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1. Climate Negotiations Open a Window: Key Implications of the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action

Author:
Robert N. Stavins and Joseph E. Aldy
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
A key outcome of the Seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP-17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Durban, South Africa, late in 2011 — the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action — represents an important milestone in the history of climate negotiations. This is because it departs from the long-standing and problematic dichotomous division of the world's countries into those with serious emissions-reduction responsibilities and the others — with no such responsibilities whatsoever. That distinction, now apparently abandoned, has prevented meaningful progress for decades. The Durban Platform — by replacing the Berlin Mandate's (1995) division of the world into a set of countries with ambitious responsibilities and another set of countries with no responsibilities — has opened an important window. National delegations from around the world now have a challenging task before them: to identify a new international climate policy architecture that is consistent with the process, pathway, and principles laid out in the Durban Platform, while still being consistent with the UNFCCC. The challenge is to find a way to include all key countries in a structure that brings about meaningful emission reduction on an appropriate timetable at acceptable cost, while recognizing the different circumstances of countries in a way that is more subtle, more sophisticated, and — most important — more effective than the dichotomous distinction of years past.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
South Africa, United Nations, and Durban

2. Post-Durban Climate Policy Architecture Based on Linkage of Cap-and-Trade Systems

Author:
Robert N. Stavins
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The outcome of the December 2011 United Nations climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, provides an important new opportunity to move toward an international climate policy architecture that is capable of delivering broad international participation and significant global CO2 emissions reductions at reasonable cost. We evaluate one important component of potential climate policy architecture for the post-Durban era: links among independent tradable permit systems for greenhouse gases. Because linkage reduces the cost of achieving given targets, there is tremendous pressure to link existing and planned cap-and-trade systems, and in fact, a number of links already or will soon exist. We draw on recent political and economic experience with linkage to evaluate potential roles that linkage may play in post-Durban international climate policy, both in a near-term, de facto architecture of indirect links between regional, national, and sub-national cap-and-trade systems, and in longer-term, more comprehensive bottom-up architecture of direct links. Although linkage will certainly help to reduce long-term abatement costs, it may also serve as an effective mechanism for building institutional and political structure to support a future climate agreement.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Environment, International Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
South Africa and Durban

3. Archaeology of the Present: Organized Crime through the Study of Urban Built Environments

Author:
Eyal Weizman and Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
The urban landscape is a testament to the impact of transnational organized crime (TOC) in the everyday lives of citizens. Because of this, architects and urban planners have an interesting role to play in understanding the complexity of this issue. Acting as archaeologists of the present, they can trace the intricate relationship of crime and its different actors within a transnational network, as it touches ground and transforms cities across borders. Cities are the ultimate battleground of TOC. The controversial topic of occupation law is approached in a conversation on how urban environments are increasingly performing both as spaces of control and spaces of contestation and resistance, and are therefore shaped and transformed by this interplay. Eyal Weizman, director of the Centre for the Research of Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, developed a 'forensic' field of study within the realm of architecture, where, by examining the traces of history and its politics within the built environment, a larger understanding of a city and its society can be read. In the context of this issue, Weizman discusses with Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa, architect and Master in Design Studies candidate at Harvard University, how architecture can perform as an able narrator in interpreting and unveiling the way crime embeds itself within the built environment of our cities and thus becomes an active participant in shaping them.
Topic:
Environment
Political Geography:
London and Durban