Robert Stavins (right) and Joseph Aldy, co-directors of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, discuss project goals at the March workshop.
Susan Lynch
"Workshop Ponders Post-Kyoto: What Next?"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Summer 2008
With the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period expiring in 2012, the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements hosted a workshop of leading thinkers in March to help determine what comes next.
The workshop brought together key scholars and other thinkers working on international climate change policy from a variety of disciplines, including economics, political science, and law. Together, they addressed issues such as how to persuade developing countries —among them China and India —to sign on to an international agreement, how to link climate policy with international trade, and how to effectively address deforestation, which accounts for 20 percent of global emissions.
The workshop is part of a larger effort by the Harvard Project to draw on the ideas of key stakeholders — including academics, business, government and NGOs— to help inform global climate policy architecture.
One of the project's key goals is to persuade the countries around the world to not only look at ideas similar to the Kyoto Protocol, but also to look at ideas very different in structure. Key ideas range from indexing emissions targets to economic growth to "bottom-up" approaches such as linking together the actions of a number of countries.
"At the end of two years, if we help countries of the world be open to better, more progressive policy approaches, we will have succeeded," said Kennedy School Professor Robert N. Stavins, co-director of the Harvard Project with Resources for the Future Fellow Joseph Aldy.
The project's research agenda closely parallels the "Bali roadmap," laying out a two-year plan toward reaching an agreement in 2009, and calling for long-term efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase transfer of clean energy technologies, and address deforestation.
—From Harvard Gazette, March 20, 2008
For Academic Citation:
Communications Office. "Workshop Ponders Post-Kyoto: What Next?." Cambridge, Mass.: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Belfer Center Newsletter (Summer 2008).
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