Successor to Kyoto

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements has released a report that outlines ideas for successors to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. The document will be presented at the 14^th Conference of the Parties of Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held next week in Poznan, Poland.

The ideas to succeed the Kyoto Protocol are based on the Bali Action Plan that guides negotiators based on successes from the Kyoto Protocol that was initiated in 2005. The Harvard Project has expanded on five major elements: long-term global climate policy goal, emission mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer, and financing. It compiles the work of 28 international research teams and proposes four plausible approaches that could be ushered into effect.

The proposals are as follows:

Proposal No. 1:

One proposed framework argues that a new international climate agreement should establish a global cap-and-trade system, where the emissions caps are determined using a set of formulas. These formulas take into account a variety of economic factors, including GDP and economic growth rates, such that a country’s annual cap may change over time, rather than being set as an absolute quantity of emissions for the duration of the agreement. The result, it is hoped, is that every country will feel it is only doing its fair share.

Proposal No. 2:

A second idea calls for an international system of national carbon taxes. Nations would implement the taxes and would keep the revenues. An international carbon tax regime could be structured to co-exist with cap-and-trade systems in the European Union and elsewhere. A carbon tax, while roughly equivalent in economic impact to a cap-and trade system, is easier to administer, rendering it more feasible to implement for countries with less developed administrative systems.

Proposal No. 3:

A third proposed framework: Rather than attempting to address all sectors and all types of greenhouses gases under one unified regime, global negotiators could pursue a system of parallel international agreements that separately address different sectors and gases, as well as key issues such as adaptation, technology R&D, and last-resort remedies like geoengineering. (Geoengineering strategies attempt to limit warming by reducing the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface.)

Proposal No. 4:

A fourth proposal is based on the reality on the ground: Countries around the world are establishing cap-and-trade systems to reduce emissions. Europe has already established its version of a cap-and-trade system (the European Union Emission Trading Scheme), while Australia, Canada, the United States, and Japan are all considering similar systems. The proposal looks at ways to link these systems together, while preserving their individual integrity. Such linkage would increase both the cost-effectiveness and the environmental effectiveness of the overall system, by increasing the pool of opportunities for low-cost emissions reductions accessible to all. There are challenges, as well, with this approach, but some of them would be alleviated by linking regional and national cap-and-trade systems to emission-credit systems, most notably the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), as well as to other cap-and-trade sytems. The CDM is an instrument under the Kyoto Protocol that allows developed countries to fund emission-reduction projects in developing countries.

The Harvard Project is an international, multi-year, multi-disciplinary effort to help identify the key design elements of a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policy architecture.