Legal Aspects of Implementing the Kyoto Protocol Mechanisms: Making Kyoto Work

Book Description

The first protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in Kyoto in 1997 and entered into force in February 2005. It is a unique international law instrument which sets legally binding targets for the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. The targets are unprecedented in an environmental agreement and will involve substantial financial commitment in virtually all industrialized country parties to the protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is also the first international agreement to include economic instruments which are designed to involve private sector entities and assist parties to meet their targets. These economic instruments, known as the Kyoto or flexible mechanisms, are Joint Implementation (JI), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and International Emissions Trading. The Kyoto Protocol defined these mechanisms but did not set out the details necessary for their operation. After protracted negotiations, detailed rules were finalized at the Seventh Session of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties held in Marrakech in 2001. The Marrakech Accords run to almost 250 pages but still leave many important practical issues unaddressed. As the 2008-2012 commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol draws close more and more projects under CDM and JI are being developed to take advantage of the Kyoto mechanisms and the key issues and problems are now becoming more apparent. Drawing on the emerging body of expertise in this complex area, this book conveys a knowledge of what is becoming known as 'Carbon Finance'. It thereby aims to contribute to the development of the market for carbon emission reductions - one of the objectives of the Kyoto mechanisms.

The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming (Council on Foreign Relations Book)

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Much ado about nothing.
A Very Important Book

The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming (Council on Foreign Relations Book)
David G. Victor
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691120269

Book Description

Even as the evidence of global warming mounts, the international response to this serious threat is coming unraveled. The United States has formally withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol; other key nations are facing difficulty in meeting their Kyoto commitments; and developing countries face no limit on their emissions of the gases that cause global warming. In this clear and cogent book-reissued in paperback with an afterword that comments on recent events--David Victor explains why the Kyoto Protocol was never likely to become an effective legal instrument. He explores how its collapse offers opportunities to establish a more realistic alternative.

Global warming continues to dominate environmental news as legislatures worldwide grapple with the process of ratification of the December 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The collapse of the November 2000 conference at the Hague showed clearly how difficult it will be to bring the Kyoto treaty into force. Yet most politicians, policymakers, and analysts hailed it as a vital first step in slowing greenhouse warming. David Victor was not among them.

Kyoto's fatal flaw, Victor argues, is that it can work only if emissions trading works. The Protocol requires industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to specific targets. Crucially, the Protocol also provides for so-called "emissions trading," whereby nations could offset the need for rapid cuts in their own emissions by buying emissions credits from other countries. But starting this trading system would require creating emission permits worth two trillion dollars--the largest single invention of assets by voluntary international treaty in world history. Even if it were politically possible to distribute such astronomical sums, the Protocol does not provide for adequate monitoring and enforcement of these new property rights. Nor does it offer an achievable plan for allocating new permits, which would be essential if the system were expanded to include developing countries.

The collapse of the Kyoto Protocol--which Victor views as inevitable--will provide the political space to rethink strategy. Better alternatives would focus on policies that control emissions, such as emission taxes. Though economically sensible, however, a pure tax approach is impossible to monitor in practice. Thus, the author proposes a hybrid in which governments set targets for both emission quantities and tax levels. This offers the important advantages of both emission trading and taxes without the debilitating drawbacks of each.

Individuals at all levels of environmental science, economics, public policy, and politics-from students to professionals--and anyone else hoping to participate in the debate over how to slow global warming will want to read this book.

Customer Reviews:

Much ado about nothing........2001-06-24

David Victor presents an interesting story with one major omission which tends to disqualify the book completely.

Blithely assuming that emissions controls can reverse a modest climate change without as much as an attempt to understand the nature of the present climate trend, especially in a perspective giving at least some comprehension of why climate change constantly occurs, the book cooks up a lot or reasoning about nothing.

The cart is solidly before the horse and I suggest other transportation for those interested in the Kyoto conundrum.

A Very Important Book.......2001-04-10

For many who favor taking action to control global warming, a book which points out the fatal flaws in the Kyoto Protocol is going to be somewhat unwelcome. However, David Victor makes a very compelling case that the Protocol is unworkable as negotiated. By creating an immensely valuable new financial asset (emissions permits) and a trading system, it opens up problems related to enforcement and monitoring, the protection of property rights under international law, the inclusion of "illiberal" governments with weak legal systems in the regime, and large politically unpalatable (and essentially unearned) transfers of wealth to Russia and Ukraine.

How does the system deal with a government, for example, which pockets its payments for selling emission permits, then pulls out of the regime when it ceases to be profitable? How are additional countries to be brought into the regime without giving them the incentive of very high "worst case" emissions targets? How do you create an asset which is allocated based on statistical data which may be imperfect?

[If anything, Victor is too *optimistic* about the ability to accurately monitor CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. As an example of this one needs only to look at Chinese coal consumption data, which has fallen by a rather implausible amount in the last half-decade, for reasons internal to China having nothing to do with Kyoto. Questionable official data (and the possibility of intentionally skewed data) for developing countries is a real impediment to their future inclusion in any regime.]

Certainly many will criticize Victor's proposed "hybrid" system, which combines elements of emissions trading and taxation, for being even more complex than Kyoto's "cap and trade" system, and for setting an absolute ceiling for permit prices rather than for emissions, but he does make a set of powerful arguments in favor of such a system.

Book Description

Few public policy issues seem as hopeless as global climate change. Mounting evidence shows that accumulating levels of greenhouse gases are already beginning to alter climate patterns, and this only intensifies concerns about long-term dangers. In turn, potential policy remedies appear feckless. Prospects for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol are highly uncertain even among nations that have ratified the accord. At the national level, the United States, which is the leading source of greenhouse gases, remains completely disengaged from the Kyoto process. Increasingly, other developed nations severely criticize the United States for its perceived failure to engage this issue.

But a quiet yet growing trend for state governments to assume a leadership role in reducing greenhouse gases suggests that a far more robust process for American policy development is under way. Conventional analyses assume that climate change can only be addressed by international regimes and national governments. However, many states have developed active, multi-faceted programs to address carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases within a diverse array of policy sectors, including energy, environmental protection, transportation, natural resources, and agriculture.

Book Description

Many environmental problems cross national boundaries and can be addressed only through international cooperation. In this book Robert Darst examines transnational efforts to promote environmental protection in the USSR and in five of its successor states--Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--from the late 1960s to the present. The core of the book is a comparative study of three key issues: nuclear power safety, transboundary air pollution, and Baltic Sea pollution.

Although expectations were high that the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union would lead to increased East-West environmental cooperation, the opposite has been true. Russia and the other successor states have generally agreed to address such problems only when paid to do so. Darst finds that post-Cold War environmental cooperation has been most successful when there is an overlap between the environmental and economic interests of the successor states and those of their Western neighbors, and when the foundation for cooperation was laid during the Cold War period.

The book is based on extensive original field research, including interviews with diplomats, government officials, scientists, and environmental activists in the successor states and Western Europe. Its findings underscore the importance of the domestic and international political context in which international environmental policy making occurs. It also deepens our understanding of the opportunities and dangers of positive inducements as a tool of international environmental policy.

Whaling Diplomacy: Defining Issues In International Environmental Law (New Horizons in Environmental Law Series)

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Whaling Diplomacy

Whaling Diplomacy: Defining Issues In International Environmental Law (New Horizons in Environmental Law Series)
Alexander Gillespie
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1845421078

Book Description

Whaling Diplomacy is the only book that addresses all of the substantive issues relating to the conservation of whales through the International Whaling Commission (IWC). It covers the law, policy, science and philosophy at the heart of each element of the debate, discussing how it has developed, the current problems that beset it and what is necessary for the future. Together, all of the issues involved in whaling form a single crucible through which the future of conservation in international environmental law is being debated. The intensity of this debate, despite being at the forefront of international environmental problems for over three decades has not dissipated, as ultimately, the clash of values, science and law within whaling diplomacy is one of the key front lines for international conservation in the 21st century. Studying the contemporary developments in international environmental law and policy, this book therefore is not just about whales, but also how related debates are being reflected in other forums. Students of law, politics, environmental economics and philosophy will find this book of great value for it's cutting-edge relevance over the three disciplines. Policymakers will also find it of interest for the insight into one of the most controversial conservation debates of our time.

Customer Reviews:

Whaling Diplomacy.......2005-10-12

Being a Marine Mammal ecologist myself, and having worked closely on issues pertaining the International Whaling Commission, I consult this book regularly and recommend it strongly to anyone interested in complexities international governance of wildlife, particularly whales and dolphins.
The author is highly experienced and explains these complex issues in simple and logical language which anyone can understand.
Although this book pertains to environmental law, it also should be read by the scientists like myself, who deal with these matters in the context of the international conservation arena.

The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy: U.S.-Canadian Wildlife Protection Treaties in the Progressive Era (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

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For the Birds (and Fish too)

The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy: U.S.-Canadian Wildlife Protection Treaties in the Progressive Era (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)
Kurk Dorsey , and William Cronon
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0295976764

Customer Reviews:

For the Birds (and Fish too).......2000-11-05

This is one of those books readers might dismiss as too specialized. That would be a mistake. Kurk Dorsey is one of the first American diplomatic historians to treat relations with Canada. Beyond that he sees how transborder issues raised by wildlife treaties run into conflicting national agendas. The Canadian-American wildlife treaties anticipate more recent efforts to negotiate environmental issues. The writing in this book makes it an engaging read.

The Death of American Empire: Neo-conservatism, Theocracy, Economic Imperialism, Environmental Disaster, and the Collapse of Civilization

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The Death of American Empire: Neo-conservatism, Theocracy, Economic Imperialism, Environmental Disaster, and the Collapse of Civilization
Reginald Muata Ashby
Manufacturer: Sema Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1884564453
Release Date: 2007-07-25

Book Description

This work is a collection of essays relating to social and economic, leadership, and ethics, ecological and religious issues that are facing the world today in order to understand the course of history that has led humanity to its present condition and then arrive at positive solutions that will lead to better outcomes for all humanity. It surveys the development and decline of major empires throughout history and focuses on the creation of American Empire along with the social, political and economic policies that led to the prominence of the United States of America as a Superpower including the rise of the political control of the neo-con political philosophy including militarism and the military industrial complex in American politics and the rise of the religious right into and American Theocracy movement. This volume details, through historical and current events, the psychology behind the dominance of western culture in world politics through the "Superpower Syndrome Mandatory Conflict Complex" that drives the Superpower culture to establish itself above all others and then act hubristically to dominate world culture through legitimate influences as well as coercion, media censorship and misinformation leading to international hegemony and world conflict. This volume also details the financial policies that gave rise to American prominence in the global economy, especially after World War II, and promoted American preeminence over the world economy through Globalization as well as the environmental policies, including the oil economy, that are promoting degradation of the world ecology and contribute to the decline of America as an Empire culture. This volume finally explores the factors pointing to the decline of the American Empire economy and imperial power and what to expect in the aftermath of American prominence and how to survive the decline while at the same time promoting policies and social-economic-religious-political changes that are needed in order to promote the emergence of a beneficial and sustainable culture.

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International Environmental Diplomacy

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 052139564X

Russia And the Kyoto Protocol: Opportunities And Challenges

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Russia And the Kyoto Protocol: Opportunities And Challenges

Manufacturer: Chatham House (Formerly Riia)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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International Environmental Politics: The Limits of Green Diplomacy

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International Environmental Politics: The Limits of Green Diplomacy
Lee-Anne Broadhead
Manufacturer: L. Rienner Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1588260925

Book Description

Toxicological Evaluations are critically assessed data and recommendations for occupational safety officers, industrial hygienists, and human and animal toxicologists. They are compiled and constantly reviewed under internationally coordinated programs for establishing the risk potential of existing chemicals to prevent health hazards at the working place. In Volume 13, data for the following chemicals are published: Benzyl chloride, Triethylenediamine, 2-Amino-6-methoxybenzothiazol, Fluorobenzene, alpha-Naphthylamine, Triethylphosphite, Diethylphosphite, Diphenyl-2-ethylhexyl phosphate, alpha-Chlorpropionic acid and sodium-alpha-chloropropionate, Zinc ethylphenyl dithiocarbamate, Dimethoxy thiophosphonyl chloride, p-Chlorbenzotrifluoride.

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