The adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997 was a major achievement in the endeavour to tackle the problem of global climate change at the dawn of the 21st century. After many years of involvement in the negotiation process, the book's two internationally recognised authors now offer the international community a first hand and inside perspective of the debate on the Kyoto Protocol. The book provides a comprehensive scholarly analysis of the history and content of the Protocol itself as well as of the economic, political and legal implications of its implementation. It also presents a perspective for the further development of the climate regime. These important features make this book an indispensable working tool for policy makers, negotiators, academics and all those actively involved and interested in climate change issues in both the developed and developing world.

Even as the evidence of global warming mounts, the international response to this serious threat is coming unraveled. The United States has formally withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol; other key nations are facing difficulty in meeting their Kyoto commitments; and developing countries face no limit on their emissions of the gases that cause global warming. In this clear and cogent book-reissued in paperback with an afterword that comments on recent events--David Victor explains why the Kyoto Protocol was never likely to become an effective legal instrument. He explores how its collapse offers opportunities to establish a more realistic alternative. Global warming continues to dominate environmental news as legislatures worldwide grapple with the process of ratification of the December 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The collapse of the November 2000 conference at the Hague showed clearly how difficult it will be to bring the Kyoto treaty into force. Yet most politicians, policymakers, and analysts hailed it as a vital first step in slowing greenhouse warming. David Victor was not among them. Kyoto's fatal flaw, Victor argues, is that it can work only if emissions trading works. The Protocol requires industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to specific targets. Crucially, the Protocol also provides for so-called "emissions trading," whereby nations could offset the need for rapid cuts in their own emissions by buying emissions credits from other countries. But starting this trading system would require creating emission permits worth two trillion dollars--the largest single invention of assets by voluntary international treaty in world history. Even if it were politically possible to distribute such astronomical sums, the Protocol does not provide for adequate monitoring and enforcement of these new property rights. Nor does it offer an achievable plan for allocating new permits, which would be essential if the system were expanded to include developing countries. The collapse of the Kyoto Protocol--which Victor views as inevitable--will provide the political space to rethink strategy. Better alternatives would focus on policies that control emissions, such as emission taxes. Though economically sensible, however, a pure tax approach is impossible to monitor in practice. Thus, the author proposes a hybrid in which governments set targets for both emission quantities and tax levels. This offers the important advantages of both emission trading and taxes without the debilitating drawbacks of each. Individuals at all levels of environmental science, economics, public policy, and politics-from students to professionals--and anyone else hoping to participate in the debate over how to slow global warming will want to read this book.

Carbon Politics and the Failure of Kyoto charts the framework and political evolution of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and examines the ensuing failure of the international community to adequately address climate change. The focus is not on the science or consequences of climate change but on the political gamesmanship of the major players throughout the UNFCCC negotiation process. More than an updated history of the subject matter, this book provides a detailed study of the carbon targets which became the biggest influencing factor on the reaction of nations to Kyoto’s binding agreements. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the leading nations’ motives, including the US, China and Germany, in entering the negotiations, in particular, their economic interests. Despite the effort to combat climate change in politics that the negotiations represent, the book concludes that an agreement which requires almost 200 very different nations to agree on a single protocol is doomed to failure. The book offers a novel contribution to our understanding of this failure and suggests alternative frameworks and policies to tackle what is arguably the most complex political issue of our time.

The Kyoto Protocol became law in February 2005--eight years after its conception as a framework for reducing emissions and a full four years after the United States abandoned it. But while President George W. Bush embarrassed much of the scientific community by challenging the veracity of the greenhouse effect, and thus the impetus for Kyoto, officials elsewhere expressed far different concerns. Reading the Kyoto Protocol explores their qualms and objections to everything from Kyoto's controversial policies on emissions trading to the question of a "post-Kyoto era." Contributors include internationally known philosophers, researchers, and environmentalists.

A concise and authoritative guide to the evolution, terms and implications of the Kyoto Protocol, this book provides an economic and political account of key policy debates and their outcome. It also explains the meaning of provisions on emissions trading and other flexibility mechanisms, and provides a quantitative analysis using the emissions trading model devised by the RIIA's Energy and Environmental Programme.

The participation of the European Community and the Member States in the international climate change regimes is a complex issue. In the case of the Kyoto Protocol, this is rendered more complicated by the fact that for the purposes of Article 4 of the Kyoto Protocol, the membership of the European Community and Member States is frozen at a particular point in time. The result of this is that under International Law the European Community and a part of the Member States (EU15) have agreed to jointly fulfil some of those obligations whereas under Community Law all Member States share a certain degree of responsibility to meet the obligations created by the Kyoto Protocol. This book analyses in great detail the Kyoto Protocol and its obligations, as well as the discrepancies between International Law and Community Law in that regard. The book is a useful tool for academics, practitioners, consultants and all stakeholders operating in the field of environmental law and climate change. Leonardo Massai is a legal expert and lecturer in International and EU Environmental Law and Climate Change.

I had the pleasure of participating at the two conferences which form the basis of this book: as a chairman at the 2007 The Hague Conference 'Tackling Climate Change - An appraisal of the Kyoto Protocol and options for the future' and as a speaker at the 2006 Siena Conference' The Kyoto Protocol and beyond: a legal perspective'. I would like to thank my colleagues Wybe Douma, Leonardo Massai and Massimiliano Montini for those opportunities, and although I was, unfortu nately, unable to contribute a paper to this book due to time constraints, I am glad to be able to say a few words on the issue by means of this foreword. The timing of the two conferences was well chosen: the period between the Siena Conference (June 2006) and The Hague Conference (March 2007) encapsu lated perfectly the period of the drafting, the presentation and the approval of the 'Integrated Energy and Climate Change Package', as presented by the European th Commission on the 10 of January 2007 and as approved by the Spring European th th Council of the 8 and 9 of March 2007. The importance of the Commission's package and the Council's conclusions must be strongly emphasized. They set, at the EU level, legally binding targets regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas of energy, and biofuels.

The first protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in Kyoto in 1997 and entered into force in February 2005. It is a unique international law instrument which sets legally binding targets for the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. The targets are unprecedented in an environmental agreement and will involve substantial financial commitment in virtually all industrialized country parties to the protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is also the first international agreement to include economic instruments which are designed to involve private sector entities and assist parties to meet their targets. These economic instruments, known as the Kyoto or flexible mechanisms, are Joint Implementation (JI), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and International Emissions Trading. The Kyoto Protocol defined these mechanisms but did not set out the details necessary for their operation. After protracted negotiations, detailed rules were finalized at the Seventh Session of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties held in Marrakech in 2001. The Marrakech Accords run to almost 250 pages but still leave many important practical issues unaddressed. As the 2008-2012 commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol draws close more and more projects under CDM and JI are being developed to take advantage of the Kyoto mechanisms and the key issues and problems are now becoming more apparent. Drawing on the emerging bodyof expertise in this complex area, this book conveys a knowledge of what is becoming known as 'Carbon Finance'. It thereby aims to contribute to the development of the market for carbon emission reductions - one of the objectives of the Kyoto mechanisms.

Hearing held on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which the administration agreed to legally binding obligations to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 7% below 1990 levels during the years 2008 to 2011. Witnesses: Sen. Daniel Akaka, Evan Bayh, Jeff Bingaman, Jim Bunning, Conrad Burns, Larry Craig, Peter Fitzgerald, Bob Graham, Chuck Hagel, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Frank Murkowski, & Craig Thomas; Jay Hakes, Admin., U.S. Energy Info. Admin.; Mary Novak, Energy Service, WEFA, Inc., Burlington, MA; Cecil Roberts, United Mine Workers of America; Margo Thorning, Amer. Council for Capital Formation; & Janet Yellen, Council of Economic Advisers.

Crucial Issues in Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol: Asia and the World focuses on responses to climate change in the world''s most populous region. This book provides the most comprehensive insight to the climate change discourse within Asia to date by drawing on the diverse disciplines and experience of legal practitioners, climate change consultants, government officials and academics. Individual chapters address issues such as how the various Asian countries OCo highly disparate in their cultures, socio-economic conditions and political systems OCo are responding to climate change, the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change, and the effective implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in Asia. Sample Chapter(s). Foreword (37 KB). Chapter 1: Climate Disruption: Remaking the Agenda of Meas in Asia and the World (138 KB). Contents: Setting the Stage: Climate Disruption: Remaking the Agenda of MEAs in Asia and the World (N A Robinson); Reframing Global Warming: Toward a Strategic National Planning Framework (S V Valentine); Climate Change OCo Living in the Anthropocene (J Obbard); Clean Development Mechanism (CDM): An Overview of the Clean Development Mechanism in Southeast Asia (J Lin); CDM in China (X Yang & X Wang); Empirial Considerations in the Development of CDM Projects in Asia (W I Y Byun & F H C Chan); Making Markets Work OCo A Review of CDM Performance and the Need for Reform (C Streck & J Lin); Emissions Trading in the European Union and Asia: Regional Framework: The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme OCo Past, Present and Future (K Deketelaere & M Schurmans); Trends in Carbon Trading: Practical Lessons (A Beatty & E Williams); Effective Implementation of the Kyoto in Asia: Singapore''s National Climate Change Strategy (K Suresh); Japan: Achieving Its Kyoto Target (H Isozaki); Compliance Under the Kyoto Protocol and Its Implications for the Asian Region (M S Manguiat); Climate Change as a Threat to Peace & Security: Glacial Melting & Human Security in the Himalayas (K Khoday); The Kyoto Protocol and Beyond: A South Asian Perspective (A Gunawansa); Beyond Kyoto: Climate Change Including a Discussion of the AP6 Initiative from the Australian Perspective (M I Jeffery); Protecting Forests to Mitigate Global Climate Change (C streck). Readership: Environmental lawyers, policy makers, practitioners in CDM, tertiary students in environmental sciences.