Conclusions: Priority Research Questions and Next Steps
While the meeting participants raised a number of research questions
and proposals over the course of the meeting, those questions and
proposals that participants felt were particularly interesting or
important were discussed again during two breakout sessions. The
starting point for these focused discussions was the themes and
major research questions described in the Scoping Report. The research
questions arising from the meeting discussions are intended to supplement
and elaborate on these questions. As such, they reflect the sense
of the meeting participants about the critical questions that could,
in one form or another, become the nucleus one or more specific
research efforts that could be moved forward. These questions, presented
here in the context of the two CMRA research themes, are as follows:
Theme 1: Administering the Current Climate Regime
Much of the focused discussion on questions associated with
the first research theme was oriented around the development and
operationalization of the Kyoto mechanisms. The meeting participants
suggested that the following questions are particularly interesting
and important:
Is consistency desirable between the provisions of the flexibility
mechanisms with regard to the adaptation and mitigation levy?
At the moment, the flexibility mechanisms differ significantly in
many different ways. For example, at the moment only the CDM has
an adaptation levy on it. What will be the impact on the transaction
costs of CDM projects if levies are applied only to CDM projects?
What will be the outcome in terms of GHG reductions and in terms
of economic efficiency if JI as well as CDM projects are levied
for adaptation purposes?
Does the operation of the CDM favor polluting states? Should
this be addressed institutionally via the adaptation fund? What
are the implications for efficient outcomes for the dual objectives
of the FCCC?
Given that States negotiate with the intent of securing rules
that are least costs options for them, how does the negotiation
of international rules governing the climate regime affect the development
and implementation and effective outcome?
What are the comparative advantages of the regulatory and market
approaches in producing the outcomes of GHG reductions? Sustainable
development? What happens to these comparative advantages in different
nations and in different contexts?
What is the future of the market-based approach if the Protocol
is not ratified in the near- to mid-term future? The market-based
approach has been moving along fairly well without a ratified protocol,
but it is not clear how long it can continue to do so. How can the
Framework Convention, which has been ratified by 163 countries,
support this market-based approach. On a related issue, what is
the legal position of international regulations regarding carbon
trading and the WTO? Carbon trading is not free trade, and we have
seen case after case where the WTO has trumped the Law of the Sea.
Is there an inherent tension between the Protocol and regimes promoting
free trade? Is reconciliation possible?
What institutional mechanisms are necessary to ensure that
Article 2.1 is on conformity with Article 12 with regard to satisfying
sustainable development criteria?
Is the existence of one Certification Board for market mechanisms
essential to ensure uniform CER unit accreditation and sustainable
development indicators? There is a general need for some uniformity
in sustainable development indicators as well as in the CDM. It
is not clear, however, if and how this can be done.
How can the effective participation of Civil Society be ensured
at the national level? This participation is particularly important
for both monitoring compliance and stating national negotiating
positions.
Can the negotiation of the Protocol take into account existing
Conventions with short-term urgency and immediacy, such as the Convention
on Biodiversity?
Should a global limit be applied to sequestration projects,
with that limit being the percentage of global emissions from LULUCF
sources? Can flexibility be introduced into a global limit so
that tropical developing nations experiencing severe deforestation
may receive a higher percentage of sequestration projects?
Theme 2: The (Re)Design of the Climate Regime
How do "collective" interests and coalition interests
interact? If the climate regime represents the collective interest,
but within the regime and in coalitions participating in it there
is a whole series of coalition interests, how do these interact
both to design or develop the regime and then to change the regime
over time? How do factors such as culture, national and regional
origin, level of national development, the international and national
legal systems, etc., influence these different interests?
How might scientific assessment and learning processes be better
incorporated into the climate regime? One of the dimensions
of the question is defining the scope of a regime. If the regime
is considered as being just the FCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, how
do the IPCC processes, the IGBP and other scientific processes,
and other learning processes feed into this regime? How might this
be improved to help the evolution of the regime?
How can the regime better incorporate the private sector needs
and interests? Many in the private sector, particularly in the
United States, have tremendous resistance to the regime. How might
the regime, defined more broadly than just the FCCC and the Kyoto
Protocol, do a better job at bringing in the private sector so as
to overcome this resistance. Is the resistance due purely to economics?
Are there other issues that are important here?
What are the linkages between climate change institutions and
the larger societal institutions of which it is a part? What
are the implications of changes in these linkages over time? These
questions embody recognition that the Convention, its Protocol and
associated institutions are all part of a larger system. How do
these different pieces fit together? What are the implications of
these linkages for changes in these societal institutions over time?
It will be hard for the climate regime to changes in society and
societal institutions if we do not understand how these pieces fit
together. This issue could become particularly important if the
Kyoto Protocol does not enter into force in the next few years.
What are the linkages among the various organizations and institutions
involved in the climate change regime? When we think of the
climate regime, we generally think of the Framework Convention,
its Kyoto Protocol, and associated institutions and mechanisms.
There are a whole range of other organizations and institutions
that fit into this. These include, for example, the U.N. General
Assembly and the other pieces of the U.N. organization, the Global
Environment Facility, the World Bank, and others. What are the linkages
among these organizations in terms of individuals and institutions?
How do interactions among these organizations affect the evolving
regime?
How can we change the current model or conception of the climate
change regime? The climate regime has grown out of a model related
to the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol, and associated
with this model is a preconception of how such the regime should
work and what the next steps in its implementation should be. There
may be other models or paradigms that are better suited to the particular
complexities of the climate change issue and some of the challenges
that the regime will face in the future. How do we break out of
this paradigm to start thinking of new forms of a climate regime
that are better suited to these future challenges?
How do the various coalitions and interests at the national
and subnational levels shape the evolving climate regime? Many
different actors, coalitions, and organizations exist that relate
to the climate problem but are not necessarily engaged directly
in the regime itself. They do have an influence on the regime, however.
What is this influence? How do they influence the problem itself?
How do these two sets of influences converge or diverge?
How might decision-makers react to different future climate
scenarios? A number of simulations or policy games have been
created that can model a range of different future scenarios. These
simulations can be used to explore how policy makers might react
when confronted with a range of possible future worlds. It may also
be useful to use this approach to start looking at how policy makers,
negotiators, and others looking into the future and adapt to different
future scenarios.
What might be the impacts of different compliance mechanisms
on the evolving climate regime? This includes not just the compliance
mechanism for the Kyoto Protocol, but that for the FCCC as well.
One possible approach for this might be to put together a synthesis
of functioning of the compliance mechanism in a number of different
countries. There is not currently any systematic synthesis of what
is known regarding compliance. It would also be useful to develop
a series of case studies of how various compliance options would
work in different countries.
How might human institutions at the international, national,
and subnational levels react to different critical thresholds of
environmental change? How might they react to alter these thresholds?
It is very likely that as the climate changes certain environmental
thresholds will be reached, such as ocean currents stopping or a
dramatic change in temperature over a twenty-year period. Research
into these issues would involve modeling both a set of biogeophysical
conditions and a set of institutional responses to changes in these
conditions.
Next Steps
There was general agreement among the participants that a coordinated
research program into the range of institutional issues associated
with the climate regime is timely and of tremendous interest to
both researchers and policy makers. They also agreed that care needs
to be taken that the CMRA is not so broad and all-encompassing that
it does not produce useful research.
Participants agreed that additional time is needed beyond that
provided by the meeting to organize and refine the list of high-priority
questions, and that they should continue to communicate electronically
to do this. This electronic communication should also be used to
further develop a set of next steps to carry the CMRA forward.
It was generally recognized that the development of a core set
of projects is critical to moving the CMRA forward. Two questions
that emerged as being particularly important are: (1) the relationship
between the CDM rules and incentives for participation in it, and
(2) the effectiveness of the various options being consider in the
compliance mechanism. The CMRA Steering Committee is currently exploring
options for developing these projects.
It was also agreed that an important role of the IDGEC project,
the carbon management activity, and the IHDP in general is to build
capacity within the scientific community in order to create vibrant
communities of researchers who are engaging in coordinated research
in order to provide insight into these larger global change issues.
There is a need to build capacity within the social sciences to
perform as well as the natural sciences in terms of producing research
results on the whole range of human dimensions.
The participants at the meeting represented research institutes
that are planning or conducting research activities that are related
to some of these questions. The value of the group is that they
can form a network of researchers through which these research efforts
can be coordinated and the results brought forward. However, they
also recognized that an expanded network of researchers was necessary
to move the activity forward, and that additional efforts were necessary
to draw researchers from such important regions such as Africa and
Latin America that were not represented at this first planning meeting.
Both the meeting participants and the CMRA Steering Committee would
welcome recommendations and nominations from the FCCC Parties of
other researchers who might become involved in this effort.
Finally, the participants expressed interest in participating
in a on-going dialogue with the policy community on institutional
questions associated with the climate regime, and expressed interest
in exploring possibilities for holding a series of discussions with
participants in the meetings of Conference of the Parties and its
subsidiary bodies.
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