The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement : Design Options and Incentives to Increase Participation and Ambition

In 2011 in Durban, South Africa, Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to establish a process - the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action - to negotiate and agree by 2015 a global outcome with legal force that is to become operative by 2020 ('ADP Agreement'). Parties also agreed that the ADP Agreement is to have the broadest possible participation (membership) and to increase ambition by the Parties (emissions reduction activities). This working paper is based on a research report produce by the author in 2013 that synthesised extensive peer-reviewed and other research on actual and theoretical elements of climate and environmental agreements and applied the findings to create a high-level best-practice framework of elements for consideration in the 2015 ADP Agreement. The paper: (1) Demonstrates how the the ADP Agreement design, character and content (paths of evolution, climate effectiveness, attributes) will fundamentally influence the outcome of future negotiations and the likelihood of success;(2) Identifies the drivers that will influence the success of climate change negotiations, the ability to reach meaningful agreement on model design and efforts to increase participation and ambition, regardless of the eventual outcome; (3) Analyses in detail a range of model options, including possible form, character and design elements and shows how the various permutations will have differing impact on participation and ambition; (4) Describes incentives to increase and maximize the possibility of universal participation (financial and technological support, low costs, penalties) without which meaningful global action on climate change could be stifled; and(5) Describes incentives to increase ambition (early action rewards, allocation rules, access to carbon markets) that are necessary to accelerate the decline of global emissions as required by science to avoid dangerous climate change. The working paper seeks to inform academics, negotiators and decision-makers in domestic and international public, private and third sectors