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Background: Forests have always played an important role in agreeing on accounting rules during the past two decades of international climate policy development. Starting from activity-based gross-net accounting of selected forestry activities to mandatory accounting against a baseline-rules have changed quite rapidly and with significant consequences for accounted credits and debits. Such changes have direct consequences on incentives for climate-investments in forestry. There have also been strong arguments not to include forests into the accounting system by considering large uncertainties, procedural challenges and a fear of unearned credits corrupting the overall accounting system, among others. This paper reflects the development of respective accounting approaches and reviews the progress made on core challenges and resulting incentives. Main text: The historic development of forest management accounting rules is analysed in the light of the Paris Agreement. Pros and cons of different approaches are discussed with specific focus on the challenge to maintain integrity of the accounting approach and on resulting incentives for additional human induced investments to increase growth for future substitution and increased C storage by forest management. The review is solely based on scientific publications and official IPCC and UNFCC documents. Some rather political statements of non-scientific stakeholders are considered to reflect criticism. Such sources are indicated accordingly. Remaining and emerging requirements for an accounting system for post 2030 are highlighted. Conclusions: The Paris Agreement is interpreted as a 'game changer' for the role of forests in climate change mitigation. Many countries rely on forests in their NDCs to achieve their self-set targets. In fact, the agreement 'to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century' puts pressure on the entire land sector to contribute to overall GHG emission reductions. This also concerns forests as a resource for the bio-based economy and wood products, and for increasing carbon reservoirs. By discussing the existing elements of forest accounting rules and conditions for establishing an accounting system post 2030, it is concluded that core requirements like factoring out direct human-induced from indirect human-induced and natural impacts on managed lands, a facilitation of incentives for management changes and providing safeguards for the integrity of the accounting system are not sufficiently secured by currently discussed accounting rules. A responsibility to fulfil these basic requirements is transferred to Nationally Determined Contributions. Increased incentives for additional human induced investments are not stipulated by the accounting approach but rather by the political decision to make use of the substitution effect and potential net removals from LULUCF to contribute to self-set targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kyoto Protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005. Emissions reductions targets established by the protocol will be met by domestic policies and by three international flexible mechanisms: clean development, joint implementation, and emissions trading. Following a value-theoretic and class-based approach, the purpose of this paper is to analyze these flexible mechanisms. In particular, the paper investigates the nature and adoption of flexible mechanisms, and their class and environmental links and implications. Carbon-intensive capitalist firms and developed economies are found to be exerting great influence on the shaping and implementation of flexible mechanisms. Environmental effectiveness and justice, and equal sustainable development raised and claimed by worker-citizens, social movements, local communities, and developing countries have not been secured. Thus flexible mechanisms do not present a real challenge to current institutions and practices for sustainable climate conditions for the workers-citizen of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to give a brief account of provisions of Kyoto Protocol along with the current position of the governments of countries playing key role in the implementation of the protocol. This protocol is a unique instrument of international law in the sense that it sets legally binding target for reduction of emission of greenhouse gases in the climate. Such targets are unprecedented in an environmental agreement. Though this protocol envisages great deal of mechanism both legal and economic, it is considered only to be the first stage in the process of climate change. This Protocol is considered to be innovative in the sphere of international law because of large amount of trade involved in its implementation which is also unprecedented in the international environmental treaties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany is the leader among countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in reducing its emissions of the Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases (GHGs), having accomplished an emissions reduction of 18.9 percent from 1990 to 2000. This paper aims to explain the reasons for this success and to examine the impacts of the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol on the development of Germany's climate policy. In order to identify the factors that determined this outcome, we divide our examination of the policy process in Germany since 1987 into five periods and will evaluate it with a focus on policy measures implemented and actors as well as the institutions involved. It concludes that domestic factors, including the participation of the Greens in the coalition government, mainly determined Germany's success in developing advanced climate policies and measures to reduce its GHG emissions. The paper also highlights the importance of the linkage of climate policy with other policies, which provided incentives to those who would otherwise have opposed or remained neutral on the development of climate policy. As such, the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol did not have a direct impact on climate policy development in Germany, but it did have an indirect impact in that it triggered the development of common and coordinated policies and measures at the European Union (EU) level in order to achieve its quantified GHG reduction target of 8 percent committed to under the Kyoto Protocol, as seen in the introduction of an EU-wide emissions trading scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Nowadays, one of the urgent issues regarding global climate change is to discuss the future of the second period of the Kyoto Protocol. However, the divergence of views and opinions among parties in the last Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Durban in December 2011, is still large. One of the bones of contention is whether the emerging developing countries, like China, should make commitments and legally bind themselves to a Green House Gas (GHG) reduction target in near future. As the largest GHG emitting country, China and its energy and climate policies will play an important role in global climate change and will also significantly influence the other countries’ policies and the global climate negotiation. In this paper, we review the current differences among parties in the Durban Conference, and we analyze the recent situation, barriers, and future policies in China. Finally we highlight the impact and potential effect of Clean Development Mechanisms in avoiding China''s barriers regarding climate change. Results show that China is making a great effort to mitigate climate change by establishing and reforming its energy and climate policies in order to achieve a low-carbon development. At the same time, more innovation and international collaboration is needed in China to achieve this goal. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Australia's climate change relationship with developing countries is framed by the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Under those agreements, Australia has committed to take a lead in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to provide technological and financial support to developing countries. In practice, Australian governments of both political hues have adopted a somewhat ambiguous and ambivalent attitude to developing countries within climate change politics and their fulfilment of those commitments has been uneven. This is particularly so if the concept of the 'Global South' is expanded from developing countries to include those people who are vulnerable to the environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though developed countries have contributed the lion's share of greenhouse gases to date, developing countries are rapidly catching up - and seem unlikely to adopt meaningful GHG controls in the near term. This prospect concerns major developed countries, since their own GHG controls could cause carbon-intensive production to migrate to unregulated countries, a phenomenon called 'carbon leakage.' This article surveys progress in international negotiations to date. It argues that, given the slow pace of efforts to create a global GHG control framework, carbon tariffs and other border measures are likely to be invoked as an alternative means of preventing carbon leakage. The article illustrates the legal and economic pitfalls of border adjustments and urges major emitting countries to suspend the imposition of border measures for a limited time while negotiating a 'Code of Good Practice' to guide their trade-related climate measures going forward. The Code that we describe would constrain the scope of border measures and sharply limit their negative consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kyoto Protocol, is the first legal instrument with a compromise to reduce the production of greenhouse effect's Gases. In Argentinean legislation the United Nation's Convention as well as the Kyoto Protocol are included in internal laws in the Law 24.295 and the law 25.438. The objective of this paper is to review the origins of these two international instruments; their incorporation to the Argentinean internal law; and to determine the state of the art of its application and the effectiveness of the Argentinean laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African governments face increasing pressure from major export destinations, primarily former colonial and slave-owning countries, to be climate change compliant. This will certainly be on display at the upcoming December 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which will seek to strengthen climate change rules agreed on in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, and adopt new protocols on global climate change regulation. Climate change is a double-edged sword: on one side it is hitting Africa's agricultural sector with increased droughts, floods, extreme frost and wildfires; and on the other, African governments are being forced to respond to stringent regulatory regimes imposed by international export destinations. Currently, the per capita greenhouse gas emissions from the highly industrialised nations - the North - is estimated to be four times that of Africa and the rest of the developing world. Twin research questions were investigated in this article: (1) to what extent does climate change impact on African trade and development, and (2) how can African governments stay on a path of sustained trade and development in this era of climate change? The article argues that Africa's survival in these times of climate change compliance rests on a shift to greater intra-African trade, as individual nations move towards cleaner and more organic technologies to become full-fledged partners in the international climate change regulatory regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to assess the economic impacts of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by decreasing industrial output in Canada to a level that will meet the target set out in the Kyoto Protocol. The study uses an ecological–economic Input–Output model combining economic components valued in monetary terms with ecologic components – GHG emissions – expressed in physical terms. Economic and greenhouse gas emissions data for Canada are computed in the same sectoral disaggregation. Three policy scenarios are considered: the first one uses the direct emission coefficients to allocate the reduction in industrial output, while the other two use the direct plus indirect emission coefficients. In the first two scenarios, the reduction in industrial sector output is allocated uniformly across sectors while it is allocated to the 12 largest emitting industries in the last one. The estimated impacts indicate that the results vary with the different allocation methods. The third policy scenario, allocation to the 12 largest emitting sectors, is the most cost effective of the three as the impacts of the Kyoto Protocol reduces Gross Domestic Product by 3.1% compared to 24% and 8.1% in the first two scenarios. Computed economic costs should be considered as upper-bounds because the model assumes immediate adjustment to the Kyoto Protocol and because flexibility mechanisms are not incorporated. The resulting upper-bound impact of the third scenario may seem to contradict those who claim that the Kyoto Protocol would place an unbearable burden on the Canadian economy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The current framework through which greenhouse gas emissions and removals in the land use sector are accounted under the Kyoto Protocol has several problems. They include a complex structure, onerous monitoring and reporting requirements, and potential for omission of some important fluxes. One solution that may overcome some of these problems is to include all lands and associated processes within a country''s jurisdiction, rather than restrict accounting to specific nominated land categories or activities. Ideally, the accounting approach should cover all significant biospheric sources and sinks, avoid biased or unbalanced accounting, avoid leakage and require no arbitrary adjustments to remedy unintended consequences. Furthermore, accounting should focus on the direct human-induced component of biospheric emissions/removals so that debits/credits can be allocated equitably and provide appropriate incentives to adopt land-use management options with beneficial outcomes for the atmosphere. This paper focuses on biospheric emissions and removals resulting from carbon stock changes. It considers four alternative accounting options that include all land areas: Gross-Net Accounting, Net-Net Accounting, Net Accounting with Negotiated Baselines and the Average Carbon Stocks approach. Each option is described, and assessed with respect to defined criteria for effectiveness. Gross-Net Accounting and Net-Net Accounting do not adequately distinguish the anthropogenic component of carbon-stock changes from indirect and natural effects, so large undeserved credits or debits could be created. Under Net Accounting with Negotiated Baselines, countries’ projected emissions and removals during the commitment period would be taken into account in the negotiation of emissions targets. In the commitment period, countries would then gain credits/debits for biospheric removals/emissions. Difficulties with this approach would lie in reaching agreed baselines for emissions and removals for individual countries, and, if desired, in factoring out residual effects of natural variability on emissions/removals. Under the Average Carbon Stocks approach, debits/credits for changes in land use or management practices would be based on the changes in long-term average carbon stocks associated with changes in specific land use and management regimes. This approach thereby directly identifies the anthropogenic component, and assigns debits and credits accordingly. It may prove problematic, however, for countries to accept long-term averages rather than observable realised carbon-stock changes as the basis for accounting. Thus, none of the options is without its drawbacks, but Net Accounting with Negotiated Baselines and the Average Carbon Stocks approach could potentially be used as the basis of developing a future ‘all lands’ accounting framework. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

It is widely agreed that the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a useful international instrument that encourages and reinforces the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), and also that it should be further promoted as a way to fill the gap in energy and GHG efficiency between industrialized and developing countries. A number of problematic issues have become apparent, however, during the past two and a half years of experience with the CDM. This paper identifies some of these and provides possible insights into their nature and possible resolution. While some technical aspects such as baseline setting are crucial and are being resolved gradually through accumulated experience, other political aspects such as the utilization of public funding need more discussion (rather than formal negotiations). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convincing the United States to mitigate its greenhouse gas emissions is critical to spurring a stronger and more durable international response to climate change. This paper focuses on current US action on climate change and the potential for future US emissions targets in both domestic and international arenas. Five topics are covered: (1) the evolving politics of climate change in the United States; (2) the impact of climate change on the US presidential election; (3) lessons learned from the Kyoto process; (4) the prospects for the United States re-engaging internationally; and (5) how to design an international regime that would encourage US participation. While federal mandatory emission targets will take more time, a great deal is happening in the United States at the state and local level. These actions are changing the politics of climate change in the United States in ways that lead many US experts to believe that a stronger national policy is inevitable. Even so, climate change is not playing a significant role in the November 2004 US presidential election campaigns, although a related issue, energy policy, features more prominently. Regardless of who wins the election, the United States will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol and may not return to the Kyoto process to negotiate emission targets beyond 2012. To secure US participation, any international climate treaty must build on prior US domestic regulation and start with exceptionally modest targets for the United States that become more stringent over time. Countries seeking to engage the United States on climate change should keep an open mind about non-Kyoto approaches, given lingering skepticism in the United States about the United Nations and the Kyoto process. The international community should encourage the United States to do more by making good on the emission mitigation pledges they have undertaken and by giving priority to convincing the United States to act at home rather than negotiating... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kyoto Protocol required most developed countries collectively to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions about 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. Despite the binding nature of each country's emissions-limitation target, levels of compliance varied greatly. What explains this variation in compliance? This article shows that the amount of material consumption within each country may contribute to answering this question. Using cross-sectional time-series data analysis for 36 Annex I (developed) countries from 2000 to 2012 and controlling for a range of domestic and international factors, quantitative analysis shows that compliance with emissions targets is least likely to be realized in countries with higher levels of consumption. This tendency has vitally important implications for agreements on future emissions limitations because those agreements must include more of the large developing countries that are intent on raising their own citizens' consumption toward levels in the developed world. Without addressing consumption behaviors and the policy implications thereof, adequately mitigating GHG pollution in the future, notably through the 2015 Paris Agreement, will be extremely difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers, scientists, industry leaders, and academicians all have debated how to restrain global warming and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Three main methods are used: command and control laws and regulations, carbon taxes, and cap and trade schemes. Recognizing the consequences of global warming, all Scandinavian countries introduced a carbon emissions tax in the 1990s. They also ratified the Kyoto Protocol that ran from 2005 through 2012. The European Union (EU) instituted a carbon trading scheme (Emissions Trading System (ETS)) in February 2005 when Kyoto became operative. The three Scandinavian EU members had two methods in place during the 2005-08 period to encourage GHG reduction: taxing and trading. Norway, not in the EU, used just taxes. The other EU members, including Spain, applied just the carbon trading ETS scheme to encourage compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. The fundamental issue addressed is this one: Did publicly held firms headquartered in Spain adequately report participation in the EU carbon emissions trading mechanism? Data to answer this question were obtained from the 2011 and 2012 annual reports for domestic Spanish public companies that received tradable emissions permits. In addition to assessing investor-owned firms' disclosure posture, the specific method of reporting about carbon emissions permits, whether companies used, banked, or sold the permits granted by the government, also is reviewed. This empirical research effort reports on a complete survey of all available data for the two financial reporting periods that concluded the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A body of literature is emerging applying critical consideration to the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism's ('CDM') achievement of policy goals regarding sustainable development, geographical distribution of projects and related matters. This article places this literature in the context of the policymaking goals of the CDM's Brazilian architects. The CDM arose from the Brazilian Proposal's Clean Development Fund, and was negotiated between Brazil and the United States in the weeks preceding the Kyoto Conference of Parties. The CDM's Brazilian architects continued to pursue their underlying policy goals by taking a leadership position in the Marrakesh Accords negotiations. During this period Brazil's primary policy objectives comprised achieving meaningful mitigation of GHG emissions to avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, derailing a perceived US/IPCC initiative to allocate emissions cap obligations in the Kyoto Protocol on the basis of current emissions, and taking a leadership position both among the G-77 and China and in the multilateral climate negotiations as a whole. The CDM arose in this context from the G-77 and China's desire to coerce the North's compliance with the North's emissions cap obligations through an alternative means of compliance. As a result, there was no focus on broad conceptions of sustainable development, or on broad distribution of CDM projects throughout the South. Instead, the CDM's Brazilian architects envisioned that CDM-related sustainable development would arise exclusively from the presence of the CDM projects. Similarly, the Brazilian Proposal advocated allocation of the Clean Development Fund on a basis proportionate to each non-Annex I countries projected 1990-2010 greenhouse gas emissions. These views persisted through the evolution of the Clean Development Fund into the CDM and through Marrakesh Accords negotiations. This article argues that the CDM has largely met the policy goals of its Brazilian architects and that the pursuit of different, additional, refined or more nuanced policy goals necessitates corresponding refinements to the CDM, or any successor mechanism, specifically targeting those different, additional, refined or more nuanced policy objectives, lending support to the emerging literature proposing changes to the CDM to pursue corresponding policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a national emissions trading system implemented in Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). The system relies on Indigenous and socio-economically disadvantaged peoples in Northern Australia, who work as a community to manage landscape fires and reduce annual GHGE from savanna burning. Particular focus is given to the role of the government in establishing policies that aid rather than limit these peoples from achieving their goals, and on the concurrent regional developments in these areas.

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Akin to a public good, emissions reduction suffers from the 'free rider' syndrome. Although many countries claim that they are meeting their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction commitments, the average global temperature and GHG emissions continue to rise. This has led to growing speculation that some countries may be taking advantage of the system by effectively exploiting a range of loopholes in global agreements. Using a case study approach, we critically review the evidence from Australia, exploring how Australia has participated in global climate change negotiations and the way in which this emissions intensive country's national emissions reduction obligations have been met. The findings suggest that: (1) successful negotiation to include Article 3.7 ('Adjusting the 1990 Baseline' or 'the Australia Clause') in the Kyoto Protocol significantly favored Australia's ability to meet its First Kyoto Commitment (2008–2012); and (2) successful bargaining for the accounting rule that allowed carbon credits from the first commitment period to be carried over to the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol benefitted Australia by 128 MtCO2e. At the national level, a lack of bipartisan political support for an effective mechanism to drive emissions reduction has also been problematic. While the introduction of the Carbon Pricing Mechanism (CPM) in 2012 reduced emissions from electricity production from about 199.1 MtCO2e to 180.8 MtCO2e in 2014, a change of government led to the abolition of the CPM in 2014 and emissions from electricity production subsequently rose to 187 MtCO2e in 2015 and 189 MtCO2e in 2016 with adverse impacts in many sectors as well as Australia's overall emissions. The current Australian government continues to undermine its commitment to mitigation and the integrity and credibility of its own emissions reductions policy, introducing a softer 'calculated baseline' for its own Safeguard Mechanism, which allows companies to upwardly adjust their calculated baselines on the basis of their highest expected emissions, permitting emissions in excess of their historical emissions. While disappointing in the context of the global emissions reduction project, Australia's actions are sadly not unique and we also provide examples of loopholes exploited by countries participating in a range of other negotiations and emissions reduction projects. Such strategies undoubtedly serve the short-term political and economic interests of these countries; however, it is increasingly apparent that the cumulative impact of such tactics will ultimately impact the entire global community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]