Climat : papiers de recherche moissonnés (9/05/2016)

Enhancing climate change mitigation ambition after Paris – Messages from economic literature / Hanna-Liisa Kangas, Kimmo Ollikka and Sally Weaver. Finnish Environment Institute, 2016, 62 p. (Report 17/2016) https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/161378

Abstract : The Paris Agreement starts a new era in global climate policy. The agreement includes a landmark target of limiting global warming to well below 2°C degrees. Since the initial contributions of the Parties do not fulfill that target, additional ways and mechanisms to increase climate change mitigation ambition are required. Increased cooperation and decreased costs of mitigation that result from enhanced policy can help to achieve the current contributions and also increase the ambition of future targets. The objective of this report is to bridge the realities of the UNFCCC negotiations and theoretical academic understanding of increasing the climate change mitigation ambition. Especially we focus on the fields of environmental economics and international environmental agreements…

The Paris Climate Change Agreement: A New Hope? / Dan Bodansky. 2/05/2016, 43 p. To be published in the American Journal of International Law http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2773895

The Paris Agreement seeks a Goldilocks solution to the climate change problem that is neither too strong (and hence unacceptable to key states) nor too weak (and hence ineffective).  To safeguard national decision-making, it adopts a bottom-up approach, in which the agreement “reflects rather than drives national policy.”  But to promote stronger action, states’ “nationally-determined contributions” (or NDCs, for short) are complemented by international norms to ensure transparency and accountability and to prod states to progressively ratchet up their efforts.  Eight features of the Paris Agreement stand out: (1) It is a legally binding instrument (albeit with many non-binding elements). (2) It applies not only to developed countries, like the Kyoto Protocol, but also to developing countries, which account for a growing share of global emissions. (3) It establishes the same core obligations for all countries.  In doing so, it abandons the static, annex-based approach to differentiation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, in favor a more flexible, calibrated approach, which takes into account changes in a country’s circumstances and capacities and is operationalized differently for different elements of the regime; (4) It establishes a long-term, durable architecture.  (5) It institutionalizes an iterative process, in which parties come back to the table every five years to take stock of their collective progress and put forward emission reduction plans for the next five-year period.  (6) It sets an expectation of progressively stronger action over time.  (7) It establishes a common  transparency and accountability framework. (8) It appears to command universal, or near universal, acceptance.  The Paris Agreement falls short of putting the world on a pathway to avoiding dangerous climate change.  But, given current political realities, it produced as much as could reasonably have been expected, and perhaps more.  That may or may not make Paris historic, but it is certainly cause for celebration.

Scenarios of Global Change: Integrated Assessment of Climate Impacts /  Sergey Paltsev, Andrei Sokolov, Henry Chen, Xiang Gao, Adam Schlosser, Erwan Monier, Charles Fant, Jeffery Scott, Qudsia Ejaz, Evan Couzo, Ronald Prinn and Martin Haigh. MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Feb. 2016, 39 p. http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/document/MITJPSPGC_Rpt291.pdf

Using the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework, we assess the climate impacts of emission scenarios exhibiting global mean surface temperatures ranging between 2.4°C and 4.3°C above pre-industrial by 2100. We compare the outcomes from these forward-looking scenarios against the common goal described by the target-driven scenario of 2°C. Without further policy measures, the agreement at COP-21 in Paris is projected to result in a 3.5°C increase in global temperature in 2100 relative to pre-industrial levels. Scenarios developed by Shell International (called Mountains and Oceans) exhibit a substantial movement towards temperature stabilization, as they result in increases of only 2.4–2.7°C by 2100. Valuable components of these scenarios include a substantial shift to renewable energy and deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS). These scenarios are successful in mitigating a large portion of water stress impacts and air pollution damages. They also significantly mitigate increases in ocean acidity. These projections show the significant value of policies that do not quite reach 2°C stabilization, but fall substantially close to that target by the end of the century. The challenge of meeting the Paris Agreement’s aspiration to limit warming to 1.5°C is monumental, yet may be desirable if societies see the 2°C impacts, described here, as running too much risk.

Trade in carbon and the effectiveness of carbon tariffs / Christoph Böhringer, Jan Schneider and Emmanuel Asane-Otoo. Oldenburg : Department of Economics, University of Oldenburg, April 2016, 39 p. (Discussion Papers in Economics ; V-388-16) https://www.gtap.agecon.purdue.edu/resources/download/6977.pdf

Carbon-based import tariffs are discussed as policy measures to reduce carbon leakage and increase the global cost-effectiveness of unilateral CO2 emission pricing. We assess how the potential of carbon tariffs to increase cost-effectiveness of unilateral climate policy depends on the magnitude and composition of carbon embodied in trade. For our assessment, we combine multi-region input-output (MRIO) analysis with computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis based on data from the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) for the period 1995 to 2007. The MRIO analysis confirms that carbon embodied in trade has sharply increased during this period. Yet, the CGE analysis suggests that the effectiveness of carbon tariffs in reducing leakage and improving global-cost effectiveness of unilateral climate policy does not increase over time, whereas the potential to shift the economic burden of CO2 emissions reduction from abating developed regions to non-abating developing regions increases substantially.

National contributions for decarbonizing the world economy in line with the G7 agreement / Yann Robiou du Pont , M Louise Jeffery , Johannes Gütschow , Peter Christoff and Malte Meinshausen. Environmental Research Letters, vol. 11, n° 5, April 2016, 10 p. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/5/054005

This article derives equitable national emissions scenarios – and 2030 – 2050 mitigation targets – consistent with a 2°C global warming limit and a global decarbonization, as agreed by the G7 in Elmau last June. The ambition of the INDCs of the G7 members as well as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is compared to emissions allocations representative of the five equity categories presented in the IPCCAR5: ‘capability’, ‘equality’, ‘responsibility-capability-need’, ‘equal cumulative per capita’ and ‘staged approaches’. Results show that G7 members’ INDCs mitigation targets are in line with a grandfathering approach but lack ambition to meet various visions of climate justice. The INDCs of China and Russia fall short of meeting the requirements of any allocation approach. Depending on how their INDCs are evaluated, the INDCs of India and Brazil can match some equity approaches evaluated in this study.

Danièle Revel

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