This volume represents a contribution to the growing literature on international and comparative climate change policy. The product of a research project of the International Bar Association Section on Energy and Natural Resources Law (SERL), it brings together leading academic lawyers from around the world, who provide detailed perspectives on what individual countries are doing (or, in some cases, not doing) to address the climate change problem. The book illustrates the range of national actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including incentives for renewable energy sources, forestry activities, voluntary agreements with industry, and emissions trading schemes. By including experts from both industrialized and developing countries, it also highlights the very differing perspectives that must be addressed in any international climate change regime, whether under Kyoto or a successor. These detailed case studies provide a rich array of material, which should be of significant interest not only to academic and business lawyers, but also to economists and energy experts, government officials, and NGOs.

The Section on Business Law of the International Bar Association is greatly indebted to the Editor, J. Michael Robinson and to John Gauntlett, the Chairman of the Committee on Issues and Trading in Securities, and his Vice Chairmen, Blaise Pasztory, Robert Briner and the members of the Committee who have contributed, for their joint efforts in preparing this ftrst book of their committee. It will make a valuable addition to the libraries of all practising lawyers because it has been written by practising lawyers, with the knowledge and experience of their own daily work and the understanding of what a practi tioner is looking for. I am confident that this book will prove of real assistance to practitioners world-wide, as have previous publications of other Committees of the Section on Business Law. I wish it great success. I hope that you may wish to join the Section on Business Law and thereby make contact and work with lawyers with similar interests in commercial law. WALTER OPPENHOF Chairman of the Section on Business Law XI Editor's Introduction I have great pleasure in presenting reports from fourteen countries. In the best tradition of many institutions of higher learning which trace their origins to some medieval ale house, this project has its genesis in a bar."