This article provides further detail on expected global GHG emission levels in 2020, based on the Emissions Gap Report (United Nations Environment Programme, December 2010), assuming the emission reduction proposals in the Copenhagen Accord and Cancun Agreements are met. Large differences are...

How can the concept of sustainable development policies and measures (SD-PAMs) be operationalized in a multilateral climate regime? The strategic approach is to focus on policies and measures that are firmly within the national sustainable development priorities of developing countries but...

In order to stabilize long-term greenhouse gas concentrations at 450 ppm CO₂-eq or lower, developed countries as a group should reduce emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020, while developing countries' emissions need to be reduced by around 15-30%, relative to their baseline levels,...

This article describes a new concept for an international climate regime for differentiation of future commitments: the 'common but differentiated convergence' approach (CDC). Under CDC, Annex-I countries' per-capita emission allowances converge within a convergence period to a low level....

Following the conclusion of the official work of the Ad Hoc Group for the Modelling and Assessment of Contributions to Climate Change (MATCH), this article considers the politically more sensitive aspect of the Brazilian proposal, namely the issue of differentiating (historic) responsibility...

The recent announcement by the USA to withdraw their support for the Kyoto Protocol has drawn attention to the conditions under which the Protocol will enter into force: at least 55 member states to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have to ratify the Protocol,...

The Mapping Carbon Pricing Initiatives Report maps existing and emerging carbon pricing initiatives around the world. It does not provide a quantitative, transaction-based analysis of the international carbon market since current market conditions invalidate any attempt to undertake such an...

Over 40 studies that analyse future GHG emissions allowances or reduction targets for different regions based on a wide range of effort-sharing approaches and long-term concentration stabilization levels are compared. This updates previous work undertaken for the Fourth Assessment Report of the...

In the context of recent discussions at the UN climate negotiations we compared several ways of calculating historical greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and assessed the effect of these different approaches on countries’ relative contributions to cumulative global emissions. Elements not covered...

Many of the major greenhouse gas emitting countries have planned and/or implemented domestic mitigation policies, such as carbon taxes, feed-in tariffs, or standards. This study analyses whether the most effective national climate and energy policies are sufficient to stay on track for meeting...