Options for Protecting the Climate
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B UILDING This World Resources Institute book is a product of the ON Climate of Trust project. Climate of Trust is a solution-oriented THE collaboration of institutions and individuals from around the K YOTO world dedicated to bridging the North-South divide on climate change. The name reflects the relationship between the research P ROTOCOL partners—the collaboration is built upon an equal partnership of collegiality and trust. : O PTIONS FOR P ROTECTING Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas Centro Interdisciplinario de Biodiversidad y Ambiente THE BUILDING ON THE KYOTO PROTOCOL C COPPE, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro LIMATE OPTIONS FOR PROTECTING Energy & Development Research Centre THE CLIMATE Fundacion Bariloche ENVORK Research & Development Institut Français de l’Energie EDITED BY Instituto Pró-Sustentabilidade Kevin A. Baumert with Korea Environment Institute WRI Odile Blanchard, Silvia Llosa, and James F. Perkaus World Resources Institute Acknowledgments i BUILDING ON THE KYOTO PROTOCOL: OPTIONS FOR PROTECTING THE CLIMATE Edited by Kevin A. Baumert WORLD With RESOURCES Odile Blanchard INSTITUTE Silvia Llosa OCTOBER 2002 James F. Perkaus ii Building on the Kyoto Protocol: Options for Protecting the Climate CAROL ROSEN PUBLICATIONS DIRECTOR HYACINTH BILLINGS PRODUCTION MANAGER MAGGIE POWELL LAYOUT KAREN HOLMES EDITING Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes responsibility for choosing the study topic and guaranteeing its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the interpretation and findings set forth in WRI publications are those of the authors. Copyright © 2002 World Resources Institute. All rights reserved. ISBN: 1-56973-524-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2002113906 Printed in the United States of America on chlorine-free paper with recycled content of 50%, 20% of which is post-consumer. Photo Credit: Paul Souders/Getty Images WRI_CC-front.PMD 2 10/9/2002, 2:19 PM Contents iii CONTENTS Foreword .........................................................................................v Acknowledgments .........................................................................vii 1. Introduction: An Architecture for Climate Protection .............. 1 Kevin A. Baumert and Nancy Kete 2. Continuing Kyoto: Extending Absolute Emission Caps to Developing Countries .................................. 31 Joanna Depledge 3. Sustainable Development Policies and Measures: Starting From Development to Tackle Climate Change............ 61 Harald Winkler, Randall Spalding-Fecher, Stanford Mwakasonda, and Ogunlade Davidson 4. Evolving to a Sector-Based Clean Development Mechanism .... 89 Joséluis Samaniego and Christiana Figueres 5. Reducing Uncertainty Through Dual-Intensity Targets......... 109 Yong-Gun Kim and Kevin A. Baumert 6. Learning from the Argentine Voluntary Commitment ........... 135 Daniel Bouille and Osvaldo Girardin 7. The Brazilian Proposal on Relative Responsibility for Global Warming ....................................... 157 Emilio L. La Rovere, Laura Valente de Macedo, and Kevin A. Baumert iv Building on the Kyoto Protocol: Options for Protecting the Climate 8. Equal Per Capita Entitlements: A Key to Global Participation on Climate Change? ............... 175 Malik Amin Aslam 9. Scenarios for Differentiating Commitments: A Quantitative Analysis ....................................................... 203 Odile Blanchard 10. Conclusion: Building an Effective and Fair Climate Protection Architecture ............................. 223 Kevin A. Baumert and Silvia Llosa Bibliography ............................................................................... 237 Glossary and Abbreviations ........................................................ 249 About the Authors ..................................................................... 253 Foreword v FOREWORD Now that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is poised to enter into force, what comes next? How can the international community address the growing threat of climate change in a way that is fair and effective? In Building on the Kyoto Protocol: Options for Protecting the Climate, Kevin Baumert and his colleagues analyze a thought-provoking spectrum of pos- sibilities for shaping an international climate change agreement. Seven- teen contributors from nine countries offer analyses of options for strength- ening the climate protection treaties. They confront the most persistent challenge of climate protection—designing solutions that include both developed and developing countries. The options examined range from the well-known to the novel. Indeed, some approaches put forth in this book have never before been examined in print. This is a good sign. We need innovation and cooperation if we are to create environmentally sound solutions that are economically and politi- cally viable. From the vantage point of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, a climate treaty with simple timetables for emission reductions may have seemed plausible. Some thought a global carbon tax would pro- vide a simple answer. Today, we have a better sense of the limited capacity of our global institutions and national governments to deal with a prob- lem on the scale of climate change. The linkages between economic de- velopment and climate change are complex and resist simple fixes. Sev- eral of the approaches examined in the following pages tackle develop- ment and climate protection simultaneously. The authors use case stud- ies—Mexico, South Africa, and South Korea, for example—to show how the concepts are applied in national contexts. What comes after Kyoto? Citizens and governments should not be sat- isfied with a haphazard round of piecemeal commitments. The dangers of climate change are too great, and those dangers fall disproportionately on vi Building on the Kyoto Protocol: Options for Protecting the Climate the poor. This book outlines a way forward: a two-track strategy that both meets the short-term interests of governments and sets in motion pro- cesses for developing a more coherent long-term framework for climate protection. The final chapter distills key lessons that government nego- tiators and civil society advocates can use for many years to come as the international community debates how to protect the climate system from dangerous human interference. The origins of this book also help illuminate its content. It grew out of a unique and compelling collaboration, called the Climate of Trust, founded in 1998 under the leadership of Bonizella Biagini, Atiq Rahman, Nicolás di Sbroiavacca, Agus Sari, and Youba Sokona. Like the current Climate of Trust collaborators convened by WRI, the original partnership firmly be- lieved that it was possible to establish an atmosphere of trust between developed and developing nations, especially with respect to the urgency of addressing climate change. The first Climate of Trust report, Confront- ing Climate Change: Economic Priorities and Climate Protection in Developing Nations, was published in 2000 by the National Environmental Trust and Pelangi. Building on the Kyoto Protocol is the next step, and includes some new research partners from both developed and developing countries, to expand the circle of individuals and organizations committed to creating solutions that span the North-South divide. Most of the authors contributing to this book are from developing country research institutes. While the industrialized countries must take the lead in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, developing countries can and must play a leadership role in shaping durable and workable solutions to climate change at the international level. Indeed their future develop- ment prospects may depend on such solutions. By building bridges across the North-South divide for research and analysis, this project helps to reduce that real-world divide; to foster trust and spark a broader dialogue that can serve as the basis for concerted government action. Support for this book and the Climate of Trust project comes from the Canadian International Development Agency, the Helen Brach Founda- tion, the Institut Français de l’Energie, the Italian Ministry of Environ- ment and Territory, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Founda- tion, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Agency for Environment, Forests and Landscape, and the Wallace Global Fund. I am grateful for their generosity and foresight. Jonathan Lash President World Resources Institute Acknowledgments vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is the product of a true collaboration. We are especially grateful to all of the Climate of Trust participants that authored the individual chapters of this book and participated in many aspects of this project. The team of au- thors—drawn from nine countries—participated in nearly every step of the peer review, revision, and editing process and adhered to deadlines that, at times, were tight. The authors also assisted one another by providing input during the peer review process and during a March 2002 authors’ workshop in Rio das Pedras, Brazil (where preliminary papers were reviewed and discussed). The editorial team especially benefited from the authors’ feedback on the Introduction and Conclusion chapters. It was a privilege to work on an ambi- tious project with such a dedicated and creative team. It is the actions of the