The Climate Change Regime Post-Kyoto: Why Compliance is Important and How to Achieve it
Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou Additional contact information Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou: Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou is Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge. Her publications are mostly on climate change politics. Her research interests include global environmental governance, regime interaction and the trade environment debate.
Abstract:
This paper considers a climate policy architecture that would be conducive to wide participation and successful compliance. Compliance in particular is an aspect of climate policy that has been under-specified in current proposals for an architecture for climate policy. Although admittedly a successful regime would have to satisfy a number of criteria, including environmental goals, dynamic efficiency and cost-effectiveness, any agreement would have to be implemented and enforced. The focus here is both on how to construct a regime that is environmentally effective, and on how to reduce problems of compliance and leakage. Other criteria will be considered in the proposal, such as cost-effectiveness and how to facilitate the negotiation process, but the primary focus will be on participation and compliance. The main argument is that a climate agreement based on both emissions targets and policies and measures is the most conducive to maximum participation and a successful compliance mechanism. (c) 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.