Climat : papiers de recherche moissonnés (27/10/2015)

An equity-based framework for defining national responsibilities in global climate change mitigation / Lei Liu, Tong Wu & Ying Huang, Climate and Development, online October 2015  http://rsa.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17565529.2015.1085358

As a global public good, climate change cannot be addressed without global cooperation and action, which in turn depends on an equitable distribution of responsibility. There are numerous problems with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for designating national responsibilities for CO₂ emissions (NRCE) – including the dispute over the equity of production-based mechanisms and vague definitions of historical emissions. Therefore, it is necessary to re-think the principles that should govern the allocation of NRCE. The essence of the dispute over production- or consumption-based emissions accounting is the distribution of the CO₂ trade balance (CTB) between two partners. “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities” (CBDR) provides a foundation for discussing equity in global climate policy. Based on CBDR, this article proposes a rubric of equity principles for defining NRCE: first, there are “horizontal allocation rules”, according to which the CTB between trading partners is distributed according to their respective levels of development (as measured by the Human Development Index), emissions per capita and gains from the trade; second, there are “vertical extending rules”, according to which the historical emissions of a country are accounted for with reference to the horizontal allocation rules and added to the present-day NRCE of the country. We argue that considering global climate policy coordination in this light will contribute to formulating a more robust definition of NRCE.

National post-2020 greenhouse gas targets and diversity-aware leadership / M Meinshausen, L. Jeffery, J. Guetschow, YR du Pont, J. Rogelj, M. Schaefer, N. Hoehne, M. den Elzen, S. Oberthuer, Nature Climate Change, online 26 October 2015, 10 p. http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2826.html

Achieving the collective goal of limiting warming to below 2 °C or 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels requires a transition towards a fully decarbonized world. Annual greenhouse gas emissions on such a path in 2025 or 2030 can be allocated to individual countries using a variety of allocation schemes. We reanalyse the IPCC literature allocation database and provide country-level details for three approaches. At this stage, however, it seems utopian to assume that the international community will agree on a single allocation scheme. Here, we investigate an approach that involves a major-economy country taking the lead. In a bottom-up manner, other countries then determine what they consider a fair comparable target, for example, either a ‘per-capita convergence’ or ‘equal cumulative per-capita’ approach. For example, we find that a 2030 target of 67% below 1990 for the EU28, a 2025 target of 54% below 2005 for the USA or a 2030 target of 32% below 2010 for China could secure a likely chance of meeting the 2 °C target in our illustrative default case. Comparing those targets to post-2020 mitigation targets reveals a large gap. No major emitter can at present claim to show the necessary leadership in the concerted effort of avoiding warming of 2 °C in a diverse global context.

Joint Design of Emission Tax and Trading Systems / Bernard Caillaud & Gabrielle Demange. Paris School of Economics, 2015, 40 p. (PSE Working Papers n 2015-03.) https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01112185

Abstract : This paper analyzes the joint design of fiscal and cap-and-trade instruments in climate policies under uncertainty. Whether the optimal mechanism is a mixed policy (with some firms subject to a tax and others to a cap-and-trade) or a uniform one (with all firms subject to the same instrument) depends on parameters reflecting preferences, production, and, most importantly, the stochastic structure of the shocks affecting the economy. This framework is then used to address the issue of the non-cooperative design of ETS in various areas worldwide and to characterize the resulting inefficiency and excess in emission. We provide a strong Pareto argument in favor of merging ETS of different regions in the world.

La Conférence de Paris 2015 : Une nouvelle économie politique des changements climatiques / Michel Damian et Franck-Dominique Vivien. Problèmes économiques,  hors série n° 8, septembre 2015, pp. 116-122. En accès libre sur le site de La documentation française : http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/var/storage/libris/9782110099983/9782110099983_EX.pdf 

La COP21, qui se tiendra à Paris fin 2015 et réunira 195 États, constitue une étape décisive dans la lutte contre le changement climatique. Outre le fait qu’un accord international contraignant est prévu, mais a minima, cette conférence marque, selon Michel Damian et Franck-Dominique Vivien, une évolution dans la conception des négociations sur le climat. L’analyse standard en termes d’internalisation des externalités, privilégiée jusqu’à présent, devrait reculer au profit d’une nouvelle économie politique de l’environnement laissant plus de place à la réglementation et aux politiques nationales. L’approche « par le haut » consistant à répartir entre les pays des objectifs de réduction des émissions devrait être remplacée, ou du moins complétée, par une approche « par le bas » partant des initiatives des États.

Danièle Revel

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