OTHER POST-KYOTO INITIATIVES
The Climate Dialogue at Pocantico
In 2004 and 2005, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change sponsored the Climate Dialogue at Pocantico, a series of four high-level meetings of twenty-five experts from governments, the business community, and civil society from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Malta, Mexico, Tuvalu, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Dialogue produced a report that presented elements and approaches that could serve as the basis for a long-term global effort to combat global climate change. These policy elements include establishing an aspirational long-term goal instead of negotiating a quantified target; setting shorter-term emission targets but allowing them to vary in form, stringency, and timing; using international emissions trading; regulating key industrial sectors using emissions caps, technology requirements, or “best practice” agreements; linking development goals to climate objectives; cooperating to develop new technologies and to deploy existing technologies in developing countries; and providing adaptation assistance to vulnerable countries. The report also recommends that nations participate in informal dialogues to build consensus.
Report of the Climate Dialogue at Pocantico
Global Leadership for Climate Action
The Global Leadership for Climate Action (GLCA) is a joint initiative of the United Nations Foundation and the Club of Madrid. It consists of 25 individuals from 20 countries, including six former heads of state, seven former heads of government, and 12 other leaders from government, business and civil society. In 2007, the GLCA issued a proposal for a post-2012 agreement on climate change. The proposal calls for a comprehensive agreement, to be negotiated under the auspices of the UNFCCC. Key elements of the proposed agreement include a world-wide commitment to reducing global emissions to 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2050; a commitment by industrialized nations to reduce their emissions by 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; a cap-and-trade system with provisions for international trading; investment in energy technology; and a climate fund to support mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.
"Framework for a Post-2012 Agreement on Climate Change" (.pdf)
The L20, which is sponsored by the Centre for Global Studies and the Centre for International Governance Innovation, is a project that explores how an international forum involving leaders from a limited group of countries can provide the means to reach agreement on otherwise intractable global problems. The L20 recently issued a report titled, “Breaking the Climate Change Deadlock: A Leaders Summit Grand Bargain”. The report argues that an issue as complex as global climate change is best addressed through negotiations between fourteen countries (an “L14”): the members of the G-8, plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, and one unspecified Islamic nation. The report presents a template for an agreement between such a group of countries. Major elements of this template include an ultimate goal of stabilizing atmospheric concentrations at 450-550 parts per million CO2; emissions caps for all nations, with developing countries’ commitments conditioned on achievement of benchmarks by industrialized countries; an international emissions trading system; consideration of taxing greenhouse gas emissions; annual investment of $10 billion in alternative energy technology research; licensing clean energy technologies to developing countries at a discount; creation of a global energy venture capital fund to commercialize clean energy technologies; and investment in specific existing low-carbon intensity technologies such as nuclear fuel and liquefied natural gas.
"Breaking the Climate Change Deadlock: A Leaders Summit Grand Bargain" (.pdf)
The 3C (Combat Climate Change) Initiative is a group of multinational corporations that have joined together in calling for an international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to acceptable levels and to ensure an affordable, reliable source of energy for the future. The 46 members of the group include, among others, Alcan, BP, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, CitiGroup, Dow Chemical, Enel, GE, Lufthansa, Siemens, and Vattenfall. The 3C Initiative issued its 2006 report “Combating Climate Change” that presents a potential framework for an international agreement on climate policy. The key elements of the framework include a global commitment to achieving an atmospheric concentration stabilization goal of 550 parts per million CO2-equivalent by 2100; binding national emissions caps that are allocated based on each country’s gross national product and per capita income; international emissions trading; and an “adaptive burden-sharing” framework in which emissions caps only become effective for developing countries after they reach a certain level of development.
"Curbing Climate Change: An Outline of a Framework Leading to a Low Carbon Emitting Society" (.pdf)
