The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is a global, multi-disciplinary effort intended to help identify the key design elements of a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policy architecture for addressing the threat of climate change. It has commissioned leading scholars to examine a uniquely wide range of core issues that must be addressed if the world is to reach an effective agreement on a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol. The purpose of the project is not to become an advocate for any single policy but to present the best possible information and analysis on the full range of options concerning mitigation, adaptation, technology, and finance. The detailed findings of the Harvard Project are reported in this volume, which contains twenty-seven specially commissioned chapters. A companion volume summarizing the main findings of this research is published separately as Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Summary for Policymakers.

"This book is a valuable tool for the negotiations." - Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark and President of the 15th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change "The world desperately needs a global climate change agreement, and this impressive collection of scholarly work highlights the essential challenges facing global leaders, and outlines possible paths to reach such an agreement." - Eileen Claussen, President, Pew Center on Global Climate Change Most agree that scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policies are vital to address global climate change. The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements seeks to identify key design elements of such climate change policies. The project draws upon leading thinkers from academia, private industry, government, and non-governmental organizations from around the world to construct a small set of promising policy frameworks and then disseminate and discuss the design elements and frameworks with decision-makers. The purpose of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is not to become an advocate for any single policy but rather to present the best possible information and analysis. Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Summary for Policymakers provides a thorough overview of this important project and points the way forward through the full range of options concerning mitigation, adaptation, technology, and finance.

With increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we are embarked on an unprecedented experiment with an uncertain outcome for the future of the planet. The Kyoto Protocol serves as an initial step through 2012 to mitigate the threats posed by global climate change. A second step is needed, and policy-makers, scholars, business people, and environmentalists have begun debating the structure of the successor to the Kyoto agreement. Written by a team of leading scholars in economics, law, and international relations, this book contributes to this debate by examining the merits of six alternative international architectures for global climate policy. Architectures for Agreement offers the reader a uniquely wide-ranging menu of options for post-Kyoto climate policy, with a concern throughout to learn from past experience in order to maximize opportunities for future success in the real, 'second-best' world. It will be an essential reference for scholars, policy-makers, and students interested in climate policy.

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is a global, multi-disciplinary effort intended to help identify the key design elements of a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policy architecture for addressing the threat of climate change. It has commissioned leading scholars to examine a uniquely wide range of core issues that must be addressed if the world is to reach an effective agreement on a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol. The purpose of the project is not to become an advocate for any single policy but to present the best possible information and analysis on the full range of options concerning mitigation, adaptation, technology, and finance. The detailed findings of the Harvard Project are reported in this volume, which contains twenty-seven specially commissioned chapters. A companion volume summarizing the main findings of this research is published separately as Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Summary for Policymakers.

With increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we are embarked on an unprecedented experiment with an uncertain outcome for the future of the planet. The Kyoto Protocol serves as an initial step through 2012 to mitigate the threats posed by global climate change. A second step is needed, and policy-makers, scholars, business people, and environmentalists have begun debating the structure of the successor to the Kyoto agreement. Written by a team of leading scholars in economics, law, and international relations, this book contributes to this debate by examining the merits of six alternative international architectures for global climate policy. Architectures for Agreement offers the reader a uniquely wide-ranging menu of options for post-Kyoto climate policy, with a concern throughout to learn from past experience in order to maximize opportunities for future success in the real, 'second-best' world. It will be an essential reference for scholars, policy-makers, and students interested in climate policy.

Risk Regulation Lesson from Mad Cows analyses and compares the policy responses in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the United States (U.S.) to the mad cow disease crisis. Although there was not nearly as many deaths related to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) as scientist had predicted, the U.K. mad cow experience is widely regarded as a major policy debacle. The authors review the policy failures in the U.K., and also explain why the absence of comparable crisis in the U.S. does not signal that the mad cow experience has been a U.S. policy success story. This monograph draws a number of lessons from the mad cow experience regarding how one should regulate invasive species risks and deal with dimly understood but potentially serious risks to large populations. Risk Regulations Lesson from Mad Cows is organized as follows. After a brief Introduction, Section 2 examines the nature of risks to animals and humans from BSE and vCJD. Section 3 presents a mainstream public policy framework to evaluate the welfare consequences of BSE and vCJD risk mitigation instruments. Section 4 examines how other governments have conceptualized the risks for policy purposes. After providing a chronology of the policy events and policy actions in Section 5, the authors examine issues pertaining to media coverage and risk communication in Section 6. Consumer responses to the informational environment are reviewed in Section 7, and governments' use of trade policy in Section 8. A controversial effort by one beef producer to have its beef certified as being BSE-free brings together a wide set of cross-cutting issues of risk communication, government regulation, litigation, and international trade, and will serve as the main policy case study in Section 9. Lastly, in Section 10 the authors conclude with a review of general lessons for regulatory policy learned from the crisis.