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Small island developing states (SIDS) have been identified as particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change. However, although SIDS have similar geographical features, natural hazards produce different outcomes in different states, indicating variation in vulnerability. The objective of this article is to explore the sources of this variation. With the point of departure in theories about how political institutions affect adaptive capacities, this article sets out to investigate whether government effectiveness has an impact on the vulnerability of SIDS. While claims over the importance of institutions are common in the literature, there is a lack of empirical accounts testing the validity of such claims. This shortcoming is addressed by this study’s time-series cross-sectional analysis using data from the International Disaster Risk database and the Quality of Government data set. The results show that government effectiveness has strong and significant effects on the number of people killed and affected by natural disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of São Paulo, the most populous state in Brazil with 40 million people, is leading the way in Brazilian environmental policies. This article discusses the implications this has particularly for climate change policies. Located in the southeast part of the country, far from the Amazon rainforest, São Paulo state has adopted policies and actions that are leading to effective improvements in the quality of air and to the partial recovery of the original Atlantic rainforest, and that promote sustainable practices for ethanol production from sugarcane. Compared to the state of São Paulo, Brazil as a whole faces a considerably different situation, with the federal and the state governments having chosen different pathways for addressing the challenges posed by climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the many calls to reform the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), its conceptual underpinnings are strong and it will most likely survive in the post-2012 climate regime. Some modifications may be considered in the short term to strengthen the effectiveness and transparency of the mechanism without modifying the Marrakech Accords. In the medium term, substantially increased mitigation efforts in developing countries may require a combination of three possible financial mechanisms: the current activity-based CDM albeit improved, a second market mechanism that would seek to improve the long term emission trends of developing countries by promoting broad-based emission reduction programs primarily in the private sector, and a third-- nonmarket--financial mechanism that would provide an incentive for the adoption of policy changes leading to a low carbon path, but where emission reductions would not be used as international offsets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's fragmented world demands creative institutional arrangements to allow governments, international organizations, and civil society actors to join forces in addressing global environmental problems. This article discusses the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as foreseen under Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol in the context of new models of governance. To do so, it depicts CDM's history, institutional setting and participatory elements. The CDM serves as a concrete example of how new collaborative networks consisting of nation states and nonstate actors can help in implementing international trea- ties. The articles traces the history of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process to provide a sufficient background for a more detailed discussion of the CDM. On that basis, it provides an analysis of the CDM, and depict the Prototype Carbon Fund, administered by the World Bank, as an example for an innovative model of cooperation between the private and the public sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]