Climate Change Negotiations

As the Kyoto Protocol limps along without participation of the US and Australia, ongoing climate negotiations are plagued by competing national and business interests that are creating stumbling blocks to success. This book approaches these blocks from five professional perspectives: a top policy-maker, a senior negotiator, a leading scientist, an international lawyer, and a sociologist who is observing the process.

The authors identify the major problems, including great power strategies (the EU, the US and Russia), leadership, the role of NGOs, capacity- and knowledge-building, airline industry emissions, insurance and risk transfer instruments, problems of cost benefit analysis, the IPCC in the post-Kyoto situation, and verification and institutional design. They also identify and assess facilitation strategies to keep climate discussions moving towards international agreement and long-term success.

Introduction.

Part 1: Professional Perspective. The Politician . The Negotiator. The Scientist in the Process. The International Lawyer. The Observing Sociologist.

Part 2: Stumbling Blocks. The US and EU. Between Two Giants: Russian Climate Policy and Negotiation. Can Leadership Contribute to Moving the Climate Negotiations Forward? NGO Participation in Global Climate Change Decision-Making Process. Institutional Capacity for Facilitating Climate Change Negotiations. Addressing the Global Warming Effect of the Airline Industry. Ensuring Integrity in the Climate Change Regime: The Role of Verification. LULUCF and Climate Change: A Field for Battles? Problems of Cost Benefit Assessments. Equity Insurance and Other Risk-Transfer Instruments for Extreme Weather Events. Overcoming Stumbling Blocks: Can the IPCC Deliver? Developing a Tool Kit for International Environmental Law-Making.

Conclusion: Approaches to Facilitation.

Gunnar Sjöstedt is Director of Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, associate professor of political science at the University of Stockholm, and a member of the steering committee of the Processes of International Negotiations Program at IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis). He has studied the OECD as a communication system and the external role of the European community, as well as the transformation of the international trade regime incorporated in GATT and its external relations. He has published extensively on international negotiation on environmental and economic affairs and has studied the non-military power relations in the world.

Ariel Macaspac Penetrante is a research fellow in the Institute for Infrastructure and Resources Management at the University of Leipzig in Germany.