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The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action negotiations are likely to lead to a Paris outcome that embodies a hybrid climate policy architecture, combining top-down elements, such as for monitoring, reporting, and verification, with bottom-up elements, including ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ from participating countries, detailing plans to reduce emissions, based on national circumstances. For such a system to be cost-effective – and thus more likely to embody greater ambition – a key feature will be linkages among regional, national, and sub-national climate policies. By linkage, we mean formal recognition by a mitigation programme in one jurisdiction of emission reductions undertaken in another jurisdiction for the purposes of complying with the first jurisdiction's requirements. The Paris outcome could play at least four different roles with respect to linkage of heterogeneous policy instruments. First, it could discourage linkage, either by not allowing countries to count international transfers toward their mitigation contributions, or by limiting the number or types of transferred units that can be counted for compliance purposes. Second, it could be silent on the topic of linkage, creating legal and regulatory uncertainty about whether international transfers are allowed. Third, it could expressly authorize linkage but not provide any further details about how linkage should occur, leaving it to future United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiating sessions to work out the details or to national governments to develop bilateral or multilateral linkage arrangements. Finally, the Paris outcome could establish institutional arrangements and rules that facilitate and promote linkage. We examine how a future international policy architecture could help facilitate the growth and operation of a robust system of international linkages. Several design elements merit serious consideration for inclusion in the Paris outcome, either in the core agreement or by establishing a process for subsequent international elaboration. At the same time, including detailed linkage rules in the core agreement is not desirable because this could make it difficult for rules to evolve in light of experience. Policy relevance These findings have implications for the efficient and effective design of an international climate policy architecture by detailing the role that linkage can play in supporting heterogeneous climate policies at the regional, national, and sub-national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief opinion piece draws upon behavioural and cognitive research to argue that the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping global temperature change below 2 degrees Celsius sets a psychologically powerful baseline against which future policy failures can be measured. When international law successfully triggers perception of a baseline, it can lead decisionmakers to perceive deviations from that baseline as "losses." This implicates loss aversion, which provides an additional motivation to achieve international norms. The psychological impacts of this new status quo may end up being more powerful and more durable than either the unusual structure of the document or the domestic implementation questions that have already attracted so much scholarly debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It is opined that the definitions of climate change under the Paris Agreement's policy and science sphere are inconsistent and apocryphal, which impedes the scientific enterprise of climate research. It is stated that climate science is policy-led instead of climate policy being science-led, as the Paris Agreement seems to require.

The article presents the author's views on the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, concluded at COP-21 in December 2015. It is opined that the Paris Agreement would appear to be a procedural framework for future, flexible climate policy- making by the parties, dressed up with some non-binding language that emphasizes ambition and progression.

The article presents the author's views on how agriculture and food security issues are related to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It is opined that it is difficult to measure emissions at the individual farm level since a variety of factors determine the amount of emissions. It is stated that agriculture is among the sectors that will be badly affected by climate change.

The article presents the author's views on climate change with specific reference to the policy of European Union (EU) in this regard. It is informed that the Commission has adopted very aggressive targets for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, and intends to allocate 20 percent of the EU's budget for climate-related activities. It mentions that Europe was at the forefront in crafting the new Paris climate agreement.