Read All About It!? Media, Accountability and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

As the curtains closed on the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech in November 2016, we can soon analyse how much media attention it raised. One could imagine that the unprecedented speed of ratification of the Paris Agreement leading to its entry into […]

Lessons from European Climate Monitoring Crucial for Paris Agreement Success

As the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) in Marrakech draws to a close, it is becoming increasingly clear that credible monitoring and transparency procedures are urgently needed. Otherwise national pledges to address climate change in the spirit of the 2015 Paris Agreement will not build sufficient global trust. The 2015 […]

What Next for Building an EU Energy Union?

A new Special Issue of the Climate Policy Journal focuses on the governance of European climate change efforts. Drawing on the insights, Michael Grubb and Kacper Szulecki argue that a huge opportunity could be grasped in the form of a New Energy Union. The outcome of the UK’s referendum illustrates the need for it to […]

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 […]