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December 2010
"Towards a Breakthrough for Deadlocked Climate Change Negotiations"
Policy Brief
By Akihiro Sawa
With regard to developing a new international framework, developed countries should acknowledge how grave the consequences would be to easily give in to a Kyoto extension. Merely extending the Kyoto Protocol would surely delay mitigation actions on the part of developing countries and discourage the U.S. from making serious efforts to reduce its large energy consumption. In other words, no country should end up being a "climate-killer" in its attempts to avoid being called a "Kyoto-killer."
December 2008
"A Sectoral Approach as an Option for a Post-Kyoto Framework"
Discussion Paper
By Akihiro Sawa
This paper seeks to explore the potential of sectoral approaches as a post-Kyoto framework.
The shared understanding of sectoral approaches in the academic community can be outlined as follows:
- Sectoral approaches can potentially engage developing countries in mitigation actions, which would be an accomplishment unachieved by the Kyoto Protocol, and determine politically acceptable national targets anddomestic allowance allocations based on the analysis of reduction potentials from technological perspectives.
- Sectoral approaches are inherently at a disadvantage compared to the Kyoto-type top-down approach with flexibility mechanisms in terms of cost effectiveness and environmental effectiveness.
- Sectoral approach-based negotiations will be substantially complex, encompassing data collection issues and multiple sector-specific negotiation processes. Therefore, they are not cost-effective enough to constitute an international framework and can only be complementary or additional to the Protocol.
Given these drawbacks, this paper will propose the Policy-Based Sectoral Approach, under which sectoral approaches would be employed to establish national emission targets and governments would internationally pledge the implementation of policies and measures to achieve the targets.
