基于集合经验模态分解和自回归-移动平均模型的COVID-19流行病全球预测系统预测结果改进

2020年,新型冠状病毒肺炎(COVID-19)在世界范围内迅速传播.为准确预测各国每日新增发病人数,兰州大学开发了 COVID-19流行病全球预测系统(GPCP).在本文的研究中,我们使用集合经验模态分解(EEMD)模型和自回归-移动平均(ARMA)模型对GPCP的预测结果进行改进,并对发病人数较少或处于发病初期,不...     

Regulating CO2 in electricity markets: sources or consumers?

The regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector within a cap-and-trade system poses significant policy questions on where to locate the point of compliance. Electricity markets often cross national or other regulatory boundaries, so that electricity generated within the boundary may comply with expectations but imported electricity may not. The question addressed in this article is where to locate the point of compliance in the electricity sector—where in the supply chain linking fuel suppliers to generators to the transmission system to retail load-serving entities should the obligation for measurement and compliance be placed? This problem is examined in the specific context of California's legislative requirements and particular energy markets, with the implications of the different policy options explored. The conclusion offered is that one particular approach to regulating the electricity sector—the ‘first-seller approach’—would be best for California. The alternative ‘load-based approach’ has had a head start in the policy process but would undermine an economy-wide market-based emissions trading programme.     

Reconciling the design of CDM with inborn paradox of additionality concept

Additionality of greenhouse gas emission reduction achieved through projects in developing countries has been a matter of heated debate for quite some time. Michael Grubb succintly summarized the inborn paradox of the additionality concept. It reads: “the most ‘cost-effective’ projects may be the least ‘additional’ and strict project additionality would give perverse policy incentives”. The authors begin with elaborating this notion. The dilemma for policy makers is that, despite the paradox, Kyoto regime desperately needs flexibility to reconcile its ambitious target with difficulties in implementing domestic policies and measures. The solution to it is to give a certain degree of discretionary elements to each party in designing criteria for clean development mechanism (CDM) projects. Such institutional design works because parties do not behave like an economic man but do have propensity to faithfully comply in a tightly woven international interdependence structure as the experience of past multilateral international agreements suggest. Transparency and responsibility will be a prerequisite for such an institutional design to be effective and attain public support. In contrast, a catch-all institutional design that depends heavily on bureaucratic and technological elements will be plagued by Grubb’s paradox and fail eventually. Elaborated methodologies for additionality determination will increase importance in the long run and universal rules may be available in future. But we have to begin with learning how the flexibility of Kyoto regime works by doing.     

Financing REDD in developing countries: a supply and demand analysis

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in developing countries has been at the centre of negotiations on a renewed international climate regime. Developing countries have made it clear that their ability to engage in REDD activities would depend on obtaining sufficient and stable funding. Two alternative REDD financing options are examined to find possible ways forward: financing through a future compliance market and financing through a non-offset fund. First, global demand for hypothetical REDD credits is estimated. The demand for REDD credits would be highest with a base year of 1990, using gross—net accounting. The key factors determining demand in this scenario are the emission reduction targets and the allowable cap. A proportion of emission reduction targets available for offsets lower than 15% would fail to generate a sufficient demand for REDD. Also examined is the option of financing REDD through a fund. Indirectly linking the replenishment of a REDD fund to the market is a promising mechanism, but its feasibility depends on political will. The example of overseas development assistance for global health indicates the conditions for possible REDD financing. The best financial approach for REDD would be a flexible REDD mechanism with two tracks: a market track serving as a mitigation option for developed countries, and a fund track serving as a mitigation option for developing countries.     

Toothfish crises, actor diversity and the emergence of compliance mechanisms in the Southern Ocean

Illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing is a challenging form of non-compliance in many marine ecosystems. IUU fishing has attracted substantial political attention in the Southern Ocean, where a series of crises created windows of opportunity for change. A crises-response framework was used for examining these dynamics between 1995 and 2009. Crises were defined in relation to their perceived threat, decision time and surprise. Published material was combined with the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLRs) expert interviews, to evaluate changing perceptions of IUU fishing and corresponding actions. A first crisis led to an increased use of informal shortcuts and a concentration of power. A second crisis created windows of opportunities for policy entrepreneurs and stimulated policy innovation. A third crisis led to the implementation of existing contingency plans. These responses were consistent with predictions from the crisis-response framework used. The series of crises threatened the credibility of CCAMLR and changed the incentives for engaging in coalitions, which led to the development of both management and enforcement approaches to compliance. State and non-state actors became increasingly involved in developing these diverse compliance mechanisms, thereby actively contributing to the adaptive capacity of CCAMLR. Synergies between fisheries industry, environmental conservation, and state sovereignty interests were effectively utilized. Individual actors, organizations and countries providing leadership had strong incentives for doing so. Trust and reputation was important for the compliance mechanisms leading to a substantial reduction of IUU fishing.     

Analysis of a commitment period reserve at national and global levels

To reduce the risk of overselling in the context of international greenhouse gas trading under the Kyoto Protocol, Parties have agreed to a commitment period reserve requirement. The commitment period reserve requires each Annex B Party to hold in its national registry quota equal to the lower of (a) X% of five times the Party’s most recently reviewed emissions inventory; and (b) Y% of the Party’s initial assigned amount. The agreement reached at the resumed sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) sets X=100% and Y=90%. This paper analyses different specifications (values of X and Y) of the commitment period reserve in terms of potential non-compliance due to overselling and restricted sales of quota surplus to compliance needs of the seller. To eliminate potential non-compliance due to overselling, Y must be equal to 100% and X must be greater than 105%. Specifications that limit potential non-compliance due to overselling, may temporarily restrict sales of quota surplus to the compliance of some countries. The Annex II Parties are less likely to face restrictions on sales of surplus quota than other Annex B countries. The risk of temporarily restricted sales is reduced to less than 10% for almost all countries for a value of X close to 90%.     

A no cap but trade proposal for emission targets

One problem in international climate policy is the refusal of large developing countries to accept emission reduction targets. Brazil, China and India together account for about 20% of today's CO₂ emissions. We analyse the case in which there is no international agreement on emission reduction targets, but countries do have domestic targets, and trade permits across borders. We contrast two scenarios. In one scenario, Brazil, China and India adopt their business as usual emissions as their target. In this scenario, there are substantial exports of emission permits from developing to developed countries, and substantial economic gains for all. In the second scenario, Brazil, China and India reduce their emissions target so that they have no net economic gain from permit trade. Here, developing countries do not accept responsibility for climate change (as they bear no net costs), but they do contribute to an emission reduction policy by refusing to make money out of it. Adopting such break-even targets can be done at minor cost to developed and developing countries (roughly $2 bn/year each in extra costs and forgone benefits), while developing countries are still slightly better off than in the case without international emissions trade. This result is robust to variations in scenarios and parameters. It contrasts with Stewart and Wiener (2003) who propose granting ‘hot air’ to developing countries to seduce them to accept targets. In 2020, China and India could reduce their emissions by some 10% from the baseline without net economic costs.     

Climate finance: A transaction cost perspective on the structure of state-to-state transfers

Direct transfers of climate finance from governments of developed countries to governments of developing countries are often perceived as risky due to information asymmetries, the infeasibility of perfect contract enforcement at the international level, and uncertain recipient capacities and respective outcomes. Donor governments usually try to minimize such risks by delegating the provision of climate finance to bilateral and multilateral organizations that implement and monitor projects in recipient countries. Such direct interventions generate an alternative set of transaction costs through the fragmentation of finance flows and proliferation of funding organizations that can put an additional burden on recipient institutions. Moreover, long delegation chains between initial donors and targeted beneficiaries trigger a cascade of principal-agent problems. The benefits of channelling climate finance through the international development cooperation system hence need to be weighed against the opportunity cost of this approach. The potential for such scrutiny is however constrained by a broken feedback loop between donor and recipient constituencies. Only if the extent to which transaction costs accrue and the reasons they do so become better understood, policy makers might be able to address them and chose the most cost-effective channel in each particular case.     

Design alternatives for a domestic carbon trading scheme in the United States

One critical aspect of the Kyoto Protocol is its flexibility in compliance. Countries or groups of countries are free to choose their own implementation strategies. Should the United States ratify the Protocol, it will most likely use emissions trading in some form to implement this accord. Two variations on a US domestic carbon trading system are presented here. One is an auction system controlling carbon at the point of energy production and distribution. The second is a hybrid system allocating permits to large combustors and controlling smaller sources through standards. Within this paper we describe and compare the main attributes of each system. Separate sections also discuss various methods for allocating permits and incorporating standards.     

Reducing emissions of ozone-depleting substances in Brazil

Montreal Protocol implementation programmes are not as straightforward a task in developing countries as it may seem to the developed world. The market is the driving force in Brazil and the country is under pressure to follow the pace of the developed countries despite the grace period allowed. The lack of a well established national infrastructure to monitor the process closely puts the implementation plan at risk. Leadership and contact points are not well defined for those seeking information and the financial support available from the Multilateral Fund. Regulatory agencies have neither the regulations nor the action programmes to ensure enforcement. The establishment of a National Task Group Office and investment in education and training are also necessary tools to patch some of the ‘holes’.     

《巴黎协定》强化透明度体系的建立与实施展望

以信息报告和审评为主要内容的透明度体系是《巴黎协定》有效实施的重要保障。《巴黎协定》建立了“强化的透明度框架”,并在2018年底达成了实施细则,形成了强化的透明度体系。这一体系建立在既往透明度履约实践基础上,针对缔约方在《巴黎协定》下所承担“共同但有区别”的义务,在为发展中国家提供履约灵活性和支持的情况下,遵循通用的模式、程序和指南。该规则体系有利于提高缔约方履约报告质量和可比性,督促各方履行条约义务,增进全球气候治理多边机制互信。然而这一体系相比既往实践,给发展中国家提出强化要求的同时尚未落实强化的支持,且体系本身的运行效率还有待观察。为此,各国应当做好充分的国内体制机制建设准备,国际社会应当落实对发展中国家履约的支持,强化相应能力建设。     

Scenarios that illuminate vulnerabilities and robust responses

Scenarios exist so that decision makers and those who provide them with information can make statements about the future that claim less confidence than do predictions, projections, and forecasts. Despite their prevalence, fundamental questions remain about how scenarios should best be developed and used. This paper proposes a particular conceptualization of scenarios that aims to address many of the challenges faced when using scenarios to inform contentious policy debates. The concept envisions scenarios as illuminating the vulnerabilities of proposed policies, that is, as concise summaries of the future states of the world in which a proposed policy would fail to meet its goals. Such scenarios emerge from a decision support process that begins with a proposed policy, seeks to understand the conditions under which it would fail, and then uses this information to identify and evaluate potential alternative policies that are robust over a wide range of future conditions. Statistical cluster analyses applied to databases of simulation model results can help identify scenarios as part of this process. Drawing on themes from the decision support literature, this paper first reviews difficulties faced when using scenarios to inform climate-related decisions, describes the proposed approach to address these challenges, illustrates the approach with applications for three different types of users, and concludes with some thoughts on implications for the provision of climate information and for future scenario processes.     

Creating a mutual gains climate regime through universal clean energy services

Climate change is a serious threat to all nations. This raises the question of why continuous treaty negotiations for more than two decades have failed to create a viable or adequate international climate regime. The current strategy of addressing climate change misdiagnoses the issue as a pollution problem by focusing on symptoms (emissions) and not on underlying causes (unsustainable development). In short, the wrong treaty is being negotiated. Drawing on negotiation analysis, it is argued that the existing and proposed climate treaties fail to meet the national interests of any party. An alternative strategy for addressing climate change is proposed that reframes the overall approach to reflect all countries’ development needs and links climate protection goals to the development structure of the treaty. The current deadlock over emissions reductions might be overcome and a mutual gains agreement reached by directing international cooperation towards promoting the provision of clean energy services for development and ensuring universal access to those services as part of an ‘early action’ agenda that will complement efforts to utilize forests and reduce other GHGs from multiple sectors.     

Improvement of the global prediction system of the COVID-19 pandemic based on the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model in a hybrid approach 基于集合经验模态分解和自回归-移动平均模型的 COVID-19 流行病全球预测系统预测结果改进

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spreads rapidly around the world. To accurately predict the number of daily new cases in each country, Lanzhou University has established the Global Prediction System of the COVID-19 Pandemic (GPCP). In this article, the authors use the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) model and autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model to improve the prediction results of GPCP. In addition, the authors also conduct direct predictions for those countries with a small number of confirmed cases or are in the early stage of the disease, whose development trends of the pandemic do not fully comply with the law of infectious diseases and cannot be predicted by the GPCP model. Judging from the results, the absolute values of the relative errors of predictions in countries such as Cuba have been reduced significantly and their prediction trends are closer to the real situations through the method mentioned above to revise the prediction results out of GPCP. For countries such as El Salvador with a small number of cases, the absolute values of the relative errors of prediction become smaller. Therefore, this article concludes that this method is more effective for improving prediction results and direct prediction.摘要2020年, 新型冠状病毒肺炎 (COVID-19) 在世界范围内迅速传播.为准确预测各国每日新增发病人数, 兰州大学开发了 COVID-19 流行病全球预测系统 (GPCP). 在本文的研究中, 我们使用集合经验模态分解 (EEMD) 模型和自回归-移动平均 (ARMA) 模型对 GPCP 的预测结果进行改进, 并对发病人数较少或处于发病初期, 不完全符合传染病规律, GPCP 模型无法预测的国家进行直接预测.从结果来看, 使用该方法修正预测结果, 古巴等国家预测误差均大幅下降, 且预测趋势更接近真实情况.对于萨尔瓦多等发病人数较少的国家直接进行预测, 相对误差较小, 预测结果较为准确.该方法对于改进预测结果和直接预测均较为有效.     

Introducing top-down methods in assessing compliance with the Kyoto Protocol

Abstract

The Kyoto Protocol has an ambitious reporting and review system to assess Parties' compliance with their emission commitments. It is based on a ‘bottom-up’ approach; that is, each Party is required to submit detailed inventories of emissions and removals. This requires considerable resources and may still not detect all important cases of non-compliance. We consider the case for introducing ‘top-down’ methods; that is, independent inverse modelling methods that calculate probable emissions using measured concentrations of gases in the atmosphere and meteorological models. We argue that the top-down methods are at present too inaccurate, too cumbersome, and politically too problematic to serve as independent alternatives to the reported emission inventories for assessing compliance, although they could be useful in monitoring the global success of the protocol. We conclude that these top-down approaches may supplement the traditional emission inventories, in particular those dealing with fluorinated gases, thereby providing input for improving the emission inventory methods.     

Analysis of a commitment period reserve at national and global levels

Abstract

To reduce the risk of overselling in the context of international greenhouse gas trading under the Kyoto Protocol, Parties have agreed to a commitment period reserve requirement. The commitment period reserve requires each Annex B Party to hold in its national registry quota equal to the lower of (a) X% of five times the Party's most recently reviewed emissions inventory; and (b) Y% of the Party's initial assigned amount. The agreement reached at the resumed sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) sets X = 100% and Y = 90%. This paper analyses different specifications (values of X and Y) of the commitment period reserve in terms of potential non-compliance due to overselling and restricted sales of quota surplus to compliance needs of the seller. To eliminate potential non-compliance due to overselling, Y must be equal to 100% and X must be greater than 105%. Specifications that limit potential non-compliance due to overselling, may temporarily restrict sales of quota surplus to the compliance of some countries. The Annex II Parties are less likely to face restrictions on sales of surplus quota than other Annex B countries. The risk of temporarily restricted sales is reduced to less than 10% for almost all countries for a value of X close to 90%.     

The effectiveness of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

How effective is the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in promoting emissions reduction for compliance with the Kyoto Protocol commitment? A theoretical benchmark is determined in order to assess the stringency of the ETS cap and to evaluate whether emissions allowances have been over-allocated. This analysis clarifies how the emissions reduction effort has been divided between ETS and non-ETS sectors, highlighting the extent to which Member States effectively rely on the ETS to comply with their Kyoto commitments. Finally, inefficiencies relating to the over-allocation of allowances are analysed; namely cross-subsidization from non-ETS to ETS sectors, national subsidies to the ETS sectors, and distortion of competition.     

对IPCC第五次评估报告减缓气候变化国际合作评估结果的解读

IPCC第五次评估报告第三工作组报告首次对减缓气候变化国际合作进行了独立成章的评估。主要结论认为,《联合国气候变化框架公约》依然是国际合作主要多边论坛,但对该《公约》基本原则的理解出现分歧,《京都议定书》的表现不尽如人意;目前国际合作机制在架构和参与主体方面日趋多元化;国际合作所面临的主要问题是参与度不够、遵约机制不健全。一个“自下而上”的全球协议、资金和技术激励可以促进广泛参与,贸易措施的介入可以完善气候政策、促进参与和遵约,《公约》外的各种小多边主义通过对接可对《公约》机制起到良好的补充作用。这些评估结论可能对2020年后应对气候变化国际合作产生重要影响。     

Forest law enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon: Costs and income effects

Despite recent success in reducing forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon, additional forest conservation efforts, for example, through ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’ (REDD+), could significantly contribute to global climate-change mitigation. Economic incentives, such as payments for environmental services could promote conservation, but deforestation often occurs on land without crucial tenure-security prerequisites. Improving the enforcement of existing regulatory disincentives thus represents an important element of Brazil's anti-deforestation action plan. However, conservation law enforcement costs and benefits have been much less studied than for conditional payments. We develop a conceptual framework and a spatially explicit model to analyze field-based regulatory enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon. We validate our model, based on historical deforestation and enforcement mission data from 2003 to 2008. By simulating the current conservation law enforcement practice, we analyze the costs of liability establishment and legal coercion for alternative conservation targets, and evaluate corresponding income impacts. Our findings suggest that spatial patterns of both deforestation and inspection costs markedly influence enforcement patterns and their income effects. Field-based enforcement is a highly cost-effective forest conservation instrument from a regulator's point of view, but comes at high opportunity costs for land users. Payments for environmental services could compensate costs, but will increase budget outlays vis-à-vis a command-and-control dominated strategy. Both legal and institutional challenges have to be overcome to make conservation payments work at a larger scale. Decision-makers may have to innovatively combine incentive and disincentive-based policy instruments in order to make tropical forest conservation both financially viable and socially compatible.