An equity first, risk-based framework for managing global climate change

This paper presents an alternative framework to the approach currently embodied in the Kyoto Protocol for managing global climate change post-2012. The framework has two key provisions. The first is that each person in the world would be ‘allowed’ an equal amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This is labeled the equity-first provision. The second provision focuses on incorporating risk concepts into the setting of GHG emission reductions. It is proposed that the global climate be managed as to avoid three categories of risks: (I) Substantial regional economic, political, and/or biological impacts; (II) Severe global economic, political, and/or biological impacts; and (III) Extinction of humans. Acceptable risk thresholds are suggested to be one-in-a-million, one-in-one-hundred-million, and one-in-ten-billion, respectively. This equity-first, risk-based framework overcomes many criticisms of the current Kyoto Protocol: it explicitly involves all countries on earth; it avoids several administrative issues that are anticipated to plague a global carbon emissions trading market; and it avoids several contentious issues associated with pegging carbon emission reductions to 1990 levels. Because the framework is risk-based and emissions are tied to population and not historic emission levels, the basic framework would not have to be frequently renegotiated, as will be needed for the Kyoto-style approach to take the world past that agreement's 2012 endpoint.     

Russia's 2020 GHG emissions target: Emission trends and implementation

This article provides an overview of the recent modelling results on Russia's GHG emission trends, and reviews the success of mitigation policies in order to establish whether Russia's domestic target seems feasible. Various Russian GHG emission scenarios indicate that Russia's domestic target – emissions 25% below the 1990 level by 2020 – is not far from the business-as-usual emissions trajectory. In particular, two factors could deliver the required emissions reductions: the currently declining gross domestic product (GDP) growth and ongoing domestic mitigation policies. The former is more likely to secure the target level of emissions, because GDP growth has been contracting significantly in comparison to earlier forecasts of 3–5% annual growth, and this trend is expected to continue. The latter option – success with domestic mitigation measures – seems less likely, given the various meta-barriers to policy implementation, and the marginality of mitigation policies, problems with law-making processes, bureaucratic tradition, and informality of legislative and implementation systems.

Policy relevance

This article provides an assessment of the stringency of Russia's domestically set emissions limitation target by 2020 and the chances of Russia, the fourth largest GHG emitter in the world, achieving it. We base our assessment on a number of recent key sources that analyse Russia's GHG emission paths by applying socio-economic models, which have only been available in the Russian language prior to this publication. This knowledge is applicable for use by other negotiation parties to compare Russia's efforts to mitigate climate change to their own, and thus makes a contribution to facilitating a more equal burden-sharing of climate commitments under the future climate change agreement.     

The economics of boldness: equity,action, and hope

Equity is usually interpreted in terms of the concept of justice, such that an equitable share of the atmospheric space is understood in terms of past emissions. This emphasizes the collective nature of sharing the burden of mitigation and the duty to act for those who have emitted the most. An alternative is considered: the aggregate costs and benefits to all Parties that could result from both increasing the level of collective ambition and implementing a climate regime that supports bold actions across all Parties. The regional impacts and carbon flow costs across differentiated scenarios are assessed and it is argued that the majority of developing-country Parties would be better off if a high ambition outcome to which all contributed, but some more than others. Moreover, those with middle or low emissions would have proportionally more to gain (or lose) relative to the level of ambition compared to those that have had higher emissions. The climate regime should be built on the principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities (CBDR&RC), in which all act early even if some do much more; one that accounts for justice but does not forget hope.

Policy relevance

Differing interpretations of equity and the principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are discussed, with a focus on how these can enhance or hinder collective action. Whilst the climate change negotiations are usually taken as games in which one party gains and another loses, and interactions are dogged by continuous conflict, it is explored instead how negotiation responses can be framed in terms of cooperation. This would emphasize the gains that could be achieved by common but differentiated collective action, which could result in a collective avoidance of impacts. The possibilities that this shift of perspective could bring are explored by comparing costs under global cooperation (or lack of it). It is found that cooperation reduces the total costs for these regions. Thus, thinking in terms of cooperation focuses the options for negotiation on the means and interpretations of the UNFCCC principles that spur action and avoid climate impacts through collective action.     

Carbon reduction in the real world: how the UK will surpass its Kyoto obligations

Abstract

Carbon dioxide emissions from UK energy use have fallen by more than 20% over the last 30 years, and carbon intensity—carbon emissions per unit of GDP—has halved. These reductions have been achieved by a combination of decarbonisation of the energy system and substantial improvements in energy efficiency. Use of natural gas in power generation has been a big factor in recent years, but energy efficiency improvements in households and particularly industry have been more important over a longer period. Government policies designed primarily to address climate change have not been important contributors, until recently.

Future reductions in emissions will require more proactive policies. However, they are possible without any economic difficulties, notably by adopting cost-effective energy efficiency measures, using new renewable energy sources and reducing dependence on private cars. These policies will improve economic efficiency. The new UK Climate Change Programme includes policies that combine regulation, investment, fiscal measures and other economic instruments. By working with the grain of other social, environmental and economic policies, they can achieve far more than a carbon tax alone, set at any politically acceptable level. Modelling the costs of emission reductions using a carbon tax as the only instrument would not only massively over-estimate costs, it would bear little resemblance to real world politics.

The paper demonstrates that a more diverse set of policy instruments is likely to be an effective and politically acceptable approach in a mature industrial economy. It is concluded that the UK's Kyoto target of a 12.5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is not challenging. The UK Government's target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20% between 1990 and 2010 is also achievable. By 2010 per capita emissions from the UK will be well below 2.5 tC per year. Claims that some countries, notably the USA, could not reduce per capita emissions below 6 tC per year seem inconsistent with this experience.     

1.5℃增暖对全球和区域影响的研究进展

《巴黎协定》明确提出将全球平均升温控制在相对于工业化前水平2℃以内,并努力将其控制在1.5℃以内,以降低气候变化的风险与影响。随后,《联合国气候变化框架公约》（UNFCCC）邀请IPCC筹备关于1.5℃增暖影响及温室气体排放途径的特别报告,为UNFCCC谈判提供科学依据。通过回顾近期发表的一些成果发现,在1.5℃到2℃的不同升温条件下,很多极端天气事件发生的概率将增加。2℃条件下一些易受威胁的系统,如生态系统和农业系统,将承受全球变暖带来的严重后果;海平面明显上升,珊瑚礁锐减,季风降水减弱等影响将进一步加强。同时,不同地区对全球不同程度增暖的响应也存在很大差异。总的说来,相较于2℃增暖而言,将增暖控制在1.5℃以内能进一步减小气候变化影响的风险。然而,要把全球增暖控制在1.5℃内具有极大的挑战性,并且目前对1.5℃增暖的影响认识仍然十分不足。定量分析2℃和1.5℃增暖对不同区域自然和人类系统造成的影响差异,需要更高分辨率的模式以及更多针对2℃和1.5℃增暖影响而设计的专门试验支持。     

The benefits of quantifying climate model uncertainty in climate change impacts assessment: an example with heat-related mortality change estimates

The majority of climate change impacts assessments account for climate change uncertainty by adopting the scenario-based approach. This typically involves assessing the impacts for a small number of emissions scenarios but neglecting the role of climate model physics uncertainty. Perturbed physics ensemble (PPE) climate simulations offer a unique opportunity to explore this uncertainty. Furthermore, PPEs mean it is now possible to make risk-based impacts estimates because they allow for a range of estimates to be presented to decision-makers, which spans the range of climate model physics uncertainty inherent from a given climate model and emissions scenario, due to uncertainty associated with the understanding of physical processes in the climate model. This is generally not possible with the scenario-based approach. Here, we present the first application of a PPE to estimate the impact of climate change on heat-related mortality. By using the estimated impacts of climate change on heat-related mortality in six cities, we demonstrate the benefits of quantifying climate model physics uncertainty in climate change impacts assessment over the more common scenario-based approach. We also show that the impacts are more sensitive to climate model physics uncertainty than they are to emissions scenario uncertainty, and least sensitive to whether the climate change projections are from a global climate model or a regional climate model. The results demonstrate the importance of presenting model uncertainties in climate change impacts assessments if the impacts are to be placed within a climate risk management framework.     

EU 20-20-20 energy policy as a model for global climate mitigation

The EU has established an aggressive portfolio with explicit near-term targets for 2020 – to reduce GHG emissions by 20%, rising to 30% if the conditions are right, to increase the share of renewable energy to 20%, and to make a 20% improvement in energy efficiency – intended to be the first step in a long-term strategy to limit climate forcing. The effectiveness and cost of extending these measures in time are considered along with the ambition and propagation to the rest of the world. Numerical results are reported and analysed for the contribution of the portfolio's various elements through a set of sensitivity experiments. It is found that the hypothetical programme leads to very substantial reductions in GHG emissions, dramatic increases in use of electricity, and substantial changes in land-use including reduced deforestation, but at the expense of higher food prices. The GHG emissions reductions are driven primarily by the direct limits. Although the carbon price is lower under the hypothetical protocol than it would be under the emissions cap alone, the economic cost of the portfolio is higher, between 13% and 22%.     

全球变暖与地球“三极”气候变化

北极、南极和青藏高原分别是地球的最北端、最南端和海拔最高的高原,被称为地球“三极”。地球三极是全球气候变化的关键区与敏感区,在区域及全球气候系统中的重要性日益凸显。本文回顾了该领域的最新研究成果,重点阐述了地球三极气候年代际变化的基本特征及其对区域气候的影响,探究了在全球气候变暖背景下地球三极气候变化之间的潜在联系,讨论并展望了未来地球三极气候变化研究所面临的挑战。     

Ocean acidification and climate change: synergies and challenges of addressing both under the UNFCCC

Ocean acidification and climate change are linked by their common driver: CO₂. Climate change is the consequence of a range of GHG emissions, but ocean acidification on a global scale is caused solely by increased concentrations of atmospheric CO₂. Reducing CO₂ emissions is therefore the most effective way to mitigate ocean acidification. Acting to prevent further ocean acidification by reducing CO₂ emissions will also provide simultaneous benefits by alleviating future climate change. Although it is possible that reducing CO₂ emissions to a level low enough to address ocean acidification will simultaneously address climate change, the reverse is unfortunately not necessarily true. Despite the ocean's integral role in the climate system and the potentially wide-ranging impacts on marine life and humans, the problem of ocean acidification is largely absent from most policy discussions pertaining to CO₂ emissions. The linkages between ocean acidification, climate change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are identified and possible scenarios for developing common solutions to reduce and adapt to ocean acidification and climate change are offered. Areas where the UNFCCC is currently lacking capacity to effectively tackle rising ocean acidity are also highlighted.     

China's carbon emissions and international trade: implications for post-2012 policy

Growing international trade has been one of the most important drivers for China's recent economic growth. This growth has fed rapid increases in energy demand and carbon emissions since 2000. China is now the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. There is mounting pressure from some in the international community for China to take specific actions to mitigate its emissions as part of a post-2012 climate regime. However, emissions embodied in internationally traded goods have not been given enough attention in this debate. This article discusses the results of research to quantify the emissions stemming from goods that are exported from China to other countries. It finds that these emissions accounted for 23% of China's national total in 2004. The article sets out how this result has been obtained and compares it to the results of several other pieces of research to demonstrate the importance of this issue. Some pointers for international climate policy are then discussed, including the advantages and difficulties of moving to consumption-based emissions accounting, and implications for international trade rules.     

欧洲地区不同温室气体背景下土地利用/覆盖变化的气候效应

通过温室气体排放和土地利用/覆盖变化,人类活动对气候变化产生显著影响。为了探究在不同温室气体浓度（Greenhouse gas concentration,GHG）背景下,相同的土地利用/覆盖变化（Land Use and Land Cover Change,LULCC）对于欧洲区域气候的影响差异,采用CESM（Community Earth System Model）耦合模式进行了模拟研究。研究发现,在1850年温室气体浓度背景下,土地利用/覆盖变化导致欧洲中东部地区降水显著增加,而在2000年温室气体浓度背景下,土地利用/覆盖变化导致欧洲中东部地区降水减少。温室气体增加后,LULCC导致该地区对流层低层大气环流由辐合变为辐散,气温以及大气水汽含量降低,这些变化能较大程度的改变LULCC对区域降水的净影响力。     

Personalized risk messaging can reduce climate concerns

One potential barrier to climate policy action is that individuals view climate change as a problem for people in other parts of the world or for future generations. As some scholars argue, risk messaging strategies that make climate change personally relevant may help overcome this barrier. In this article, we report a large-n survey experiment on San Francisco Bay Area residents to investigate how providing spatially-resolved risk information to individuals shapes their climate risk perceptions in the context of sea-level rise. Our results suggest that personalized risk messaging can sometimes reduce concern about sea-level rise. These experimental effects are limited to respondents who believe that climate change is happening. Further, we do not find an effect of providing local risk messages on an individual's willingness to pay for regional climate adaptation measures. Our results emphasize that local messaging strategies around sea-level rise risks may not have the clear impacts that some advocates and scholars presume.     

Impacts of Future NOx and CO Emissions on Regional Chemistry and Climate over Eastern China

A coupled chemical/dynamical model (SOCOL-SOlar Climate Ozone Links) is applied to study the impacts of future enhanced CO and NOx emissions over eastern China on regional chemistry and climate. The result shows that the increase of CO and NOx emissions has significant effects on regional chemistry, including NOx, CO, O₃, and OH concentrations. During winter, the CO concentration is uniformly increased in the northern hemisphere by about 10 ppbv. During summer, the increase of CO has a regional distribution. The change in O₃, concentrations near eastern China has both strong seasonal and spatial variations. During winter, the surface O₃, concentrations decrease by about 2 ppbv, while during summer they increase by about 2 ppbv in eastern China. The changes of CO, NOx, and O₃, induce important impacts on OH concentrations. The changes in chemistry, especially O₃, induce important effects on regional climate. The analysis suggests that during winter, the surface temperature decreases and air pressure increases in central-eastern China. The changes of temperature and pressure produce decreases in vertical velocity. We should mention that the model resolution is coarse, and the calculated concentrations are generally underestimated when they are compared to measured results. However, because this model is a coupled dynamical/chemical model, it can provide some useful insights regarding the climate impacts due to changes in air pollutant emissions.     

气候变化国家评估报告(Ⅲ):中国应对气候变化对策的综合评价

Climate change is increasingly becoming the hotspot issue of global attention. On the basis of review of the process responding to climate change of international community, this paper introduces the status of carbon emissions of the world and China, and the technology potential for China to mitigate carbon emissions. At the same time, this paper explores the macro-impacts of China's mitigation of carbon emissions, the equity of global mitigation of climate change, and the impacts of international cooperation in the field of climate change. Furthermore, this paper puts forward the ideas and countermeasures of mitigating climate change in China, indicating that China should positively adapt to the trends of international politics, economy and trade pattern changes and bring the strategies of mitigating climate change into national social and economic development strategy, planning to promote comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development of national economy and society under the situation of global response to climate change.     

Potential impact of albedo incorporation in boreal forest sector climate change policy effectiveness

Forests have an important role to play in climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration and wood supply. However, the lower albedo of mature forests compared to bare land implies that focusing only on GHG accounting may lead to biased estimates of forestry's total climatic impacts. An economic model with a high degree of detail of the Norwegian forestry and forest industries is used to simulate GHG fluxes and albedo impacts for the next decades. Albedo is incorporated in a carbon tax/subsidy scheme in the Norwegian forest sector using a partial, spatial equilibrium model. While a price of EU€100/tCO₂e that targets GHG fluxes only results in reduced harvests, the same price including albedo leads to harvest levels that are five times higher in the first five years, with 39% of the national productive forest land base being cleared. The results suggest that policies that only consider GHG fluxes and ignore changes in albedo will not lead to an optimal use of the forest sector for climate change mitigation.

Policy relevance

Bare land reflects a larger share of incoming solar energy than dense forest and thus has higher albedo. Earlier research has suggested that changes in albedo caused by management of boreal forest may be as important as carbon fluxes for the forest's overall global warming impacts. The presented analysis is the first attempt to link albedo to national-scale forest climate policies. A policy with subsidies to forest owners that generate carbon sequestration and taxes levied on carbon emissions leads to a reduced forest harvest. However, including albedo in the policy alongside carbon fluxes yields very different results, causing initial harvest levels to increase substantially. The inclusion of albedo impacts will make harvests more beneficial for climate change mitigation as compared to a carbon-only policy. Hence, it is likely that carbon policies that ignore albedo will not lead to optimal forest management for climate change mitigation.     

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.     

Technology obscuring equity: historical responsibility in UNFCCC negotiations

According to the concept of historical responsibility, the commitments of individual countries to take action on climate change are distributed based on the relative effects of their past emissions as manifested in present climate change. Brazil presented a comprehensive version of the concept to pre-Kyoto negotiations in 1997. The ‘Brazilian proposal’ originally combined several justice principles; however, following referral to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, discussion soon became confined to technical calculations. This case illustrates how disparities in knowledge production and framing can influence the inclusiveness of negotiations. Southern participation in the policy process was restrained due to lack of scientific expertise on the part of Southern countries and due to the non-inclusive biophysical discourse traditionally preferred by Northern policy-makers. The historical responsibility issue became stranded on problems of how to correctly represent physical nature in climate models. This marginalized the original intention that equity should be the guiding principle of the North—South interaction, arguably undercutting a potential angle of approach to advance the climate change negotiations. The article concludes that in the interest of facilitating the North—South dialogue in climate change negotiations, any framing of historical responsibility that excludes equity needs to be redefined.     

Reversible and irreversible impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in multi-century projections with the NCAR global coupled carbon cycle-climate model

The legacy of historical and the long-term impacts of 21st century greenhouse gas emissions on climate, ocean acidification, and carbon-climate feedbacks are investigated with a coupled carbon cycle-climate model. Emission commitment scenarios with zero emissions after year 2100 and 21st century emissions of 1,800, 900, and 0 gigatons of carbon are run up to year 2500. The reversibility and irreversibility of impacts is quantified by comparing anthropogenically-forced regional changes with internal, unforced climate variability. We show that the influence of historical emissions and of non-CO₂ agents is largely reversible on the regional scale. Forced changes in surface temperature and precipitation become smaller than internal variability for most land and ocean grid cells in the absence of future carbon emissions. In contrast, continued carbon emissions over the 21st century cause irreversible climate change on centennial to millennial timescales in most regions and impacts related to ocean acidification and sea level rise continue to aggravate for centuries even if emissions are stopped in year 2100. Undersaturation of the Arctic surface ocean with respect to aragonite, a mineral form of calcium carbonate secreted by marine organisms, is imminent and remains widespread. The volume of supersaturated water providing habitat to calcifying organisms is reduced from preindustrial 40 to 25% in 2100 and to 10% in 2300 for the high emission case. We conclude that emission trading schemes, related to the Kyoto Process, should not permit trading between emissions of relatively short-lived agents and CO₂ given the irreversible impacts of anthropogenic carbon emissions.     

Climate change technology transfer: a new paradigm and policy agenda

This article proposes a shift to a paradigm that is more extensive than the current narrow focus on North—South climate change technology transfers, towards a more inclusive ‘global’ paradigm. An implication of the paradigm shift is that there should be a concomitant expansion of the policy agendas of the international climate and trade regimes. The traditional North—South paradigm of technology transfer ignores the increasing importance of developing countries as sources of advanced climate-friendly technologies, and therefore ignores South—North and South—South transfers. Further, whereas the North—South paradigm has emphasized developing countries' intellectual property rights policies as barriers to technology transfers, the ‘global’ paradigm focuses attention on trade and investment policy barriers, including developed countries' policies that inhibit technology transfer from developing countries. The analysis is relevant to international negotiations in the post-2012 climate regime, and is also relevant to the future development of the trade regime—not only at the multilateral level in the WTO, but also at the regional and bilateral levels.     

Health and environmental co-benefits and conflicts of actions to meet UK carbon targets

Many actions to reduce GHG emissions have wider impacts on health, the economy, and the environment, beyond their role in mitigating climate change. These ancillary impacts can be positive (co-benefits) or negative (conflicts). This article presents the first quantitative review of the wider impacts on health and the environment likely to arise from action to meet the UK's legally-binding carbon budgets. Impacts were assessed for climate measures directed at power generation, energy use in buildings, and industry, transport, and agriculture. The study considered a wide range of health and environmental impacts including air pollution, noise, the upstream impacts of fuel extraction, and the lifestyle benefits of active travel. It was not possible to quantify all impacts, but for those that were monetized the co-benefits of climate action (i.e. excluding climate benefits) significantly outweigh the negative impacts, with a net present value of more than £85 billion from 2008 to 2030. Substantial benefits arise from reduced congestion, pollution, noise, and road accidents as a result of avoided journeys. There is also a large health benefit as a result of increased exercise from walking and cycling instead of driving. Awareness of these benefits could strengthen the case for more ambitious climate mitigation action.

Policy relevance

This article demonstrates that actions to mitigate GHG emissions have significant wider benefits for health and the environment. Including these impacts in cost–benefit analysis would strengthen the case for the UK (and similar countries) to set ambitious emissions reduction targets. Understanding co-benefits and trade-offs will also improve coordination across policy areas and cut costs. In addition, co-benefits such as air quality improvements are often immediate and local, whereas climate benefits may occur on a longer timescale and mainly in a distant region, as well as being harder to demonstrate. Dissemination of the benefits, along with better anticipation of trade-offs, could therefore boost public support for climate action.