This article investigates the genesis and role of the 2° target in international climate policy. We identify a dual role played by temperature targets: (i) a social planner's option of decision making under uncertainty that draws on the precautionary principle, and (ii) a policy instrument to...

To date, processes to implement the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and international climate change mitigation and adaptation obligations are largely disconnected in most countries. This creates administrative overlaps, costs and hampers the development of effective problem...

This paper discusses and analyzes various international mechanisms to scale up global action on climate mitigation and address the policy gap in this area. Despite the new commitments made at COP 26, there is still an ambition and a policy gap at the global level to keep temperature increases...

At the G7 summit in June 2022, the German government intends to promote international climate cooperation by establishing a climate club. This club is envisioned to foster implementation of the Paris climate goals and, ideally, grow into a global alliance of ambitious countries. In light of...

In the presence of strategic complementarities stemming from peer effects in demand or from technological spill-overs, propagation and amplification mechanisms increase the effectiveness of climate policies. This suggests that climate goals can be met with smaller policy interventions. However,...

Carbon markets under the Paris Agreement are expected to differ substantially from those that emerged under the Kyoto Protocol. Unlike the top-down approach of markets created by the Kyoto Protocol, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), international carbon markets under Article 6 of...

We propose a mixture model approach to identify locally optimal technologies and to dissect environmental productivity (output produced per unit of emission) into a technological and a managerial component. For a large sample of plants covered by the EU ETS, we find that the share of plants...

We study the endogenous formation of climate coalitions linked to a preferential free trade arrangement. In a multi-stage strategic trade and participation game, coalition and fringe countries dispose of a discriminatory tariff on dirty imports as well as emission permits imposed on domestic...

I examine a policy-making game among countries that must choose both a policy instrument (e.g., a tax or a quota) and its intensity (i.e., the tax rate or the quota level) to price pollution. When countries price pollution non-cooperatively, they not only set the intensity inefficiently, they...

Industrialized countries and emerging economies must cooperate in order to decarbonize the emissions-intensive industrial sector and to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. While Germany and the other G7 countries have committed to supporting emerging economies in their efforts to combat...

“A development is not a development if it destroys our planet. ”This article gives an encapsulation of the jurisprudence on sustainable development. It gives an overview of the concept of sustainable groundwater resource development. The world is progressing at an alarming rate where...

Nations around the world have pledged for decades to address climate change, but no significant actions have been taken. This is hardly surprising, since there is no precedent in human history for such cooperation. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, not fall. I argue that optimism about...

Policy work in both the United States and the European Union is underway on how best to structure border carbon adjustments (BCA) mechanisms to protect the competitiveness of domestic industries while these enterprises make investments in reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—thereby...

International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) that address global environmental problems with cross-border externalities (i.e., climate change) suffer from severe free-riding problems resulting in limited national participation. Gains and losses in international trade are concerning when...

A substantial literature investigates carbon leakage effects for large countries and climate coalitions. However, little is known about leakage effects for a small open economy within a climate coalition. To fill this gap in the literature, we incorporate international climate policies relevant...

We study the dynamics of equilibrium membership of an international environmental agreement aimed at increasing the stock of a global public good such as climate change mitigation.In contrast with previous studies, we assume partial cooperation among signatories, and showthat the coalition size...

This paper estimates the carbon leakage rate across countries, arguably a key parameter in the international climate policy discussion including on border carbon adjustment, but which remains subject to significant uncertainty. We propose innovations along two lines. First, we exploit recently...

In short, yes. I use a multi-region integrated assessment model with fuel-specific endogenous technical change to examine the impact of Europe and China reducing emissions to zero by mid-century. Without international technological diffusion this is insufficient to avoid catastrophic climate...

Major carbon-pricing systems in Europe and North America involve multiple countries or states. Individual jurisdictions often pursue additional initiatives---such as unilateral carbon price floors, legislation to phase out coal, aviation taxes or support programs for renewable energy---that...

Recent literature has explored both physical and policy linkage between trade and environment. Here we explore linkage through leverage in bargaining, whereby developed countries can use trade policy threats to achieve improved developing country environmental management, while developing...

The Paris Agreement is the first treaty under the global climate regime to mention ‘climate justice’ as a concept. Given this unprecedented legal turn of the concept, the article reports a sociolegal study of climate justice, framing and assessing the substantive policy issues arising from...

Through their Intergovernmental Panels on Climate Change, the scientific community tells us that we are heading towards a climate catastrophe. As a result, various countries are offering various promising and novel policy instruments to mitigate climate change and continue to grow...

This paper examines the formation of International Environmental Agreements (IEAs). The economic literature focuses on scenarios where countries are weakly sensitive to environmental damages (constant or linear marginal damages) and finds that stable coalitions are small when countries choose...

This paper estimates the carbon leakage rate across countries, arguably a key parameter in international climate policy discussions including on border carbon adjustment, but which remains subject to significant uncertainty. We propose innovations along two lines. First, we exploit recently...

Since the mid-1980s, the international community has controlled refrigerants that may damage the ozone layer and cause climate change based on several international agreements. In particular, the Montreal Protocol contributed to not only solving the ozone layer depletion problem but also...

This sequel to the Groundswell report includes projections and analysis of internal climate migration for three new regions: East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Qualitative analyses of climate-related mobility in countries of the Mashreq and in Small...

The transformation from Kyoto to Paris has been analysed by international relations scholars, international law, and transnational governance theory. The international relations literature looks at the climate regime from a perspective of power distribution, state interests, institutions, and...

A decade ago, the German Advisory Council to the Federal Government on Global Environmental Change (Wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung für Globale Umweltveränderungen - WBGU) published its main report. This attempt to take stock in 2011 made an impact and provided orientation on...

The EU steps up its efforts to curb its territorial CO2-emissions. It is planning to introduce a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) to level the playing field and to raise own resources. However, unilateral European climate policy action, whether shored up with a CBAM or not, can only...

This paper seeks to give insights into how domestic voters form their preferences pro or contra compliance with IEAs and therefore how public concern for the environment and interest group activity influence national compliance behaviour. Three hypotheses are developed. First, compliance...

We explore the possibility of achieving a cooperative outcome when governments act non-cooperatively in a strategic environmental policy model where emission permit markets are linked. We introduce a specific distribution scheme of the permit revenues between the exporting countries so as to...

World Bank Group President David Malpass spoke about climate change and the loss of biodiversity as defining issues of our time. He insisted on the importance of supporting developing countries in achieving their NDCs, helping them develop long-term strategies for low-carbon and...