Although developing countries face a drastic increase in their greenhouse gas emissions, mitigation actions against climate change do not rank high among their priorities. The obvious reason lies in the necessity for them to continue the development process, which is characterised by pressing...

The European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS) is a landmark environmental policy, representing the world’s first large-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) trading program. The coexistence of state actors and top-down processes with stakeholders participation and flexible abatement strategies make...

The present stalemate in climate negotiations has led policy analysts and economists to explore the possible emergence of alternative climate regimes. This paper explores the idea of replacing international cooperation on greenhouse gas emission control with international cooperation on...

Agricultural and forestry activities cover the majority of the EU territory: in particular agriculture is the main lad use type, accounting for more than 41% of the land use in the EU15, while in the new Member States this share ranges between 30 and 60 %, whereas forestry is the second. The...

Within the political, scientific and economic debate on climate change, the process of evaluating climate policies ex-ante, during and/or ex-post their lifetime, is receiving increasing attention from international institutions and organisations. The task becomes particularly challenging when...

This paper analyses whether different emissions trading regimes provide different incentives to participate in a cooperative climate agreement. Different incentive structures are discussed for those countries, namely the US, Russia and China, that are most important in the climate negotiation...

No international regime on climate change is going to be fully effective in controlling GHG emissions without the involvement of countries such as China, India, the United States, Australia, and possibly other developing countries. This highlights an unambiguous weakness of the Kyoto Protocol,...

The Russian Federation played a crucial role in the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, after the US decision not to comply with the treaty, its ratification turned out to be indispensable for the Protocol to become legally binding. In early 2002, the Russian government decided to...

This paper provides an initial analysis of the EU ETS based on the installation-level data for verified emissions and allowance allocations in the first trading year. Those data, released on May 15, 2006, and subsequent updates revealed that CO2 emissions were about 4% lower than the allocated...

The recent events that followed the US decision not to comply with the Kyoto Protocol seem to drastically undermine the effectiveness of the Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. Therefore, it is important to explore whether there are economic factors and policy strategies that might help the...