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Focusing primarily on the forests of Southeast
Asia, the Political Economy of Tropical and Boreal Forests (PEF)
flagship team has sought to understand the combined effects
of the decentralization of authority within states regarding
forest management, the rise of global markets and financial
flows, and the creation of international regimes concerned with
forest products (e.g. the International Tropical Timber Agreement). |
The fundamental question concerns the extent to which
international and global forces emphasizing commodity values counteract
or even overwhelm concerns for other values (e.g. subsistence harvesting,
the cultural significance of forests, the protection of biodiversity)
that are apt to be more prominent in decisions taken at the regional
and especially the local level. The PEF team has produced a volume
of case studies exploring these issues in Southeast Asia on a comparative
basis and has plans to extend the analysis to additional areas.
Preliminary findings indicate that decentralization does make a
difference and may well be necessary for sustainable forest management.
However, the actual results in terms of forest management are affected
by a host of other factors, including cross-scale interactions that
promote or impede efforts to manage forests in a sustainable manner.
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The Carbon Management Research Activity (CMRA)
flagship team has directed particular attention to the implementation
of the Kyoto Protocol and specifically to questions relating
to the design and implementation of the Kyoto mechanisms,
including emissions trading, joint implementation, and the
Clean Development Mechanism. IDGEC researchers have begun
to develop agent-based models to examine compliance and emissions
trading under different institutional rules and mechanisms.
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A number of studies deal with the potential role
of carbon sequestration as a means of meeting the targets and timetables
of the Kyoto Protocol. Others have turned to the basic architecture
of the institutional arrangements set forth in the Kyoto Protocol
and raised fundamental questions about the compatibility between
the attributes of this regime and the properties of the climate
problem. Still others have noted that the climate regime directs
attention almost exclusively to matters of mitigation in contrast
to adaptation. These studies have called for increased attention
under the auspices of IDGEC to the institutional dimensions of adaptation
to climate change.
IDGEC has endorsed an international collaborative
research endeavor of SSC member Taishi Sugiyama aimed at developing
a post-Kyoto policy framework. The researchers will develop and
analyze a series of policy scenarios for the negotiations relating
to the second commitment period. IDGEC has also entered into an
active partnership with the Global Carbon Project (GCP), a joint
initiative of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP),
IHDP, and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), in an effort
to enhance understanding of the carbon-climate-human system as a
coupled system and contribute to the pursuit of sustainability in
this realm.
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The Performance of Exclusive Economic Zones (PEEZ)
flagship team started from the premise that the creation of
Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) during the 1970s was one of
the most significant institutional changes occurring in international
society during the course of the last century.
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Although arguments favoring the creation of EEZs often
focused on problems of conservation and sustainable use, PEEZ has
found that this institutional change has generated major socioeconomic
and distributive consequences and given rise to new problems relating
to shared, straddling and highly migratory stocks of fish. This
has stimulated a sustained effort to devise rules dealing with such
matters nested within the overarching governance system codified
in the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea together with regional
regimes focused on problems relating to straddling stocks in a number
of areas around the world. These developments raise an array of
questions relating to institutional interplay.
Thus far, PEEZ has held two scientific workshops leading
to the development of a volume of papers to be edited by Alf Håkon
Hoel, Syma Ebbin and Are Sydnes. PEEZ has also teamed with the Arafura-Timor
Seas Experts Forum (ATSEF), an emerging international soft law agreement
involving Australia, Indonesia and East Timor, to analyze the science/policy
interface. Analyzing the ATSEF provides an excellent opportunity
to examine the institutional drivers of illegal fishing, design
institutions for effective fisheries regulation, and craft optimal
institutional solutions for coastal resource use. The PEEZ team
has received grants from the Norwegian Research Council and the
University of Tromsø that have enabled the hiring of a post-doctoral
researcher and a doctoral student and supported the research of
a senior researcher. IDGEC Research Fellow, Frank Alcock, authored
a successful grant proposal entitled "Assessing the Performance
of EEZs: Fisheries Management, Trade and Human Livelihoods."
The grant supported a PEEZ related workshop in November 2003 at
Duke University.
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