Carmen Bunzl - Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Chapter 2. Options for future climate change architectures 52
2.1.2 Description of approaches to future commitments
In this section is focused on approaches that set national emission targets
which can be used together with international emission trading. The
approaches that better cover the broad range of options proposed to date have
been selected: Multistage approach, Contraction and Convergence, Common
but Differentiated Convergence, Global Tryptich and the Brazilian Proposal.
These are going to be described in detail, including the three major elements
for designing an international regime for mitigation of climate change
introduced above (Section 1.1): (1) participation, (2) sharing emission
allowances and (3) type of commitment. These elements mainly refer to
mitigation actions; as we have said before, adaptation will not be further
considered her. The other elements mentioned, technology and financing, will
only be seen as part of some of these approaches.
An important issue in international climate negotiations is countries’
positions and what commitments they are ready to take in. Together with the
description of the different approaches, its implications for countries and
countries’ perceived positions – these do not represent official country positions
unless indicated otherwise – are going to be described. The following indicators
(Blok et al. 2005) are used to summarize the assessment:
‘+’: Might be willing to support the approach
‘0’: Unclear whether the country would support or not the approach
‘-‘: Unlikely to support the approach
Some general strengths and weaknesses of each approach are also discussed
as an introduction for their criterion based assessment in the following section.
2.1.2.1 Multistage approach
Description
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería ICAI Carmen Bunzl Boulet Junio 2008