Climate Change Policy-making

Developing an acceptable global policy on climate change has been an elusive task, despite recent progress that has brought consensus among all countries except the US. Sandalow and Bowles (2001) provide an overview of the treaty-making process and its challenges. The following is a summary of their overview article.

There are numerous difficulties in creating consensus policy in the global community:

1. The time scale of climate change is long (50-100 years) compared with scales of political and economic change (2-4 years)
2. Energy and transportation sectors are the largest contributors to greenhouse gases, and countries who are big emitters are so because they have large investments in these sectors. Making changes in these sectors can be very costly and disruptive.
3. Different political and economic cultures in different countries make it difficult to develop uniformly accepted strategies for mitigation.
4. The large discrepancy in greenhouse gas emissions between industrialized countries and developing countries creates difficulties in defining responsibilities for mitigation.

A successful treaty on climate change should:

1. Create strong incentives ot begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions
2. Provide a framework for international cooperation that is cost effective.
3. Allow flexibility for other options as international consensus is built over years or perhaps decades.

The elements of a climate change treaty include the following:

1. Emissions targets
2. Legally binding commitments
3. Consideration of all greenhouse gases
4. Multi-year compliance periods
5. Emissions trading between parties
6. Sequestration
7. Incentives for developing countries

Reference

D. B. Sandalow and I. A. Bowles, 2001: Fundamentals of treaty-making on climate change. Science 292, 1839-1840.