Frequently presented as a historic last chance to set the world on a course to prevent catastrophic climate change, the 21st Conference of the Parties to the Climate convention (COP21) was a global summit of exceptional proportions. Bringing together negotiators, scientists, journalists and representatives of global civil society, it also constituted a privileged vantage point for the study of global environmental governance "in the making". This volume offers readers an original account of the current state of play in the field of global climate governance. Building upon a collaborative research project on COP21 carried out by a multidisciplinary team of twenty academics with recognised experience in the field of environmental governance, the book takes COP21 as an entry point to analyse ongoing transformations of global climate politics, and to scrutinise the impact of climate change on global debates more generally. The book has three key objectives: To analyse global climate governance through a combination of long-term analysis and on-sight observation; To identify and analyse the key spaces of participation in the global climate debate; To examine the "climatisation" of a series of crosscutting themes, including development, energy, security and migration. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers of climate politics and governance, international relations and environmental studies.

The Kyoto Protocol capped the emissions of the main emitters, the industrialized countries, one by one. It also created an innovative financial mechanism, the Carbon Market and its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows developing nations to receive carbon credits when they reduce their emissions below their baselines. The carbon market, an economic system that created a price for carbon for the first time, is now used in four continents, is promoted by the World Bank, and is recommended even by leading oil and gas companies. However, one critical problem for the future of the Kyoto Protocol is the continuing impasse between the rich and the poor nations.Who should reduce emissions — the rich or the poor countries?This book is about the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or COP21, held from 30 November to 11 December 2015 in Paris, which brought together around 40,000 participants in total — with delegates representing each country, observers, and civil society members. It is one of the largest climate conferences ever organized. Co-written by Graciela Chichilnisky, who proposed and designed the carbon credit emissions trading market, this book is a must read for academics and professionals studying, implementing and analyzing global climate change policies; interested advance undergraduates and postgraduates interested in the follow up of the Kyoto Protocol and UNFCCC 1992 founding.

In December 2015, 196 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement, seen as a decisive landmark for global action to stop human- induced climate change. The Paris Agreement will replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2020, and it creates legally binding obligations on the parties, based on their own bottom-up voluntary commitments to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The codification of the climate change regime has advanced well, but the implementation of it remains uncertain. This book focuses on the implementation prospects of the Agreement, which is a challenge for all and will require a fully comprehensive burden- sharing framework. Parties need to meet their own NDCs, but also to finance and transfer technology to others who do not have enough. How equity- based and facilitative the process will be, is of crucial importance. The volume examines a broad range of issues including the lessons that can be learnt from the implementation of previous environmental legal regimes, climate policies at national and sub-national levels and whether the implementation mechanisms in the Paris Agreement are likely to be sufficient. Written by leading experts and practitioners, the book diagnoses the gaps and lays the ground for future exploration of implementation options. This collection will be of interest to policy-makers, academics, practitioners, students and researchers focusing on climate change governance.

Increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG) have exacerbated the effects of climate change and led a steady rise in the average global temperature and intensified weather events. Countries sought to outline an aggressive agenda for combating climate change at the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris last year. In order to reach a common goal, countries released national action plans, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) for reducing GHG and especially CO2 emissions. However, a source of contention is the effect that limiting emissions might have on economic growth. In the context of the recently completed COP21, this paper examines the relationship between the stringency of climate policy implemented prior to 2015 and economic growth. Because INDCs were only introduced in the lead up to COP 21, this paper instead uses the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) to measure the stringency of countries’ climate policies from 2010 through 2014. My results show that an increase in the CCPI percentile score is associated with a small rise in a country’s GDP. Additionally, this analysis indicates that countries may experience higher increases in GDP for an improved CCPI ranking, depending on the country’s level of development. Therefore, my paper provides some suggestive evidence that countries may be able to implement increasingly stricter climate policies without hampering their economic growth.

"The Fight for Climate after COVID-19 draws on the troubled and uneven COVID-19 experience to illustrate the critical need to ramp up resilience rapidly and effectively on a global scale. After years of working alongside public health and resilience experts crafting policy to build both pandemic and climate change preparedness, Alice C. Hill exposes parallels between the underutilized measures that governments should have taken to contain the spread of COVID-19 -- such as early action, cross-border planning, and bolstering emergency preparation -- and the steps leaders can take now to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Through practical analyses of current policy and thoughtful guidance for successful climate adaptation, The Fight for Climate after COVID-19 reveals that, just as our society has transformed itself to meet the challenge of coronavirus, so too will we need to adapt our thinking and our policies to combat the ever-increasing threat of climate change." --

This handbook provides an overview of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as of August 2006. It focuses on the institutional framework of the Convention and the actions taken by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention.

This book is written by experts from Institute of Urban and Environmental Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and National Climate Center, this book provides an overview of China’s effort to implement the Paris Agreement. In addition to measures put in place to reduce runoff in cities, improve flood risk management, promote decarbonization, and combat desertification, the book also addresses issues such as scientific assessment in relation to climate change, the implications of US domestic climate politics for China-US relations, and China’s emerging leadership role in the post-Paris age. The volume is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand how China’s aggressive climate adaptation policies help shape the country’s growing weight in global climate governance.