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The 2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference had been scheduled from 1 to 12 December in Lima/Peru. While in the run-up to the conference, China and the US in a surprise bilateral move had announced plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions that exceeded expectations, the conference was characterised once again by a deep division between key players from the former so-called "developed" and "developing" world. The negotiations thus took 32 hours longer than planned and ended on Sunday morning at 1.22 am. More importantly, the conference failed almost completely to resolve the tasks it was supposed to do in order to prepare the last round of negotiations before next year's conference in Paris 2015, which is supposed to deliver a comprehensive future climate agreement. A team of researchers from the Wuppertal Institute attended the conference and have compiled a first assessment of the results.
Much of the current literature on climate clubs sees mitigation costs creating free rider incentives as the main problem of climate policy. Climate clubs are supposed to solve this problem by creating additional incentives for mitigation. Looking more in detail, one sees that the situation differs from sector to sector. Some industry sectors indeed have substantial cost and competitiveness issues. In others such as electricity and transport, there are costs at micro level but balance for economy and society as a whole is rather positive. International climate policy in general and clubs in particular should therefore be tailored to sectoral specifics.
Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement establishes a new mechanism for Parties to cooperate in achieving their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). One key innovation of the Article 6.4 mechanism is its objective to "deliver an overall mitigation in global emissions" (Art. 6.4(d)). This report develops recommendations on how to implement this objective. A key difficulty lies in the fact that even basics of how the mechanism is supposed to function have so far not been clarified by the Parties. The report therefore first sketches out what has so far been agreed and discussed on the mechanism’s activity cycle. Second, as the concept of overall mitigation has so far also not been clearly defined by Parties, the report derives a working definition from the language that was agreed in the Paris Agreement. In the next step, the report provides a survey of the options to achieve overall mitigation that have so far been discussed in the relevant literature and in the Article 6 negotiations. Many of these options were developed in the context of the Kyoto mechanisms. The report therefore discusses to what extent the options are also applicable under the Paris Agreement or whether adjustments need to be made. In the following, the options that are applicable under the Agreement are assessed on the basis of a number of criteria. The report concludes with a summary of the main findings and recommendations.
This policy paper reviews the concept of additionality in the context of the Paris Agreement. Additionality is a key criterion that helps to maintain the environmental integrity of the Paris Agreement, especially when units created under Article 6.2 or 6.4 are used for offsetting purposes whether that is by Parties in order to meet their NDCs or whether by other entities with legal mitigation obligations.
It does so by first reviewing key concepts such as offsetting, environmental integrity, and baseline. Subsequently, it explores the context of additionality under the Paris Agreement. More specifically it discusses what should be counted as the baseline for additionality demonstration. The subsequent chapter then highlights the challenges with establishing additionality, that is establishing a causal relationship between a policy intervention and a proposed activity. Finally, the Policy Paper discusses aspects of international governance with respect to additionality.
Additionality revisited : guarding the integrity of market mechanisms under the Paris agreement
(2019)
The Paris Agreement requires mitigation contributions from all Parties. Therefore, the determination of additionality of activities under the market mechanisms of its Article 6 will need to be revisited. This paper provides recommendations on how to operationalize additionality under Article 6. We first review generic definitions of additionality and current approaches for testing of additionality before discussing under which conditions additionality testing of specific activities or policies is still necessary under the new context of the Paris Agreement, that is, in order to prevent increases of global emissions. We argue that the possibility of "hot air" generation under nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) requires an independent check of the NDC's ambition. If the NDC of the transferring country does contain "hot air", or if the transferred emission reductions are not covered by the NDC, a dedicated additionality test should be required. While additionality tests of projects and programmes could continue to be done through investment analysis, for policy instruments new approaches are required. They should be differentiated according to type of policy instrument. For regulation, we suggest calculating the resulting pay-back period for technology users. If the regulation generates investments exceeding a payback period threshold, it could be deemed additional. Similarly, carbon pricing policies that generate a carbon price exceeding a threshold could qualify; for trading schemes an absence of over-allocation needs to be shown. The threshold should be differentiated according to country categories and rise over time.
The Paris Agreement adopted in December 2015 provides the basis for future international cooperation on the field of climate change mitigation. While truly global in reach, the agreement will however result in an increasingly complex new climate regime: Instead of using a uniform formula, Parties are allowed to autonomously define their NDCs (nationally determined contributions), resulting in a large diversity of contributions. This poses significant challenges for emissions accounting and the transfer of emission units.
This Policy Paper explores how these challenges can be addressed by analysing different types of NDCs and assessing their compatibility with the export and use of emission units. On that basis, the authors develop opt-in provisions for Parties willing to participate in unit transfers under the new climate regime and illustrate how potential risks to environmental integrity can be addressed.
2020 was meant to be the year of climate ambition. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Glasgow conference was postponed to November 2021, and climate policy generally appeared to have been put on the backburner. But towards the end of the year prospects seemed to brighten with a series of zero-emission pledges and the election of Joe Biden as US President. This article analyses what the year of the pandemic achieved in terms of combating climate change. This article first summarizes the virtual events that were organised to substitute for the physical UNFCCC conferences and what progress was or was not made on the outstanding items of the "Paris rulebook", implementation of the Gender Action Plan, and other items. Subsequently, the article surveys the status of NDC updates and to what extent recovery programmes have been used to advance climate action. Finally, the article takes a closer look at the current dynamics among non-Party actors. In summary, while formal negotiations essentially stopped in the year of the pandemic, the conservation did not. However, implementation is still lagging far behind the ambitious targets that have been set. While implementation is mostly the domain of national policy, the international process has a number of options at its disposal to foster climate action.
This paper analyses the results of the climate conference in Lima 2014 in the light of the coming climate summit in Paris by the end of this year (COP21). The authors from the Wuppertal Institute make recommendations for the improvement of the current cooperation in the context of the climate convention and they suggest to complement the existing UN regime with a club of forerunner countries in order to provide new breath for international climate policy.
Last year's conference of the global climate change regime took place from 2 until 15 December 2019 in Madrid, Spain. Despite marking a new record for overtime in the history of the UNFCCC, the conference did not only fail to meet the increasing public demand for swift and strong climate action, it also failed on its formal mandate to finalise the Paris rulebook. A record number of issues were left unresolved and shelved for the next session. COP25 thereby highlighted how much work still lies ahead both domestically and internationally if 2020 is to see a step-up in climate action that is consistent with the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement.
While the Paris Agreement (PA) has enshrined ambitious long-term objectives, the current actions of the Parties to the Agreement fall far short of these goals. The Global Stocktake (GST), established in Art. 14 of the PA, may help narrow this gap between ambition and action: its purpose is to review the implementation of the PA and to assess the collective progress of the international community towards Paris goals. While some general modalities on how to conduct the GST have been adopted, the details are still to be determined.
The objective of this report is to analyze existing international regimes as regards their review processes, the contribution of these review processes to various governance functions and, finally, to derive lessons for the GST. Processes analyzed include:
the design of the upcoming Global Stocktake itself,
the Talanoa Dialogue (TD) which is the direct precursor of the GST,
the Agenda 2030 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), which features a regular stocktaking process focused on progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
the review processes of the UN human rights system (UNHRS) and
the review processes and assessment panels of the Montreal Protocol (MP).
The analysis of each review process is organised in four section: (1) political background and context, (2) technical and organisational details of the processes, (3) interface between the political and technical processes, and (4) how the review processes contribute to achieving the objectives of the respective regime, particularly governance functions of the regime (guidance and signal, transparency and accountability, and knowledge and learning).
Design options for the new international market mechanism under article 6.4 of the Paris agreement
(2020)
In this project commissioned by the German Environment Agency, important aspects of the mechanism under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement were examined in more detail. This mechanism is to succeed the CDM under the Kyoto Protocol from 2021 onwards, but it will contain decisive improvements, especially with regard to a robust accounting of emission reductions and better integration into the national climate policy of the host country. The report is addressed to the international experts, in particular to the delegates to the climate conference and observers, and is therefore written in English. A German summary is included. The following topics are covered:
How does the mechanism achieve an overall reduction of global emissions?
Are there opportunities to use benchmarks to establish baselines?
Can contributions to increasing ambition be made by using Art. 6.4?
What contribution can the voluntary market make to increasing ambition in the future?
Introduction of incentives for the participation of private companies under Art. 6.4 of the PA.
The role of the Art. 6.4 mechanism on the way to a net zero emission world.
The project provides a contribution to the general discussion in the EU as well as to the Article 6 - Negotiations under the UNFCCC. It is a contribution that presents backgrounds and interrelationships for individual questions concerning the design of the new market mechanisms under Article 6 and can thus contribute to a more informed decision-making process.Since there are, however, several different ways of designing a mechanism that can avoid double counting and provide incentives for increasing ambition, this project is only one of several current contributions to the international discussion.
This article aims to analyse the potential for international climate governance to promote the decarbonisation of land transport. It first summarises challenges and barriers that impede the transformation of the sector. On this basis, the article discusses how international governance could potentially assist with overcoming these barriers and mobilising potentials. Subsequently, the article analyses to what extent existing international governance institutions deliver on the potential identified. The analysis finds that while there is a large number of international institutions trying to promote the decarbonisation of land transport, none of them emerge saliently as hubs or core institutions. There is a substantial amount of activity to generate and disseminate knowledge and learning, but the potential for providing guidance and signal, setting rules, providing transparency/accountability and means of implementation could be further exploited. The article concludes with suggestions on how international governance may be strengthened.
A sectoral perspective can help the Global Stocktake (GST) to effectively achieve its objective to inform Parties' in enhancing subsequent NDCs and in enhancing international cooperation. Specifically, granular and actionable sectoral lessons, grounded in country-driven assessments, should be identified and elaborated. To be effective, conversations on sectoral transformations need to synthesise key challenges and opportunities identified in the national analyses and link them to international enablers; focus on systemic interdependencies, involve diverse actors, and be thoroughly prepared including by pre-scoping points of convergences and divergence across transformations. We specifically recommend that:
the co-facilitators of the Technical Dialogue use their (limited) mandate to facilitate an effective conversationon sectoral transformations e.g. by organising dedicated informal seminars in between formal negotiation sessions;
key systemic transformations necessary toachieve net-zero by mid-century should be spelled out and included in the final decision or political declaration of the GST; and
the political outcome of the GST should mandate follow-up processes at the regional level and encourage national-level conversations to translate the collective messages from GST into actionable and sector-specific policy recommendations.
Much mitigation-related governance activity is evident in a range of sectoral systems, and regarding particular governance functions. However, there is a tendency for this activity to relate to the easiest functions to address, such as "learning and knowledge building", or to take place in somewhat limited "niches". Across all sectoral systems examined, the gap between identified governance needs and what is currently supplied is most serious in terms of the critical function of setting rules to facilitate collective action. A lack of "guidance and signal" is also evident, particularly in the finance, extractive industries, energy-intensive industries, and buildings sectoral systems.
Of the sectoral systems examined, the power sector appears the most advanced in covering the main international governance functions required of it. Nevertheless, it still falls short in achieving critical governance functions necessary for sufficient decarbonisation. Significantly, while the signal is strong and clear for the phase-in of renewable energy, it is either vague or absent when it comes to the phase-out of fossil fuel-generated electricity. The same lack of signal that certain high-carbon activities need actively to be phased out is also evident in financial, fossil-fuel extractive industry and transport-related sectors.
More effective mitigation action will need greater co-ordination or orchestration effort, sometimes led by the UNFCCC, but also from the bodies such as the G20, as well as existing (or potentially new) sector-level institutions. The EU needs to re-consider what it means to provide climate leadership in an increasingly "polycentric" governance landscape.
The gap between the internationally agreed climate objectives and tangible emissions reductions looms large. We explore how the supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Conference of the Parties (COP), could develop to promote more effective climate policy. We argue that promoting implementation of climate action could benefit from focusing more on individual sectoral systems, particularly for mitigation. We consider five key governance functions of international institutions to discuss how the COP and the sessions it convenes could advance implementation of the Paris Agreement: guidance and signal, rules and standards, transparency and accountability, means of implementation, and knowledge and learning. In addition, we consider the role of the COP and its sessions as mega-events of global climate policy. We identify opportunities for promoting sectoral climate action across all five governance functions and for both the COP as a formal body and the COP sessions as conducive events. Harnessing these opportunities would require stronger involvement of national ministries in addition to the ministries of foreign affairs and environment that traditionally run the COP process, as well as stronger involvement of non-Party stakeholders within formal COP processes.
Global climate
(2017)
On 7-18 November, the twenty-second Conference of the Parties (COP-22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the twelfth Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP-12) took place in Marrakech. Due to the rapid entry into force of the Paris Agreement, Marrakech also hosted the first Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA-1). Nobody had expected this one year before in Paris - the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, by comparison, had taken eight years. Many hailed the rapid entry into force as further proof of the commitment of the world community to finally tackle the climate problem.
Global climate
(2017)
On 12 December, the twenty-first Conference of Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement. This marked the conclusion of the long process of crafting a new international climate regime that began with the adoption of the Bali Roadmap in 2007, failed spectacularly in Copenhagen in 2009, and resumed with a new approach in Durban 2011. This article summarizes and analyzes the main contents of the Paris Agreement.
Global climate
(2016)
This article summarises the main outcomes of the Lima UN Climate Conference (COP20 / CMP10). It starts with the discussions under the Durban Platform on developing a new comprehensive climate agreement and increasing short-term ambition and subsequently covers the issues relating to near-term implementation of previous decisions in the areas of transparency, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, loss and damage, adaptation, finance, and carbon markets.
Global climate
(2020)
The annual Climate Change Conference took place on 2-15 December in Katowice, Poland. It included the twenty-fourth Conference of the Parties (COP-24) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the fourteenth Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP-14), the resumed first Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (MOP-1), and their subsidiary bodies. The conference had two main objectives: operationalizing the Paris Agreement by adopting detailed rules for its implementation and starting the process of strengthening the parties' climate protection contributions.
Global climate
(2019)
The twenty-third Conference of the Parties (COP-23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in Bonn on 6-17 November 2017, under the presidency of Fiji. COP-23 focused, in particular, on developing rules to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement and on raising ambition for climate protection. Since this was the first "Oceanic" COP, special attention was given to supporting the countries of the Global South in their efforts to reduce emissions, adapt to climate change, and deal with the unavoidable impacts of climate change. This article summarizes the main developments and results of COP-23.
Better integration of climate action and sustainable development can help enhance the ambition of the next nationally determined contributions, as well as implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Governments should use this year as an opportunity to emphasize the links between climate and sustainable development.
The new mechanism under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement is to be supervised by a body designated by the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA). However, so far there is no clarity what role exactly the supervisory body (Body) is to play. Against this background, this JIKO Policy Paper analyses different governance options for Art. 6.4.
The paper first reflects the objectives of the new mechanism and on what the role of the mechanism as a whole should be. The paper then summarises what has already been agreed on the functioning of the mechanism and elaborates what steps will be needed to generate transferrable emission reductions under the Article 6.4 mechanism. On this basis, the paper develops criteria for how to decide what role the Body should have, and then discusses what role the Body and the other actors that are involved in the mechanism could have in each of the steps of the activity cycle.
Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are commonly used by decision makers in order to derive climate policies. IAMs are currently based on climate-economics interactions, whereas the role of social system has been highlighted to be of prime importance on the implementation of climate policies. Beyond existing IAMs, we argue that it is therefore urgent to increase efforts in the integration of social processes within IAMs. For achieving such a challenge, we present some promising avenues of research based on the social branches of economics. We finally present the potential implications yielded by such social IAMs.
The impacts of the COVID-19 crisis and the global response to it will co-determine the future of climate policy. The recovery packages responding to the impacts of the pandemic may either help to chart a new sustainable course, or they will further cement existing high-emission pathways and thwart the achievement of the Paris Agreement objectives. This article discusses how international climate governance may help align the recovery packages with the climate agenda. For this purpose, the article investigates five key governance functions through which international institutions may contribute: send guidance and signals, establish rules and standards, provide transparency and accountability, organize the provision of means of implementation, and promote collective learning. Reflecting on these functions, the article finds that the process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), together with other international institutions, could promote sustainable recovery in several ways.
How can existing national climate policy instruments contribute to ETS development? : Final report
(2019)
Before introducing an emissions trading system, jurisdictions have to consider the ex-isting energy and climate policy framework. This report seeks to analyse and evaluate non-ETS climate policy instruments, such as carbon taxes or green certificate trading schemes, regarding their suitability to serve as a basis for establishing emission trading systems. There is a general assessment of prototypical policy instruments. Besides, the report contains insights from case studies in India and Mexico. The report is meant to inform ETS development by showing how existing policy instruments could contribute to this process and by illustrating how non-ETS policy instruments could coexist with an emissions trading system, allowing for an effective policy mix.
This report is a synthesis of the research and re-evaluates the options previously considered in this project (Vieweg et al (2014)) in the light of the negotiation process up to today. The mitigation-related design elements considered are:
Participation and differentiation of countries; Types of commitments, including also the compulsory character of the commitments and time aspects; Guidance on ambition of the commitments to assure adequacy of global and individual countries' efforts; Transparency of commitments.
The 2010 UN climate conference in Cancún emphasized that "Parties should, in all climate change related actions, fully respect human rights". However, so far there is no further guidance. This article discusses the relevant legal human rights norms and two case studies from the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The first case (Bajo Aguán, Honduras) shows that the current absence of any international safeguards can lead to registration of highly problematic projects. The second case (Olkaria, Kenya) suggests that safeguards, introduced here as a side effect of World Bank involvement, can have a positive impact, but that it is necessary to have them based on human rights. It therefore seems recommendable that the UN climate regime develop mandatory human rights safeguards. In addition or alternatively, individual buyer countries or groups of countries, such as the European Union, could introduce their own additional requirements for CDM projects.
This article analyses the human rights implications of projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). While the CDM is likely to expire in the near future, the experience gained should be used to inform the rules of the new mechanism to be established under the 2015 Paris Agreement. We argue that the CDM and the new mechanism, as international organizations under the guidance of UNFCCC member states, should apply the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Based on the experience drawn from three case studies (two hydro power projects in Barro Blanco, Panama, and Bujagali, Uganda, and one geothermal energy project in Olkaria, Kenya), we show that CDM projects, while in formal compliance with CDM rules, can lead to a number of human rights infringements. We conclude with a number of recommendations on how to achieve a greater recognition of human rights in the new mechanism under the Paris Agreement.
The inclusion of references to human rights in the Paris Agreement was celebrated as a milestone towards greater integration of human rights in environmental and climate governance. Beyond their symbolic value, the significance of these provisions however depends on the extent to which they inform the implementation of the Paris Agreement both at the national and international levels. This article takes stock of the integration of human rights in climate governance and identifies concrete opportunities to ensure that human rights considerations are included in the Paris Implementation Guidelines to be adopted at COP-24, promoting climate action that aligns with Parties' human rights obligations. We first consider the relevance of human rights to climate action and the incremental recognition of these linkages in the international climate regime - both in the lead up to the adoption of the Paris Agreement and since. We then consider in specific terms how human rights could inform five key dimensions of the Paris Agreement's Implementation Guidelines: NDC guidance, adaptation communications, transparency framework, global stocktake, and the article 6 mechanisms. This article will reflect on past experience of how climate policy impacts human rights and on proposals put forward in the context of the negotiations of the implementation guidelines. It concludes with recommendations on a right-based approach to the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
Measures to address climate change can result in human rights violations when the rights of affected populations are not taken into consideration. Climate change projects in so-called "developing" countries are often financed and/or also implemented by industrialised countries. The research project ClimAccount Human Rights Accountability of the EU and Austria for Climate Policies in Third Countries and their possible Effects on Migration focused on the accountability of the EU and its Member States with regard to negative impacts of climate change measures they are involved in on human rights in third countries - especially those associated with "migration effects". Based on three case studies - projects registered under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism - the human rights dimension of climate change action was discussed, areas of human rights concerns that were discernible in all three case study projects were identified, the issue of extraterritorial human rights obligations was analysed and the subject of access to justice was scrutinized.
On 8 November 2016, Donald Trump was elected to become the 45th President of the United States of America. In his campaign, he repeatedly expressed his intention to "cancel the Paris Agreement". How can the course set with the adoption of the Paris Agreement be continued independently of the developments in the US? Lukas Hermwille and Wolfgang Obergassel sketch possible consequences of the sea change of US climate policy for the international negotiation process and identify options for a "Trump-resilient" way forward.
Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement explicitly acknowledges the need to incentivize and facilitate the participation of private entities in the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), private sector actors had already the opportunity to participate in a new and fast-growing market. However, they faced numerous challenging investment barriers. The study provides an overview on key factors and barriers determining private sector participation in Article 6 mechanisms. It distinguishes between the three topics demand side factors, rules and standards for market mechanisms, and supply side factors and provides for each of them options to mitigate or overcome barriers.
In a short analysis, it further explores three of the identified options:
- Improving the design and support of national systems and capacities is an important pre-requisite for the private sector to be able to generate and sell ITMOs
- The up-scaling of mitigation activities e. g. through (sub-) sector level crediting, and policy crediting helps private sector actors to benefit from economies of scale
- Exploring the potential of digitization of measuring, reporting and verification (MRV), e. g. the use of sensors, internet of things, artificial intelligence and blockchain to make the project cycle more efficient and reduce transaction costs.
Overall, the report stresses the importance of host country readiness to provide the private sector with a robust and trusted environment that allows for the adoption of Article 6 mechanisms.
Combating climate change requires a fundamental simultaneous transformation of various sectoral systems that are key to the functioning of our economies and societies, such as energy, industry, transport, housing, and agriculture. This report by the COP21 RIPPLES project examines sector-specific challenges to decarbonisation and what contribution international governance could make to overcoming these challenges.
Taking a sectoral perspective, the report identifies the key governance challenges that exist internationally towards the deep transformations required, and specifies the resulting key governance functions to be fulfilled by means of international cooperation/international institutions.
To this end, the report first clarifies a number of key concepts, including international (climate) governance, international and transnational institutions, institutional complexes and poly-centricity. It then derives a number of functions that international institutions can fulfil from the relevant literature: providing guidance and signals, setting rules, providing transparency and accountability, providing capacity building, technology and finance, and facilitating knowledge and learning. This is the basis for an investigation into the key governance challenges and the potential of international governance in 14 key sectoral systems.
The twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Sharm el-Sheikh made history by for the first time ever discussing and ultimately even agreeing to establish a fund to address loss and damage caused by climate change. However, the conference did little to limit the occurrence of loss and damage in the first place by containing the extent of climate change. This article discusses the conference's outcomes in the areas of mitigation and adaptation, loss and damage, the Global Stocktake, cooperation under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, climate finance, and gender-responsiveness. While modest progress can be observed, it is too slow to actually achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement. This pace is leading many, not least the most vulnerable countries, to search for parallel arenas of cooperation.
At the next United Nations (UN) climate conference in the United Arab Emirates at the end of 2023, the first Global Stocktake (GST) of the Paris Agreement is due to conclude. The main goal of this process is to feed into a new round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by Parties to the Agreement for 2035. In addition, the GST is aimed at identifying opportunities for strengthening international cooperation to achieve the Paris goals. The GST represents the first opportunity for Parties and other stakeholders to collectively highlight opportunities for international climate cooperation. Specifically, outcomes should plant the seeds for the development of concrete sectoral decarbonization roadmaps that could guide international cooperation in years to come.
What is necessary to reach net zero emissions in the transport sector on a global level? To keep limiting global warming to 1.5° C within reach, the world has to decarbonise by mid-century, with every sector contributing as much as possible as soon as possible. This paper identifies what has to be done in road transport, aviation, and shipping to achieve net zero emission in the transport sector.
For this purpose, it first sets the scene by providing an overview of the origins and impacts of the concept of net zero emissions in international climate policy as well as of the current state and future prospects of global transport emissions using currently available scenarios for low-emission and net zero transport.
While for staying below 1.5° C, the basic approach to reducing transport emissions remains unchanged from what has been suggested in the past, the set, intensity and pace of actions as to shift fundamentally. Without first drastically reducing traffic volume and shifting transport demand to low-emission modes, reaching net zero transport will not be feasible: the amount of additional electricity required to fully electrify the sector with renewable energy is otherwise just too huge.
After portraying key instruments for achieving net zero emissions in land transport, aviation, and shipping, this paper identifies key barriers for net zero transport. Based on this analysis, the authors recommend the following to be able to move transport to net zero:
1. Adapt Decarbonisation Strategies to Different Transport Sub-sectors
2. Prioritise and Significantly Increase Investment in Zero-/low-carbon Infrastructure
3. Massively Invest in the Development and Roll out of Zero-/low-emission Technologies
4. Focus on a Just Transition to Overcome Social and Political Barriers
5. Increase International Support and Cooperation
With the adoption of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, former debates about generating carbon credits on the basis of national policies have resurged. National policies have not been eligible as project activities under the Kyoto Protocol's flexible mechanisms. The Paris Agreement opens the possibility for such policy crediting but also provides an entirely new context: Universal participation, ambitious long-term targets and nationally defined contributions (NDCs) that are to be made more ambitious over time. As this paper shows, these changes in the framework conditions add an additional layer of complexity to policy-based cooperation.
The paper explores the potential for policy-based cooperation by first briefly presenting the regulatory basis provided by the Paris Agreement before outlining a prototype for policy-based cooperation and its key challenges.
The new mechanism defined under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement is supposed to allow for international cooperation with regard to climate change mitigation and thereby enable an increase in overall mitigation. Nevertheless, the design of the mechanism under Article 6.4 should also make sure that it is not be in conflict with the long-term goal of net-zero GHG emissions but even better foster national pathways leading to this objective. Building this into the mechanism requires to shift the focus from short- and mid-term considerations to the long-term perspective in one way or another.
This discussion paper explores three different approaches that may help to foster the long-term objective of net-zero GHG emissions in the operationalization of Article 6.4, namely positive and negative lists, additionality with regard to a baseline consistent with both, NDCs and long-term targets, as well as adaptation of existing instruments and criteria from climate finance. The detailed discussion of the ap-proaches shows that the approaches should not be seen as mutually exclusive but rather as comple-mentary to each other. From the analyses, two storylines emerge how to combine aspects of the differ-ent approaches in a reasonable way to foster the long-term objective of net-zero GHG emissions under Article 6.4.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement establishes mechanisms for Parties to "pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their nationally determined contributions to allow for higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions [...]" (Article 6.1). I. e. the mechanisms are explicitly designed to foster higher ambition. However, without additional guidance and rules, the economic incentives of carbon markets may work against increasing host country ambition. For example, setting ambitious NDC targets may directly reduce the amount of mitigation outcomes that go beyond the NDC target and that a host country can transfer abroad. The report presents four options on how the risks can be ad-dressed and ambition can be increased: (1) Strengthening reporting, transparency and comparability; (2) Reconciling the design of the Article 6.4 mechanism with ambition raising of host countries; (3) Supporting the host country to raise ambition through the Article 6.4 mechanism; (4) Fostering the acquiring country to raise ambition through the Article 6.4 mechanism. These options are assessed and recommendations are provided on how they could be implemented.
Last year's conference of the global climate change regime took place from 2 until 15 December 2018 in Katowice, Poland. The conference had two main objectives: operationalising the Paris Agreement by adopting detailed rules for its implementation, and starting the process of strengthening Parties' climate protection contributions. This article covers the negotiations on these two sets of issues and also includes a discussion of other recent climate activities by Parties and non-Party actors. Success of the negotiations in Katowice was far from assured, but in the end COP24 concluded with the adoption of the "Katowice Climate Package" setting out detailed guidelines on how to implement its various elements. However, the conference fell short on the first objective, none of the major emitting countries was ready to step up its climate ambition. The most important aspect of the Katowice outcome is therefore that it has brought the wrangling about implementation procedures to a close, making way for the true task at hand: the strengthening of national and international activities to protect the climate and the implementation of the existing pledges. Arguably, a key factor that has been slowing down climate policy is the power of entrenched interests. The article therefore concludes with a reflection on how such barriers to climate action may be overcome and what role future COPs may play in this regard.
On 12 December 2015, the Parties to the UNFCCC adopted the "Paris Agreement". With this step, the world community has agreed on a collective and cooperative path to fight human-induced climate change: After 25 years of UN climate diplomacy, the world's governments have for the first time in history negotiated a treaty which envisages climate action by all nations. The Agreement sets the world on a path that might lead to a decarbonised economy in the second half of the century. Researchers from the Wuppertal Institute have observed COP 21 and elaborated a detailed analysis of the results. The assessment provides an overview of the most important negotiation outcomes, assesses their results as well as shortfalls and provides an outlook of the next steps needed to implement the Paris Agreement's goals and to set the world firmly on a non-fossil based development path.
On 12 December 2015, the Parties to the UNFCCC adopted the "Paris Agreement". With this step, the world community has agreed on a collective and cooperative path to fight human-induced climate change: After 25 years of UN climate diplomacy, the world's governments have for the first time in history negotiated a treaty which envisages climate action by all nations. The Agreement sets the world on a path that might lead to a decarbonised economy in the second half of the century. Researchers from the Wuppertal Institute have observed COP 21 and elaborated a detailed analysis of the results. The assessment provides an overview of the most important negotiation outcomes, assesses their results as well as shortfalls and provides an outlook of the next steps needed to implement the Paris Agreement's goals and to set the world firmly on a non-fossil based development path.