Toward a New Climate Agreement

This book examines the challenges of sustaining meaningful cooperation among countries striving to manage global climate change through international environmental agreements. Through the perspectives of leading international scholars from multiple disciplines, readers of the book will gain an understanding of how agreements are negotiated, the strength and weaknesses of previous climate agreements and how a more effective future climate agreement can be designed.

Auteur

Todd L. Cherry is a Professor of Economics at Appalachian State University, USA, and at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo (CICERO). He currently holds the Rasmuson Chair of Economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage, USA.

Jon Hovi is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, Norway, and at CICERO.

David M. McEvoy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Appalachian State University, USA.

Résumé
Climate change is one of the most pressing problems facing the global community. Although most states agree that climate change is occurring and is at least partly the result of humans' reliance on fossil fuels, managing a changing global climate is a formidable challenge. Underlying this challenge is the fact that states are sovereign, governed by their own laws and regulations. Sovereignty requires that states address global problems such as climate change on a voluntary basis, by negotiating international agreements. Despite a consensus on the need for global action, many questions remain concerning how a meaningful international climate agreement can be realized. This book brings together leading experts to speak to such questions and to offer promising ideas for the path toward a new climate agreement. Organized in three main parts, it examines the potential for meaningful climate cooperation. Part 1 explores sources of conflict that lead to barriers to an effective climate agreement. Part 2 investigates how different processes influence states' prospects of resolving their differences and of reaching a climate agreement that is more effective than the current Kyoto Protocol. Finally, part 3 focuses on governance issues, including lessons learned from existing institutional structures. The book is unique in that it brings together the voices of experts from many disciplines, such as economics, political science, international law, and natural science. The authors are academics, practitioners, consultants and advisors. Contributions draw on a variety of methods, and include both theoretical and empirical studies. The book should be of interest to scholars and graduate students in the fields of economics, political science, environmental law, natural resources, earth sciences, sustainability, and many others. It is directly relevant for policy makers, stakeholders and climate change negotiators, offering insights into the role of uncertainty, fairness, policy linkage, burden sharing and alternative institutional designs.

Contenu

PART I: CONFLICT: BARRIERS TO A NEW AGREEMENT 1. Observations from the climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa 2. Does fairness matter in international environmental governance 3. Formation of climate agreements: The role of uncertainty and learning 4. Burden sharing in global climate governance 5. Negotiating to avoid 'gradual' versus 'dangerous' climate change: An experimental test of two prisoners' dilemmas 6. U.S. climate policy and the shale gas revolution PART 2:RESOLUTION: PATHS TOWARD A NEW AGREEMENT 7. The role of inequality in international environmental agreements with endogenous minimum participation requirements 8. Climate policy coordination through institutional design: an experimental examination 9. Improving the design of international environmental agreements 10. Managing dangerous anthropogenic interference: decision rules for climate governance 11. Exclusive approaches to climate governance: More effective than the UNFCCC? 12. Bottom up or top down PART 3:GOVERNANCE: STRUCTURES FOR A NEW AGREEMENT 13. Rethinking the legal form and principles of a new climate agreement 14. Technology agreements with heterogenous countries 15. International guidance for border carbon adjustments to address carbon leakage 16. The effect of enforcement in the presence of strong reciprocity: an application of agent-based modeling 17. EU emissions trading: achievements, challenges, solutions 18. The EU's quest for linked carbon markets: turbulence and headwind