Taking stock of progress under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)

The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was established in 1997 with the dual purposes of assisting non-Annex I Parties in achieving sustainable development and assisting Annex I Parties in achieving compliance with their quantified greenhouse gas (GHG) emission commitments. This paper looks at the achievements of the CDM to date in the context of wider private and public flows of investment into developing countries. Market demand for GHG credits from CDM projects comes from Annex I countries’ emission commitments. Annex I countries can meet those commitments by domestic as well as international emission mitigation activities, including the CDM. The CDM can be an attractive compliance option as it can help meet Annex I GHG commitments more cost-effectively through project-based activities that are consistent with host-countries’ sustainable development priorities. The extent of the demand for CDM credits depends on the stringency of emission commitments, the “gap” between countries’ emission commitments and actual emissions, and the relative use of CDM and other means of meeting emission commitment

Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes

DOI:10.1787/011766488208This global screening study makes a first estimate of the exposure of the world's large port cities to coastal flooding due to storm surge and damage due to high winds. This assessment also investigates how climate change is likely to impact each port city's exposure to coastal flooding by the 2070s, alongside subsidence and population growth and urbanisation. The study provides a much more comprehensive analysis than earlier assessments, focusing on the 136 port cities around the world that have more than one million inhabitants in 2005. The analysis demonstrates that a large number of people are already exposed to coastal flooding in large port cities. Across all cities, about 40 million people (0.6% of the global population or roughly 1 in 10 of the total port city population in the cities considered here) are exposed to a 1 in 100 year coastal flood event. For present-day conditions (2005), the top ten cities in terms of exposed population are estimated to be Mumbai, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Kolkata, Greater New York, Osaka-Kobe, Alexandria and New Orleans; almost equally split between developed and developing countries. When assets are considered, the current distribution becomes more heavily weighted towards developed countries, as the wealth of the cities becomes important. The top 10 cities in terms of assets exposed are Miami, Greater New York, New Orleans, Osaka-Kobe, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Nagoya, Tampa-St Petersburg and Virginia Beach. These cities contain 60% of the total exposure, but are from only three (wealthy) countries: USA, Japan and the Netherlands. The total value of assets exposed in 2005 is across all cities considered here is estimated to be US3,000 billion; corresponding to around 5% of global GDP in 2005 (both measured in international USD)... Available at : http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/ranking-port-cities-with-high-exposure-and-vulnerability-to-climate-extremes_01176648820

A research roadmap for quantifying non-state and subnational climate mitigation action

Non-state and subnational climate actors have become central to global climate change governance. Quantitatively assessing climate mitigation undertaken by these entities is critical to understand the credibility of this trend. In this Perspective, we make recommendations regarding five main areas of research and methodological development related to evaluating non-state and subnational climate actions: defining clear boundaries and terminology; use of common methodologies to aggregate and assess non-state and subnational contributions; systematically dealing with issues of overlap; estimating the likelihood of implementation; and addressing data gaps

Cities, climate change and multilevel governance

Cities represent a challenge and an opportunity for climate change policy. As the hubs of economic activity, cities generate the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions and are thus important to mitigation strategies. Urban planning will shape future trends and the concentration of population, socio-economic activity, poverty and infrastructure in urban areas translates into particular vulnerability to increased climate hazards. City governments and urban stakeholders will therefore be essential in the design and delivery of cost-effective adaptation policies. Further, by empowering local governments, national policies could leverage existing local experiments, accelerate policy responses, foster resource mobilization and engage local stakeholders. This paper presents a framework for multilevel governance, showing that advancing governance of climate change across all levels of government and relevant stakeholders is crucial to avoid policy gaps between local action plans and national policy frameworks (vertical integration) and to encourage crossscale learning between relevant departments or institutions in local and regional governments (horizontal dimension). Vertical and horizontal integration allows two-way benefits: locally-led or bottom-up where local initiatives influence national action and nationally-led or top-down where enabling frameworks empower local players. The most promising frameworks combine the two into hybrid models of policy dialogue where the lessons learnt are used to modify and fine-tune enabling frameworks and disseminated horizontally, achieving more efficient local implementation of climate strategies. Such integration generates benefits at all stages of the policy process. This includes agenda setting and strategic planning, to encourage political leadership and stakeholders\u27 support; policy formulation and approval to promote long-term vision and near term action; local implementation to overcome obstacles, build necessary capacity, and establish reliable financing for action; feedback and evaluation; and dissemination to promote information sharing and cross-scale learning. A review of current practices suggests the need for national governments to help create a sound institutional foundation and knowledge base to support decision making and action at local levels. This includes developing harmonized GHG inventory methods for local government use, boundary organisations to generate regional science-policy or economic-policy information, and developing strong urban climate policy networks. Making such tools available will help local governments to design, implement and refine policies to find cost-effective climate policy solutions and drive economic development in green sectors. It will also help national governments to deliver on ambitious climate policy goals in the coming decades. &nbsp

Understanding climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation at city scale: an introduction

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Coordination -> Special issue of Climatic Change 104(1) "Understanding climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation at city scale: an introduction"

Coordination -> Special issue of Climatic Change 104(1)Edito in : CLIMATIC CHANGE, Vol 104, Issue 1International audienc

Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change: A Literature Review

Climate change is expected to have significant implications for the world economy and, more broadly, for many areas of human activity. The purpose of this review is twofold. First, it is to summarise current estimates of the impacts of climate change and to explain how these estimates are built in order to identify the main sources of uncertainty and approximation affecting them. Second, the paper discusses how this uncertainty should influence policymaker?s decisions. A main conclusion of the review is that there are large uncertainties, which are not fully reflected in existing estimates of global impacts of climate change in monetary units. Nonetheless, despite these uncertainties, policy action may be justified, provided that policies are cost-effective, even if the marginal cost of GHG emissions mitigation exceeds the marginal damage of one additional ton of carbon. This is because two features of the impacts of climate change tilt the balance in favour of action: their irreversibility, and the risk that they are extreme. Évaluer les impacts du changement climatique : Une revue de la littérature Le changement climatique devrait avoir des conséquences importantes sur l'économie mondiale et, plus généralement, sur un large éventail d'activités humaines. L'objectif de cette revue est double. D?une part, il s'agit de résumer les estimations récentes des impacts du changement climatique et d'expliquer comment ces estimations sont obtenues afin d'identifier les principales sources d'incertitude et d'approximation qui les entourent. D'autre part, la façon dont cette incertitude devrait influencer les décisions des responsables politiques est discutée. L'une des conclusions principales de cette revue est qu'il existe un grand nombre d'incertitudes autour des impacts du changement climatique qui ne sont pas pleinement reflétées dans les estimations des impacts globaux exprimés en unité monétaire. Néanmoins, en dépit de ces incertitudes, une politique active pourrait être justifiée, à condition que ces politiques soient efficaces au regard des coûts, même si le coût marginal de réduction des émissions des gaz à effet de serres est supérieur au coût marginal d'une tonne additionnelle de carbone. Ce résultat provient de deux caractéristiques des impacts qui inclinent la balance en faveur de l'action : leur irréversibilité et le risque qu'ils soient extrêmes.uncertainty, climate change, impact, irreversibility, extreme events, irréversibilité, événements extrêmes, impact, changement climatique, incertitude

Global warming in the public sphere

Although the science of global warming has been in place for several decades if not more, only in the last decade and a half has the issue moved clearly into the public sphere as a public policy issue and a political priority. To understand how and why this has occurred, it is essential to consider the history of the scientific theory of the greenhouse effect, the evidence that supports it and the mechanisms through which science interacts with lay publics and other elite actors, such as politicians, policymakers and business decision makers. This article reviews why and how climate change has moved from the bottom to the top of the international political agenda. It traces the scientific discovery of global warming, political and institutional developments to manage it as well as other socially mediated pathways for understanding and promoting global warming as an issue in the public sphere. The article also places this historical overview of global warming as a public issue into a conceptual framework for understanding relationships between society and nature with emphasis on the co-construction of knowledge

The Economics of Climate Change Impacts and Policy Benefits at City Scale: A Conceptual Framework

International audienceToday the OECD is actively working with governments to highlight the role of cities to deliver cost-effective policy responses to climate change. A number of projects at the OECD are advancing the understanding of the roles that cities can play to respond to efficiently and effectively to climate change. This report is one in a series under the OECD Environment Directorate's project on Cities and Climate Change. The project aims to explore the city-scale risks of climate change and the local benefits of both adaptation policies and (global) mitigation strategies

The economics of climate change impacts and policy benefits at city scale: a conceptual framework

International audienceCities are particularly vulnerable to climate change and climate extremes in part because they concentrate many activities, people and wealth in limited areas. As a result they represent an important scale for assessment and understanding of climate change impacts. This paper provides a conceptual and methodological framework for urban economic impact assessment of climate change. The focus of the paper is on model-based analysis of future scenarios, including a framing of uncertainty for these projections, as one valuable input into the decision-making process. The paper highlights the main assessment difficulties, methods and tools, and selected examples across these areas. A number of challenges are unique to climate change impact assessment and others are unique to the problem of working at local scales. The paper also identifies the need for additional research, including the need for more integrated and systemic approaches to address climate change as a part of the urban development challenge as well as the need to assess the economic impacts of climate change and response policy at local scale