Designing the Post-Kyoto climate regime: lessons from the Harvard project on international climate agreements
A way forward is needed for the post-2012 period to address the threat of global climate change. The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is an international, multi-year, multi-disciplinary effort to help identify the key design elements of a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policy architecture. The Project includes 28 research teams operating in Europe, the United States, China, India, Japan, and Australia. The work of the Project is being carried out in three stages. The first stage featured meetings with key domestic and international policy constituencies to discuss considerations regarding potential successors to Kyoto. The second stage focused on policy analysis and economic modeling to develop a small set of promising policy frameworks and key design elements. In the third stage, Project researchers are exploring key design principles and alternative international policy architectures with domestic and international audiences, including the new administration and Congress in the United States. This interim report identifies some of the key principles, promising policy architectures, and guidelines for essential design elements that have begun to emerge, building upon lessons learned from the 28 research initiatives.