This paper introduces ƐCPR, country performance ratings that support Norway's Energy+ initiative by monitoring the progress of 153 countries in reducing the CO2 emissions intensity of energy consumption. It develops annual ƐCPR ratings for the period from 2001 to 2010.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Energy Policy, and Foreign Aid
Mikkel Funder, Ian Christoplos, Ida Peters, Adam Pain, and Esbern Friis-Hansen
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This literature review summarises selected theories of institutional change, with a particular emphasis on issues relevant to the Climate Change and Rural Institutions (CCRI) research programme. The review focuses on concepts that can be applied in understanding how and why meso level institutions operating at district and provincial levels respond or fail to respond when faced with climate change related upheavals. The review examines the concepts of path dependency, gradual institutional change and institutional bricolage, and how these tools might be used to understand processes of change in meso level institutions when faced by catastrophic environmental change.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Energy Policy, and Governance
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
Deborah Gordon, Daniel Sperling, and David Livingston
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The U.S. electric-vehicle industry has posted impressive growth over the last decade, with hundreds of companies now advancing the plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) market. But there is still much to do to further the transition to electric-drive vehicles. It will take a sophisticated set of policy tools and local action to spur manufacturers, utilities, localities, and states to fully commercialize PEVs.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, and Science and Technology
Regardless of many benefits available to Russia from adopting a more practical approach to climate mitigation, the country remains on the outskirts of the international climate policy debate—an important element of foreign policy in this decade. Russian leaders tend to point to the post-Soviet decline of Russia's greenhouse gas emissions as a major contribution to global climate mitigation efforts. Yet, because the country's carbon intensity remains very high, that stance undermines Russia's role as a serious global climate actor.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, International Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
Climate change is making extreme weather – like droughts, floods and heat waves – much more likely. As the 2012 drought in the US shows, extreme weather means extreme food prices. Our failure to slash greenhouse gas emissions presents a future of greater food price volatility, with severe consequences for the precarious lives and livelihoods of people in poverty.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Economics, and Food
What role can companies play in strengthening the capacity of small-scale producers in developing countries to adapt to climate change, and in doing so, make their global value chains more resilient? While some leading companies have made progress in taking greater responsibility for what happens throughout their supply chains, there has been little discussion about the threat that climate change poses to the livelihoods of small-scale producers. Through interviews with three companies: Starbucks, Marks Spencer, and The Body Shop, the paper examines how smallholders involved in coffee production in Colombia, sesame in Nicaragua, and cotton in Pakistan have been affected by climate change and what it means for the companies' businesses . From this research, Oxfam identifies key actions for companies to begin to address the challenges to small-scale producers, and raises questions for further discussion.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Economics, Environment, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Since its conception, theology has been entwined with ecology. Major or minor, extinct or thriving, all religions give relevance to the meaning of the environment and the relationship of human beings with the Earth. The modern Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all revere the environment and recognize its significance within their respective religious texts. The presence of the Abrahamic religions is visible on every corner of the planet. However, within the status quo, Christianity is the dominant religion at the core of Immanuel Wallerstein's “World-system.” The prominence of Christianity within developed countries, meaning in this case countries that emit the largest percentages of carbon into the atmosphere, raises the question of modern Christianity's relationship with the environment.
Beneath the drama of current events, a serious paradox, as old as civilization itself, steadily erodes the foundations of modern society: humans rely on Earth to survive, yet their way of life burdens it with increasingly taxing demands. Thus, as humans degrade Earth, they threaten the quality of their own existence. Globalization, the compression of time and space, both exacerbates and alleviates the burden of this environmental paradox. Perceiving time as accelerated and space as condensed alters the ways in which humans interact with their physical environment. For instance, globalization can promote behavior that improves environmental health by fostering creative environmental problem solving and cooperation among groups. It can also construct behavioral patterns that degrade the environment by encouraging resource consumption, waste, and pollution.
This Occasional Paper aims at providing a new perspective on the relevance of climate change for the EU's external action. Considering its linkages with various areas such as energy security, economic growth and diplomacy, and indeed its importance in terms of future political stability, climate change is a major 'game-changer' in international relations. The issue of climate change, and how to deal with it, therefore presents governments with a significant opportunity to reshape the international order in the light of the major global transformations currently underway. The development of the climate change regime presents the EU with both an opportunity and a threat, in as much as it may either accelerate Europe's decline as a foreign policy actor or, on the contrary, reinvigorate its diplomatic ambitions.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Diplomacy, Environment, and Industrial Policy