Issues, obstacles and outlook for the Copenhagen international climate change negotiation

Written on an occasional basis by CIGI’s research The climate change negotiation currently underway and set to conclude in fellows and staff, the goal of this Copenhagen late in 2009 marks the continuation of a change in the global series is to inform and enhance debate landscape in terms of trade, politics and the entire international system that among policy makers and scholars on began with the [...] Though a critical component of the negotiation, this bedrock principle still remains without a firm and accepted interpretation despite the fact that only a few months remain before the scheduled conclusion of the negotiation in Copenhagen, thus creating a schism between developed and developing countries over the question of who is responsible for what level of action on climate change. [...] Emissions levels on a per country basis (also referred to as a level basis in the negotiation and literature) are the easiest to relate to the levels of emissions in the atmosphere. [...] The involvement of the larger developing countries in the Copenhagen negotiation potentially hangs in the balance – an unfortunate situation considering that China’s emissions are roughly on the same level (on a per country basis) as those of the United States, making them the two highest emitting countries in the world. [...] No method of measuring carbon ISSN 1915-822X (Online) emissions perfectly on a wide scale yet exists, and this is a complicating factor for several issues in the negotiation, particularly metrics, enforcement The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Centre for mechanisms and issues of finance.