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Solar radiation modification, particularly stratospheric aerosol injection, holds the potential to reduce the impacts of climate change on sustainable development, yet could itself generate negative impacts and is subject to intense scholarly debate based on relatively little evidence. Based on expert elicitation involving over 30 individuals with backgrounds across the domains of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we identify a broad range of potential implications of solar radiation modification for the SDGs. Depending on design and application scenarios, applications could potentially assist in the pursuit of several of the goals by limiting temperature rise and limiting acceleration in atmospheric water cycles as well as extreme weather events. However, by adding to particulates, introducing an additional layer of complexity and potential for conflict in global governance, as well as otherwise altering planetary environments, they might also detract from the pursuit of SDGs and introduce novel risks. The overall impact of solar radiation modification on sustainable development is currently highly uncertain and dependent on climate change mitigation pathways and governance. We identify key areas for further transdisciplinary research the pursuit of which might reduce some uncertainty and help inform emerging governance processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major new multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) have entered into force in 2016, including the Paris Agreement (PA) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, the Kigali Amendment (KA) to the Montreal Protocol with a phase-down schedule for HFC production and use in all countries as well as the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) under the International Civil Aviation Organization, an offset mechanism for GHG emissions. Regarding climate change mitigation, these MEAs are implicitly and explicitly linked to each other. However, the interaction effects between them have not yet been studied. We apply document analysis to assess the following question: how does the MEA interplay impact the scope and effectiveness of international market-based climate policy instruments defined in Article 6 of the PA (Paris Mechanisms) regarding NDC achievement? The Paris Mechanisms can generate early reductions in HFCs that lower the KA baseline and thus the entire phase-down schedule, thereby generating long-term GHG mitigation. Reduction in HFC-23—a large, controversial source of carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)—is now mandated through the KA and thus no longer available for international market mechanisms. If it accepts CDM credits predating 2020, CORSIA will not generate demand for emission units generated by the Article 6 mechanisms and thus not impact their effectiveness. Otherwise, CORSIA demand for Article 6 credits enhances effectiveness, provided that 'double counting' of credits is prevented through corresponding adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using principal-agent theory, we explain the effect of an exogenous increase in financial resources on the autonomy of international bureaucracies. This can be empirically demonstrated at the example of the unexpectedly large inflow of fees for the registration of clean development mechanism (CDM) projects and issuance of emission credits on the political influence of staff in the UNFCCC Secretariat. Through document analysis, interviews and econometric analysis, we show that CDM staff was able to gain substantial influence over concrete policy decisions and even change the structure of relevant decision-making and consultation processes. We also show that this may reinforce rather than reduce the role of special interests expressed via country representatives in the CDM Executive Board. While one might be worried about the erosion of democratic principles at the international level, from a normative perspective, the overall effect is difficult to assess. If the international civil service is competent and committed to the delivery of the global public good, its increasing autonomy and influence may also be socially advantageous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant number of countries classified as 'developing' during the negotiation of the UNFCCC in the early 1990s have experienced rapid economic growth and increase of greenhouse gas emissions since then. We assess whether governments of such countries are considering taking up responsibility for emissions mitigation in the context of the UNFCCC's principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR). While an expansion of mitigation responsibility to Non-Annex I countries has been strongly opposed by overarching groups such as the G 77, we find countries such as South Africa and Indonesia that have clearly supported binding commitments. Other countries like China and Singapore oppose binding commitments but increasingly engage in domestic mitigation action. Moreover, China has pledged a significant amount of climate finance. Even in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which adamantly refuse mitigation commitments, some mitigation action seems to emerge. We thus foresee that countries will increasingly adopt differentiated positions regarding their responsibility for mitigation. This could provide new dynamics in international climate negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes potential criteria to allocate international funding for adaptation to climate change, as a response to one of the main governance challenges of international adaptation funding-the prioritization of project proposals given scarce funding. Based on the review of the equity and cost-effectiveness literature and relevant policy documents, we identify three potential indicators for equity (vulnerability level, poverty, equal funding per capita), and three indicators for cost-effectiveness (economic savings in absolute and relative terms, human lives saved). Applying these simple indicators to information provided in all 39 project documents considered by the Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) in 2011, we find that projects approved or endorsed by the AFB rank high according to one cost-effectiveness indicator (absolute economic savings), while they rather rank low according to all equity and further cost-effectiveness indicators. Furthermore, we analyze whether equity and cost-effectiveness are two contradicting goals, or whether ways can be found to reconcile both goals in multilateral adaptation finance. We conclude from both the theory and the 39 analyzed project documents that a pure economic definition of cost-effectiveness tends to be in contradiction with equity but that trade-offs between equity and cost-effectiveness can be limited if relative economic savings or human live savings are used as indicator for cost-effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Bank is increasingly active in the area of climate change mitigation. While it justifies this engagement with its poverty reduction objective and its capacity to pave the way for new business activities in developing countries, critics blame the World Bank as a 'climate profiteer' and as an unfair competitor in private markets. Our econometric analysis of over 2,000 projects registered until May 2010 under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol allows us to compare the activities of the Bank with those of other, primarily private actors. The results indicate that hardly any of the CDM projects can be considered as strongly pro-poor. Nevertheless, in comparison to the rest of the CDM projects, the Bank's portfolio shows a relatively clearer orientation towards poor countries. Within these countries, however, the Bank does not show any particular pro-poor focus, and tends to implement those projects that are commercially most attractive. Moreover, there is no evidence of the Bank phasing out its activities once the market becomes fully operational, which goes against its professed pioneering and catalytic role in carbon markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), established by the Kyoto protocol, can generate substantial rents for project participants via the sale of Certified Emission Reductions. For this reason, supposedly technical decisions about the approval of CDM methodologies and about the registration of projects may be driven by benefits to specific countries or interest groups. Our econometric analysis of data for about 250 methodologies and about 1000 projects discussed by the CDM Executive Board (EB) so far, suggests that indeed, along with formal quality criteria, political-economic variables determine the final EB decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CDM under the Kyoto Protocol has so far been unable to mobilize activities of households and service industries to improve end-use energy efficiency. This is mainly due to the lack of or the cumbersome requirements of the few existing baseline and monitoring methodologies as well as the difficulty to prove project additionality. We assess methodologies for projects distributing compact fluorescent lamps to households. The approval of the first large-scale methodology took more than 2 years and in the interaction with the regulatory bodies, the methodology became very cumbersome, especially regarding monitoring requirements. Four sample groups are required and the technology that has to be used for measuring utilization of CFLs does not yet exist. Therefore, project developers are not applying the large-scale methodology but try to use the pre-defined small-scale methodology. But even the small-scale methodology requires a substantial amount of data and measurements. A “Programme of Activity” approach could reduce monitoring costs through limiting monitoring to a sample of projects. Moreover, monitoring experts could be trained and thus monitoring mistakes reduced compared to single project settings. A deemed savings methodology was recently approved which alleviates but does not completely eliminate monitoring needs. It considerably reduces CER volumes compared to the other two methodologies and thus project developers have to assess the trade-off between higher monitoring costs and lower CER volumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the increasing interest in the development and dissemination of technologies for harnessing new and renewable sources of energy in India, there have also been some efforts towards their use in the domestic lighting sector. However, the cumulative number of Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) lighting systems such as SPV lanterns and solar home lighting systems in India is far below their theoretical potential despite government subsidy programmes. One of the major barriers is the high capital investment in these systems. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) provides industrialized countries with an incentive to invest in emission reduction projects in developing countries to achieve a reduction in CO2 emissions at lowest cost that also promotes sustainable development in the host country. SPV lanterns and solar home lighting systems could be of interest under the CDM because they directly displace greenhouse gas emissions while contributing to sustainable rural development. However, only two SPV projects have been submitted under the CDM so far. This study assesses the maximum theoretical as well as the realistically achievable CDM potential of SPV lanterns and solar home lighting systems in India. The SPV lantern project is financially viable at a certified emissions reductions (CER) price of 34 € whereas the solar home lighting project is financially viable at a CER price of 46 €. While the maximum mitigation volume is about 35 million tonne CO2 on an annual basis, an estimate of achievable CER levels is done using the past diffusion trends of SPV systems. We find that annual CER volumes could reach 0.8 to 2.4 million by 2012 and 5.6 to 13.6 million by 2020. This would require that the government sets the subsidy level for SPV lighting systems at a level that allows them to become viable with the CER revenue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change poses formidable challenge to the development of livestock sector in India. The anticipated rise in temperature between 2.3 and 4.8°C over the entire country together with increased precipitation resulting from climate change is likely to aggravate the heat stress in dairy animals, adversely affecting their productive and reproductive performance, and hence reducing the total area where high yielding dairy cattle can be economically reared. Given the vulnerability of India to rise in sea level, the impact of increased intensity of extreme events on the livestock sector would be large and devastating for the low-income rural areas. The predicted negative impact of climate change on Indian agriculture would also adversely affect livestock production by aggravating the feed and fodder shortages. The livestock sector which will be a sufferer of climate change is itself a large source of methane emissions, an important greenhouse gas. In India, although the emission rate per animal is much lower than the developed countries, due to vast livestock population the total annual methane emissions are about 9-10 Tg from enteric fermentation and animal wastes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the interaction of climate and development policy that has taken place since the early 1990s. Increasing dissatisfaction about the results of traditional development cooperation and the appeal of climate policy as a new policy field led to a rapid reorientation of aid flows. At the turn of the century, over 7% of aid flows were spent on greenhouse gas emissions mitigation. However, the contribution of emissions mitigation projects to the central development objective of poverty reduction as specified in the Millennium Development Goals is limited and other project types are likely to be much more effective. Adaptation to climate change can be expected to have higher synergies with poverty alleviation than mitigation, primarily through its impact on health, the conservation of arable land and the protection against natural disasters. An analysis of the Clean Development Mechanism shows that projects addressing the poor directly are very rare; even small renewable energy projects in rural areas tend to benefit rich farmers and the urban population. Use of development aid for CDM projects and / or their preparation via capacity building is thus clearly not warranted. We further analyze whether the use of development aid for climate policy could be justified as a countermeasure against the emission increase related to successful development itself. However, countries that are achieving an improvement of human development from a low level are unlikely to increase their energy consumption substantially. Only at a level where the middle class expands rapidly, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions soar. Thus targeting middle class energy consumption by appliance efficiency standards and public transport-friendly urban planning are the most effective measures to address developing country emissions. Rural renewable energy provision in poor countries has a much higher impact on poverty, but a much lower impact on greenhouse gas emissions. We conclude that while there are valid reasons for long-term collaboration with emerging economies on greenhouse gas mitigation, there should be a separate budget line for such activities to avoid "obfuscation" of a decline of resources aimed at poverty alleviation. Nevertheless, mitigation will remain attractive for donors because it ensures quick disbursements and relatively simple measures of success. Moreover, mitigation activities in developing countries provide politicians in industrialized countries with a welcome strategy to divert the attention of their constituencies from the lack of success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions domestically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enteric fermentation in livestock is an important source of anthropogenic methane emission. India, with its large livestock population, is estimated to contribute 10.8 Tg of methane annually from this source. An evaluation of various methane mitigation options indicate that some of the available technologies like, diet supplementation with feed additive and molasses urea product are highly cost effective in reducing enteric methane emissions. The gross cost of methane abatement from use of feed additive monensin premix ranges from 0.6 to 1.8/ton CO2 equivalent, for buffaloes and indigenous cows, respectively. The gross cost of enteric methane mitigation from supplementing molasses urea products and dietary manipulation through increased concentrate feeding is much higher. But, as the monetary value of the increased milk production on application of these technologies was higher than the annual cost of reduction strategy for buffaloes and crossbred cows, the net costs of the former mitigation option was negative for buffaloes ( -28.1/ton CO2) and of the latter for crossbred cows ( -7.0/ton CO2,). The availability of cost-effective technologies suggest that the methane mitigation projects under CDM can be planned in the Indian dairy sector to the mutual benefit of countries with emission targets and India. The vast dairy animal population of India and resulting methane emissions provide good opportunity for these countries to buy reasonable quantum of emission credits from projects in India. Such projects will work to benefit India by providing a tool for technology transfer to increase animal productivity and attract capital that assists in more prosperous and environmental friendly milk production in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Joint Implementation (JI) host country has to make sure that JI projects are additional to avoid extra costs to generate the reductions necessary to cover the deduction of Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) from the country's Kyoto Protocol emissions budget. A tender of ERUs by the government allows to generate additional reductions beyond the ERUs issued if it thoroughly checks project additionality. The government of New Zealand is running a tender for JI projects under the title ‘Projects to Reduce Emissions’ since 2003. In two rounds, 10 million ERUs have been awarded and several projects have already entered into contracts with European buyers. The ratio of ERUs awarded to reductions achieved was 0.8 in the second tender. However it remains to be seen whether the additionality test of this tender is sufficient to exclude clearly non-additional projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For projects under the UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a baseline has to be set to allow calculation of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions achieved. An important obstacle to CDM project development is the lack of data for baseline definition; often project developers do not have access to data and therefore incur high transaction costs to collect them. The government of Vietnam has set up all necessary institutions for CDM, wants to promote CDM projects and thus is interested to reduce transaction costs. We calculate emission factors of the Vietnam electricity grid according to the rules defined by the CDM Executive Board for small scale projects and for large renewable electricity generation projects. The emission factors lie between 365 and 899 g CO2/kWh depending on the specification. The weighted operating and build margin reaches 600 g for 2003, while grid average reaches 399 g. Using three-year averages, a combined build and operating margin of 705 g is calculated. We hope that these data facilitate CDM project development in the electricity supply and energy efficiency improvement in Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emissions trading will not be able to become the single instrument of a national climate policy because of costs for monitoring of greenhouse gases and transfers of allowances. Thus, it is important to assess optimal ways of integrating emissions trading into national climate policy mixes, thus leading to a more efficient policy, especially by allowing the use of transboundary transactions. The implemented trading systems of the UK and Denmark, the agreed EU one, and the planned ones of Norway are used as case studies. In the UK, the introduction of an energy tax on industry was the catalyst that led to the development of emissions trading, voluntary agreements, and two subsidy programs. However, in Denmark trading was limited in scope and not integrated with the successful emission tax. The EU and Norwegian trading schemes both have a large scope and integrate international transfers; the former is integrated with other instruments to avoid free riding. Policy integration will thus enhance the efficiency improvements that emissions trading can introduce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current “business as usual” projections suggest greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized nations will grow substantially over the next decade. However, if it comes into force, the Kyoto Protocol will require industrialized nations to reduce emissions to an average of 5% below 1990 levels in the 2008–2012 period. Taking early action to close this gap has a number of advantages. It reduces the risks of passing thresholds that trigger climate change “surprises.” Early action also increases future generations' ability to choose greater levels of climate protection, and it leads to faster reductions of other pollutants. From an economic sense, early action is important because it allows shifts to less carbon-intensive technologies during the course of normal capital stock turnover. Moreover, many options for emission reduction have negative costs, and thus are economically worthwhile, because of paybacks in energy costs, healthcare costs, and other benefits. Finally, early emission reductions enhance the probability of successful ratification and lower the risk of noncompliance with the protocol. We discuss policy approaches for the period prior to 2008. Disadvantages of the current proposals for Credit for Early Action are the possibility of adverse selection due to problematic baseline calculation methods as well as the distributionary impacts of allocating a part of the emissions budget already before 2008. One simple policy without drawbacks is the so-called baseline protection, which removes the disincentive to early action due to the expectation that businesses may, in the future, receive emission rights in proportion to past emissions. It is particularly important to adopt policies that shift investment in long-lived capital stock towards less carbon-intensive technologies and to encourage innovation and technology development that will reduce future compliance costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the impact of military action and conflicts on the commitment of nations to comply with the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas mitigation. Recommendations on how to address the environmental issues concerning military activities; Sources of greenhouse gas emissions in peacetime military activities; How territorial disputes and border changes affect the greenhouse gas reduction policies of nations; Contribution of refugee movement in greenhouse gas emission.

We suggest a multi-layered system of three convergence criteria – similar to those used in the run-up to the European monetary union – that define the notion of "demonstrable progress" towards reaching the emission commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. These are the existence of an independently evaluated national emissions inventory, the level of domestic policies and measures, and the quantitative convergence of emissions towards the Kyoto target. While the first of these criteria constitutes a necessary condition for use of the Kyoto Mechanisms, the other two should determine the degree of participation allowed for any given Annex I country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the EU-15 forms the only 'bubble' under the Kyoto Protocol and has negotiated an internal burden sharing. A strategic EU climate policy should include accession countries. Thus, even in the case of early ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by 2002, it would be sensible to form a bubble with all countries that are certain to be EU members during the commitment period 2008–2012. Of course due to Art. 4.4 of the Protocol the EU-15 has to stick to its own bubble. However, nothing prevents it from forming an implicit bubble including all first wave countries by inducing them to form a bubble on their own and transfer the surplus to the EU-15. Similarly, second wave countries should form a bubble of their own to co-ordinate JI and permit transfers to the EU. This would reduce the gap between business-as-usual and the target by about 50%. If ratification is delayed to a point where it is clear which second wave countries will be members by 2008, the bubble should be extended by those countries. When in 2005 target negotiations start for the second commitment period, the EU should negotiate a bubble consisting of all states being certain to be members by 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the authors' insight regarding the response of the Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) Secretariat to their article "Equity and cost-effectiveness of multilateral adaptation finance: are they friends or foes?." Topics include the five criticisms of the AFB Secretariat to their analysis and decision in interpreting individuals' decision making, the reasons why negative decisions can have consequences for project proponents, and making statements on AFB funding allocation.