Title: From burden-sharing to opportunity-sharing: unlocking the deadlock of climate change negotiation
Abstract: Since traditional fossil fuel-based economic growth is coupled with carbon emissions, mitigation is regarded as a burden on economic growth in conventional thinking about climate change. The scarcity of emission budget as well as the global public goods interpretation of climate changes has led climate change negotiations into a burden-sharing deadlock. However, some recent economics studies have shed some lights that mitigation could actually promote local economic growth opportunities; consequently increasing incentives for unilateral mitigation actions. The objective of this paper is to highlight the implications of these studies for the strategies of unlocking the climate negotiations deadlock. Following an explanation of how climate change negotiations have led to a burden-sharing game and have become a deadlock, we show that emerging literature on green growth has provided some new ways of thinking which suggest how mitigation could promote local economic growth. One policy implication of the emerging literature is that we need to change our mindset in climate change negotiation - from burden sharing to opportunity sharing, in order to move forward on climate action. We should therefore put green growth at the heart of post 2020 climate change regime. A new two-track approach is discussed for achieving the transformation.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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