Aldy on opportunity for new and improved international climate change agreement
The challenges standing in the way of an effective international climate change agreement are many, but the prospects for a meaningful deal may be better now than in the past decade or more. That is the prevailing theme in a new research paper co-authored by Harvard Kennedy School Professors Joseph Aldy and Robert Stavins, published in the August 31 edition of Science.
"The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) launched a process to confront risks posed by global climate change. It has led to a dichotomy between countries with serious emission-reduction responsibilities and others with no responsibilities whatsoever," the authors argue. "This has prevented progress, but recent talks suggest the prospect for a better way forward and an openness to outside-the box thinking."
Aldy and Stavins argue that both scholars and practitioners have a unique opportunity over the near term to build upon the momentum achieved at recent Conference of the Parties (COPs) meetings to help lay the foundation for a comprehensive climate-policy regime by 2020. The trigger for such a regime, the authors contend, may lie in the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (DPEA), an agreement reached in Durban, South Africa, at the 17th COP meetings last December, outlining a plan for eliminating key distinctions between developed and developing nations, while remaining true to the principles laid out in the over-arching United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"The outcome of the Durban negotiations has increased the likelihood that a sound foundation for meaningful long-term action can be developed. With the DPEA, there is a mandate for change. Governments around the world need fresh ideas, and they need those ideas over the next 2 to 3 years. Indeed, they have begun to solicit such ideas as the negotiators begin to frame the implementation of the DPEA," Aldy and Stavins write.
