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Integrated assessment models (IAMs) project future anthropogenic emissions which can be used as input for climate models. However, the full list of climate-relevant emissions is lengthy and most IAMs do not model all of them. Here we present Silicone, an open-source Python package which infers anthropogenic emissions of unmodelled species based on other reported emissions projections. For example, it can infer nitrous oxide emissions in one scenario based on carbon dioxide emissions from that scenario plus the relationship between nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions found in other scenarios. Infilling broadens the range of IAMs available for exploring projections of future climate change, and hence Silicone forms part of the open-source pipeline for assessments of the climate implications of IAM scenarios, led by the Integrated Assessment Modelling Consortium (IAMC). This paper presents a variety of infilling options and outlines their suitability for different cases. We recommend certain infilling techniques as good defaults but emphasise that considering the specifics of the model being infilled will produce better results. We demonstrate the package's utility with three examples: infilling all required gases for a pathway with data for only one emission species, splitting up a Kyoto emissions total into separate gases, and complementing a set of idealised emissions curves to provide a complete, consistent emissions portfolio. The code and notebooks explaining details of the package and how to use it are available on GitHub (https://github.com/GranthamImperial/silicone , last access: 2 November 2020). The repository with this paper's examples and uses of the code to complement existing research is available at https://github.com/GranthamImperial/silicone%5fexamples (last access: 2 November 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Carbon emissions from gas flaring in the Nigerian oil and gas industry are both a national and international problem. Nigerian government policies to eliminate the problem 1960-2016 yielded little or no results. The Kyoto Protocol (KP) provides Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as an international market-based mechanism to reducing global carbon emissions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analytically highlight the potentials of CDM in eliminating carbon emissions in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. Design/methodology/approach: This paper reviewed the historical background of Kyoto protocol, Nigerian Government policies to eliminating gas flaring in its oil and gas industry 1960-2016 and CDM projects in the industry. The effectiveness of the policies and CDM projects towards ending this problem were descriptively analysed. Findings: Government policies towards eliminating gas flaring with its attendant carbon emissions appeared not to be yielding the desired results. However, projects registered under CDM in the industry looks effective in ending the problem. Research limitations/implications: Therefore, the success recorded by CDM projects has the policy implication of encouraging Nigeria to engage on establishing more CDM projects that ostensibly proved effective in reducing CO2 emissions through gas flaring reductions in its oil and gas industry. Apparent effectiveness of studied CDM should provide a way forward for the country in eliminating gas flaring in its oil and gas industry which is also a global menace. Nigeria could achieve this by providing all needed facilitation to realising more CDM investments. Practical implications: CDM as a policy has proved effective in eliminating gas flaring in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The government should adopt this international policy to achieve more gas flaring reductions. Social implications: Social problems of respiratory diseases, water pollution and food shortage among others due to gas flaring are persisting in oil and gas producing areas as government policies failed to end the problem. CDM projects in the industry have proved effective in eliminating the problem, thus improving the social welfare of the people and ensuring sustainable development. Originality/value: The paper analysed the effectiveness of Nigerian Government policies and an international market-based mechanism towards ending gas flaring in its oil and gas industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy efficiency (EE) is an evolving research aspect for researchers, businesses, and policymakers for its undeniable role in meeting increasing energy demand, reducing CO2 emissions, and tackling climate change. This paper provides a review of the current state of EE research by mapping the research landscape in business and economics to understand the socioeconomic dimensions within these research areas. To identify key information, we examine the trends and characteristics of 2935 relevant scientific publications over a 30-year period from 1990 to 2019 in the Social Science Citation Index of the Web of Science database using bibliometric analysis with a R language package called 'bibliometrix'. Our analysis shows an increasing trend in publications from 2006 onwards; the period remarkably coincides with the implementation phase of the Kyoto protocol in 2005. Accordingly, we observe that EE research has a strong association with issues like CO2 emissions, climate change, sustainability, and the growing importance of these issues in recent years. Thus, our findings provide crucial understandings by incorporating a wide array of scientific outputs in response to calls for greater theoretical clarification of EE research. These findings provide insights into the current state of the art of, and identify crucial areas for future, research. Hence, our research assists in formulating environmentally sustainable policies to tackle the adverse effects of CO2 emissions and related climate change through providing critical grasps on the scholarly development related to EE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the built environment has emerged as a critical target of climate change intervention for urban governments around the world, engaging developers, professionals, activists and communities in a range of new eco-urbanism projects. While important contributions have been made, this paper suggests that critical academic and policy debates on urban climate politics have so far paid insufficient attention to the sheer divergence in urban experiences, concerns and public–professional responses elicited through such experiments worldwide. By juxtaposing architectural and other eco-housing practices from diverse cities on three continents—Kyoto (Japan), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Surat (India)—this paper aims to conjure a more cosmopolitan research imagination on how climatic solidarities may emerge in the face of multiple urban differences and inequalities. Towards this end, the paper mobilizes assemblage urbanism as a set of methodological sensibilities towards issues of knowledge, materiality, multiplicity and scale-making within situated and contested processes of urban ecological change. Drawing on the politics of thick description favored by assemblage thinking, I deploy situated ethnographies to suggest that eco-housing projects in Kyoto, Copenhagen and Surat engage professional and public actors in variable world-conjuring efforts, potentially opening up new micro-arenas for the articulation of more attractive, sustainable and just urban futures. While shaped by inequalities of power, resource and knowledge, such eco-housing assemblages, I suggest, also serve as spaces of collective experimentation and learning, in and beyond the particular city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agroforestry is recognized as one of the strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation under the Kyoto protocol. The system has been practiced in Ethiopia for a while by smallholder farmers by incorporating crops with trees providing extensive socio-economic and environmental benefits. This unaccounted benefit of the system needs further and specific study. Thus, this study aimed to examine the resilience of three (homegardens, woodlots, and parkland) traditional agroforestry systems (TAFS) on the basis of biomass carbon accumulation and socio-economic characteristics in Silite district, Southern Ethiopia. Systematic random sampling was employed to collect social and biological data. Height and diameter at breast height (DBH) were measured to determine the biomass carbon stock and a questionnaire was performed for the socio-economic data. The mean differences across the system were analyzed using a post hoc test. Socioeconomic data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the chi-square test. Climate change awareness was perceived almost by half of the respondents, thus the contribution of TAFS to climate change adaptation and mitigation was revealed socio-economically and ecologically. Carbon stock and socio-economic benefits gained from agroforestry systems consist in a great sink of carbon and food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UNFCCC COP 17 Durban conference confirmed the need to reach an all-party-inclusive global climate agreement by 2015 as the successor of the Kyoto Protocol. Although this Durban 'road map' is promising, the international negotiation process for reaching such a deal is bound to be filled with great challenges, given the wide divide between developed and developing nations. Against this background, comprehensive evaluations of the effectiveness of Kyoto market-based mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in terms of mitigating human-induced climate change are urgently needed. Such information is required to assess how the world's collective actions against climate change should proceed after Kyoto. This paper studies whether CDM is achieving its objective of emission reductions in the host countries. Here we empirically investigate the impacts of CDM projects on CO2 emission reductions for 60 CDM host countries over the period 2005-2010, using a newly developed econometric method for dynamic panel data models associated with the X-differencing procedure. Our results provide evidence in support of a decline in CO2 emissions in CDM host countries. We conclude that the international community should continue its support towards low carbon development in developing countries via CDM projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social Sciences in China is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: To date, developed countries can only tap mitigation opportunities in developing countries by investing in projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Yet CDM investments have so far failed to reach all of the high-potential sectors identified in IPCC reports. This raises doubts about whether the CDM will be able to generate an adequate supply of credits from the limited areas where it has proved successful. Our paper examines the current trajectory of potential mitigation entering the CDM pipeline and projects it forward under the assumption that the diffusion of the CDM will follow a path similar to other kinds of innovations. Projections are then compared to pre-CDM predictions of the mechanism''s potential market size used to assess Kyoto''s cost, in order to discern whether limits on the types of project entering the pipeline will also limit the eventual supply of certified emission reductions (CERs). The main finding of the paper is that the mechanism is on track to deliver an average annual flow of roughly 700 million CERs by the close of 2012 and nearly to 1100 million tons by 2020. Parameter tests suggest that currently identified CDM investments will exceed early model predictions of the potential market for CDM projects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses whether with the Kyoto treaty demanding reductions in greenhouse gases and the loss of forests outpacing their renewal by natural means, could it be time to start planting genetically engineered forests. A new sort of anti-GMO protest broke out last December in Argentina at the tenth anniversary United Nations conference on climate change. Protestors were not grousing about food this time, but about genetically modified trees, which, under the Kyoto Protocol set to go into effect this month, are considered a viable, clean mechanism for sequestering carbons in the environment, which contribute to global warming.

Carbon offsets from the Kyoto Flexible Mechanisms can be used by firms in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme for compliance in lieu of EU allowances, making these carbon assets interchangeable. We offer an explanation of the price spread using a structural model of the price for Certified Emissions Reductions that combines three features: a limit for the use of Kyoto offsets within the EU ETS; a disconnect between the current price of offsets and their marginal cost of production for institutional reasons; and uncertainty about future supply and demand of offsets. Our model expresses the offset price as an average of the EU allowance price and an offset's outside value, weighted by the probability of a binding import limit. Using a monthly series of the United Nation's Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation about offset supply and demand, we provide empirical support for our theory of offset price formation. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the price process is dominated by uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the awareness of global climate change, many studies have been carried out to avoid this situation. These studies have been carried out intensely since the protocol signed in Kyoto in 2005. Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from engines operating on fossil fuels, the promotion of using the renewable natural sources such as wind, solar, etc. which are called clean energy, methane gas decompositions, and similar studies are some of these. As the studies increased, funding difficulties began to be seen in supporting the projects. In this context, especially project selection has started to gain importance. When the carbon emission reduction projects are examined, it is seen that forestry and especially forestation projects are very important. Especially, afforestation investments are very important in terms of increasing carbon sinks and many ecosystem services they provide are of great value. The aim of this study is to develop a new mechanism to create a source of financing for afforestation investments. In this context, the Private Pension System Funds was used as a fund-raising tool for the financing of afforestation investments. in this new mechanism, it was aimed that preventing climate change by making all actors gain income. With the implementation of this system, it is thought that the problems in the existing carbon markets will be prevented, the investments on afforestation will increase and also the environmental funds will become widespread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When assessing the more pressing challenges of the Paris Agreement, four aspects become relevant. First, the lack of reliable sources and resources of climate finances-related information. Second, only developed countries' contributions are being accounted and disseminated. The omission of the resources invested by the developing world to combat climate change skews theoretical analysis, limits accuracy in policy, and has the potential to alienate the Global South against adopting climate policies. Third, loans represent a majority share of the climate finances and are swelling the debt of developing countries, especially in Latin America. Finally, Kyoto's leaves as legacy a governance model predominantly hierarchical both at general climate finances as well as in REDD+ in the three regions. The goal of this article is to draw a baseline on the quantity and quality of climate finances and specifically those of REDD+, a mechanism targeted at developing countries. There were three distinct stages to this review: (1) the assessment of 13,000 projects implemented in Asia, Africa, and Latin America between 2008 and 2015; (2) the assessment of 312 REDD+ initiatives implemented in the three regions in this period; and (3) the analysis of the governance model propelled by these transactions. Policy implications of the results presented in this article conclude this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To be effective, a post-Kyoto climate agreement must secure significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions by all (key) emitters. Potent participation and compliance enforcement will be required to make it in every key emitter's best interest to participate in, and comply with, an agreement which specifies deep emissions reductions for all its signatories. This article considers the conditions under which potent enforcement would likely be politically feasible. Based on assessments of the current political landscape, and on the sets of constraints that characterize negotiations over enforcement systems, the article firstly finds that neither type of enforcement would be politically feasible if agreement is sought among all key emitters. Secondly, because participation enforcement is perceived as less legitimate than compliance enforcement, the coalition of countries prepared to accept the former is likely smaller than the coalition prepared to accept the latter. Thirdly, participation enforcement likely places stricter requirements on the coalition's membership and size. Thus, while compliance enforcement should in principle always be politically feasible among some coalition, reaching agreement on participation enforcement is less likely. To the extent that participation enforcement is politically feasible, however, an agreement which enforces the cooperation of all key emitters may be attainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International policies for mitigation of climate change provide a global public good and thus suffer from 'free riding,' i.e., inaction of governments. In 25 years of negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the regime has changed its character from a top-down approach based on mandatory emissions commitments to a bottom-up system of voluntary government pledges. At the same time, various initiatives by governments at all levels and private companies have been established, but most are limited to emissions reporting and exchange of knowledge on mitigation technologies. None of the alternatives has shown a higher mitigation effectiveness than the Kyoto Protocol. Generally, the transition toward a bottom-up regime risks a reduction of transparency and increases in the transaction costs of mitigation. Although it could give rise to a club of countries engaging in strong mitigation that could expand over time, it is unlikely to be ambitious enough to achieve the target of limiting warming to 2°C. On the one hand, carbon prices will be applied in a larger number of jurisdictions, and mitigation technologies diffuse around the world. On the other hand, carbon price levels will remain relatively low, and their mitigation benefits will be more than outweighed by the growth of infrastructure and consumption. Thus, a temperature increase of at least 3°C by 2100 becomes more and more likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is widely recognized that industrialized countries’ commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions will be far less costly to achieve if they can be met at least in part through investment in cheap abatement options available in developing countries, as is permitted under the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. Developing-country NGOs and others involved in the policy debate on the CDM have frequently raised concerns, however, about the so-called “low-hanging fruit” problem. The standard characterization of this problem is that if developing countries allow their cheap abatement options to be used now, they may find themselves worse off in future when they take on emissions-reduction commitments of their own, because only expensive abatement options will remain. We show that under plausible CDM-market imperfections a low-hanging fruit problem may indeed arise, but that the standard characterization of the problem is incorrect. We also present a potential solution, based on mandating a “virtual” option clause in CDM-investment contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes stock of current knowledge of climate change and the response to this major problem affecting the environment and economic development. It begins with a brief review of climate change science and impacts as assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It then reports on the status of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, and summarizes national commitments to making the effort required to mitigate climate change by limiting the emission of greenhouse gases. The main issues still to be addressed are identified, focusing in particular on carbon markets and adaptation funding. Future prospects are considered, including possible emissions targets for developing countries. The article thus focuses on the key issues of concern for developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the causal mechanisms through which domestic policies and underlying domestic structural and institutional factors influenced the Netherlands' leadership-taking capability during climate change negotiations leading up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Two causal mechanisms are prominent. One is the importance and necessity of building domestic capacity before the negotiation, and the other is the role of the "power devise" for a middle power to become influential in the negotiation. In this case, a regional organization provided the framework for a middle power to materialise its leadership potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses that the carbon trading has been possible only through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, it was found that CDM is limited to afforestation and reforestation projects. It was said that, although the Intergovernmental Pane on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 20-25% of current annual carbon emission results from loss of tropical forest, the option for reducing rates of carbon emissions by improved forest management and by avoided deforestation is not legible. On the other hand, it was shown that the country could earn up to $630 million annually from the Reduced Emissions form Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) policy.