive lessons for these upcoming coal phase-outs from examining the phase-out of hard coal production in the two largest mining regions of Germany, the Ruhr area and the Saarland. The analysis starts with […]

Reframing Ocean Acidification in the Context of the UNFCCC

In the mid- to late 2000s, the marine science and policy community was grappling with a newly recognized threat to the ocean: the insidious changing of ocean chemistry due to the absorption of human produced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It was becoming clear that the influx of CO2, which results in a series of chemical […]

NDCs to integrate sectors using the Nexus Approach? Linking Brazil’s agricultural exports to action against deforestation

As the threats to the Amazon forest grow in intensity, it is becoming clear that Brazil’s plans for the ‘development’ of the Amazon region seem to be accelerating deforestation. The rainforest loss from August 2018 to July 2019 is up to 30% compared with the same period in the previous year. This is the highest […]