Mitigating Failed Attempts at Mitigation: Using Unilateral Consumption-Based Measures to Remedy the UNFCCC/Kyoto System’s Failure to Stabilise Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions

27 Pages Posted: 28 Nov 2011 Last revised: 29 Oct 2013

See all articles by Julian Wyatt

Julian Wyatt

University of Geneva - Faculty of Law

Date Written: November 27, 2011

Abstract

International climate change mitigation efforts have reached an impasse and global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. If the international community is to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change, it must explore new, novel policy options aimed at climate change mitigation.

This paper attempts to uncover a somewhat different but nonetheless effective means to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions through a genealogical method. An exploration of the origins of the present climate change mitigation impasse revealed several important structural defects in the UNFCCC/Kyoto regime that distinguish it from analogous international environmental law regimes and have rendered it largely ineffective for achieving mitigation in light of momentous recent changes to the structure of the global economy. The UNFCCC / Kyoto system, unlike the anterior Vienna Convention / Montreal Protocol system for the protection of the ozone layer, for example, requires volume-based reductions from only developed country parties and, most crucially, relies exclusively on production-based measures.

Greenhouse gas consumption-based measures, which also address the greenhouse gases emitted elsewhere but effectively imported into a country as part of the product in which they are invisibly embedded, present an opportunity to overcome the limitations of the production-based developed country only UNFCCC/Kyoto regime and thereby to make a meaningful contribution to global climate change mitigation. Moreover, by leveraging off developed countries relatively larger shares of world consumption, consumption-based measures offer UNFCCC Annex I countries keen to act on global climate change a greater global climate change impact through unilateral regulation than their increasingly futile production-based internal measures.

GHG consumption-based proposals may encounter some administrative, economic, political and legal obstacles, but broadly-speaking, it would seem that a State wishing to introduce such measures would be able to address most of the administrative and economic concerns by carefully designing a manageable, suitable and economically appropriate policy. While no panacea to the complex climate change mitigation problem, such policies may yet provide new and desperately-needed impetus in the global effort to stabilise and ultimately reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Keywords: climate change, international environmental law, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, Copenhagen Accord, ozone layer protection, Montreal Protocol, carbon leakage, manufacturing, consumption-based policy, consumption taxes

Suggested Citation

Wyatt, Julian, Mitigating Failed Attempts at Mitigation: Using Unilateral Consumption-Based Measures to Remedy the UNFCCC/Kyoto System’s Failure to Stabilise Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions (November 27, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1965249 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1965249

Julian Wyatt (Contact Author)

University of Geneva - Faculty of Law ( email )

Geneva
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://www.julianwyatt.com

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