Carmen Bunzl - Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Chapter 3. Implications of future climate regime architectures 129
1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction
The Kyoto Protocol is only a first step towards reaching the ultimate
objective of the UNFCCC, “to achieve … stabilization of greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous
anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (UNFCCC 1992).
International negotiations on the future climate change regime have already
started, both under and outside the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. These
discussions need an analytical basis on the possible impacts that a future regime
design could have on countries.
In this Chapter, the implications that different future climate change regime
architectures will have on countries are assessed. Here, the focus is on regional
emission allocations and abatement costs at a global scale - other studies have
modeled emission allowances within groups of countries, e.g. within the EU
(which will be discussed in Chapter 4, in order to better assess these impacts on
Spain).
First, an overview of literature of different studies aiming at quantitatively
compare different future climate change architectures, is presented in Section
1.2, in order to choose the most comprehensive analysis.
Section 2 describes the global emission levels needed to reach stabilization of
greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. Three levels of ambition are explored –
stabilizing GHG concentrations at 450, 550 and 650 parts per million by volume
carbon dioxide equivalent (ppmv CO2eq.).
Section 3 provides required emission reductions for the different (groups of)
countries according to different approaches for the future climate regime
(Höhne et al., 2007). The approaches selected have all been previously
introduced in Chapter 2: Contraction an Convergence (Section 2.1.2.2),
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería ICAI Carmen Bunzl Boulet Junio 2008