HOME / BLOG
Blog
Read the latest climate policy analysis and opinion pieces from the Climate Strategies network.
This blog includes posts previously published on the former joint Climate Strategies – Climate Policy Journal blog.
To tackle and build resilience to the ever-increasing impacts of the climate crisis, societies around the world are transitioning to become…
By Heiner von Lüpke Marking a watershed moment in the history of international climate policy, the Work Programme on Just Transition…
Three principles can help the EU close gaps in its net-zero plans, Karsten Neuhoff et al. argue in this blog post.
As the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) negotiations commenced at the UNFCCC Bonn Climate Conference today, we hear from our Programme…
For the second edition of our member spotlight, we spoke to Richard Mulwa about just transitions in Kenya.
In our Member Spotlight series, we are speaking to Climate Strategies members about their latest research. For the first edition, we chatted with Kateryna Holzer, Senior Researcher at the University of Eastern Finland.
Russia’s requests for climate cooperation should be met with scepticism, Anna Korppoo argues.
Read more about Climate Strategies Member Olga Chepelianskaia’s TEDx Rawatpur talk on Thriving Low Carbon Cities of the Future
Here’s what we learnt from our roundtable at the Bonn Climate Conference on new economic models to boost climate action.
To make coal phase-outs successful, a Just Transition must be a central element of government policy, global experts say.
Read this recap of our COP26 side event on global perspectives on just transition.
Michael Obersteiner looks back on the history of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
Hanna-Mari Ahonen and Kenneth Möllersten summarise key recommendations from the NET-RAPIDO project.
In this blog post, Anna Korppoo and Andrzej Błachowicz explain why Russia needs to get ready for the clean energy transition.
An essay by Jean-Charles Hourcade on the award of the IAEE Marcel Boiteux Prize to the book Plantary Economics.
Deforestation leakage occurs when measures to protect forests lead to a shift of deforestation to another region. What measures can help reduce this leakage?
One of the few legally binding obligations of the 2015 Paris Agreement is for countries to be transparent to each other about what…
To learn more about this topic, download this policy brief. The recently strengthened European greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in the…
The climate contribution is a weight-based charge on consumption of carbon-intensive materials sold for final use in Europe.
The United States is very focused on crisis management—that is crises that are dramatic and short in duration. With some pointed…
We are delighted to share this collection of editorials and reports on different Conference of the Parties (COPs) and Subsidiary Bodies…
The COVID-19 crisis has disrupted consumption, production and government policy-making. This post and the accompanying paper argue that, despite these challenges,…
How to engage people with climate change in times of COVID-19, economic distress and rising populism
At this moment, countries worldwide face three main crises: the COVID-19 pandemic, a looming economic crisis, and a liberal democracy crisis,…
Many countries and corporations are in the process of establishing net-zero GHG emission targets. One estimate suggests that such targets are…
Increasing discontent from many – embodied in the gilets jaunes protests in France and around the world – shows that the…
Carbon pricing is often hailed as the key policy response to address climate change. We question this view as it tends…
Carbon Contracts for Differences (CCFD) are one of the elements of the policy package developed by the Climate Friendly Materials Platform…
Climate change brings both challenges and opportunities for economic growth in oil producing countries, which are highly reliant on oil-export revenues….
COVID-19 has thrown the interconnected and complex systemic nature of our global society into stark relief. It has also sparked many…
Countries around the world are thinking about how to address the widespread repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic after the urgent and…
We know that climate change causes more extreme weather – such as longer and more frequent droughts and more powerful hurricanes…
With Covid-19 dominating the news, it’s easy to forget the greater threat posed by climate change. Whilst recent months have seen…
The Climate Strategies and Climate Policy Blog is full to the brim with blog posts providing important scientific insights on how…
Back in late March, when the corona crisis had finally forced us all from our offices and into our homes, Climate…
‘So what is your biggest concern going into Paris?’ Rolling Stone Magazine asked then US Secretary of State John Kerry in…
In one of the key scenes of the legendary film Casablanca (1942), Captain Louis Renault orders his police officers to “round…
By Andrzej Blachowicz and Julie-Anne Hogbin, Climate Strategies Since the idea of a Just Transition first emerged from the labour union…
After COP 21, with the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015, the outlook for carbon pricing policies has been…
I’m from Aotearoa, New Zealand, and I really love its land and people, but I am fully aware that from a…
Taking the Paris Agreement seriously, implies a coal phase-out for all industrialized countries by 2030. In our paper in Climate Policy…
In the mid- to late 2000s, the marine science and policy community was grappling with a newly recognized threat to the…
The case of North Africa: Given increasing population, urbanization and improvement in living standards in the North African countries, energy demand…
As the threats to the Amazon forest grow in intensity, it is becoming clear that Brazil’s plans for the ‘development’ of…
Recent climate assessments have stressed two key messages. First, to avert irreversible damage from climate change, ambitious measures need to be…
Transformation is a term we often hear. It highlights the deep changes required in the organization of economics, technology and society…
From 2 to 13 December 2019, the international community will meet for the 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) to the…
Equity is important when we take stock of action on climate change. Equity and ambition go together, because the climate is…
How can transformative policies be designed and implemented across sector boundaries? Scholars have compared the quest for policy coordination and coherence…
US President Donald Trump has claimed that environmental and climate policy were to blame for the decline of U.S. coal –…
In many jurisdictions worldwide, CO2 emissions from electricity generation are covered by an emission trading system (ETS), while renewable electricity generation…
At the recent UN Climate Action Summit in New York, world leaders were reminded of the urgent task they face in…
In the preamble to the Paris Agreement the parties emphasize “the intrinsic relationship that climate change actions, responses and impacts have…
This blog post is partly based on the policy paper published in the journal Climate Policy: ‘Job Losses and the Political…
It may seem that after the Yellow Vests in France and the popular vote defeat of the carbon tax in the…
The need for action on climate change is now hotter than ever before – the Greta Thunberg movement is demanding more…
The Paris Agreement’s success depends on Parties’ implementation of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) towards the Agreement’s goals. No less than…
Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015, global CO2 emissions continue to rise. The Paris goal of limiting…
With the recent news that the UK and Ireland have committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, and the EU considering the…
There is a huge elephant in the world of climate policy that no one wants to name. The burning of fossil…
The window for tackling climate change is narrowing. Current national climate policies fall short of what’s needed to address climate change,…
Eighty-three islands with a combined population of 288, 000 are facing an existential threat. But in the face of increasing loss…
The production of basic materials like steel, cement and aluminium accounts for around 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions…
It is a truth widely acknowledged that domestic climate plans under the UN climate process are almost impossible to compare. That…
The carbon offset market has been around for more than 15 years and projects have been created for forests, mines, grasslands,…
Production of basic materials (cement, iron and steel, paper and board, aluminum, as well as chemicals and petrochemicals) account for around…
Cities have become a major actor in climate change mitigation, at least if you follow the announcements of progressive majors and…
Solar geoengineering – or technological interventions to reflect a small portion of incoming sunlight to partially offset the effects of climate…
The good news is that we can reduce poverty and emissions at the same time in highly emissions intensive developing economies….
Coral reefs are among the great natural wonders of the earth, but they are in hot water. The IPCC projects that…
To prevent dangerous levels of climate change, the Paris Agreement defined a target of limiting global warming to 2°C. This target…
Public understanding that air travel is problematic from a climate perspective seems to be increasing. One manifestation of this is that…
Our new article with David Victor and Arild Underdal in Climate Policy looks systematically at the political economy of the diffusion…
In my new article published in Climate Policy, I outline the need for strong and rapid greenhouse gas reductions from the…
The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report (SR1.5) finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require anthropogenic…
Accounting, Rewarding, and the Paris Agreement In a newly published article in Climate Policy, I explore some governance issues associated with…
With the recent surge of nationalism across many countries, efforts to build solidarity in the global climate regime might appear excessively…
The Paris Agreement is widely recognised as an exciting step forward in the world’s fight against climate change. One element that…
The Talanoa Dialogue in the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] negotiations extends a broad invitation to share low-carbon…
Our new study published by Climate Policy finds that national climate action has spread rapidly, and that this spread is strongly…
Countries affected by U.S. tariff increases are weighing their options for retaliation. Many of the same countries have pledged to lead…
It’s widely accepted that responding to climate change is difficult because it requires transformation of a complex socio-technical systems and is…
“The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea” Franklin D. Roosevelt “Governing for the future is ……
The Clean Power Plan (CPP) was the regulatory cornerstone of the U.S.’ Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to reduce greenhouse gas…
Since more than 40 countries have already implemented carbon pricing policies of some kind, there is much that other countries contemplating…
Shortly after assuming office, the new President of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, challenged Africa to “develop its energy mix,…
Along with the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Green Climate Fund (GCF or the Fund hereafter) serves as an operating entity…
For global climate change, a big challenge is that China (specifically Mainland China as referred to in this blog post) has…
An effective system for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) is the cornerstone of any carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS). A key…
When people think of Russia and the environment, they tend to think of the big, environmental catastrophes of the Soviet past…
Advancements in renewable energy and natural gas have appeared to make coal a thing of the past, with the costs of…
The fundamental goal of climate policy is to incentivise emissions reductions and the transition to lower carbon processes and technologies. When…
Perhaps the most widely debated event in global climate policy since the Paris Agreement’s adoption in 2015 was the United States’…
In an article just published in Climate Policy, I discuss the rise over the past decade of the “keep-it-in-the-ground” movement –…
During the UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP 23) in Bonn, the fourth workshop of the Facilitative Sharing of Views…
STORY HIGHLIGHTS When the WTO’s eleventh Ministerial Conference meets in December 2017, Members can make a significant contribution to the 2030…
It is recognised in the climate science community that literature and research informing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and…
The question of how to differentiate efforts fairly has always been central and controversial in UN climate negotiations. The UN Framework…
Understanding the role of materials in the supply chain can give us a truer picture of global emissions, as well as…
The surge in transnational governance schemes led by non-state actors can be traced back to the incipient globalisation that followed the…
Can the international trade system be a catalyst for reforming fossil fuel subsidies (FFS) to help relieve the burden on the…
The question whether countries can be held liable for climate change damages has become an important issue in the UN climate…
As the curtains closed on the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change…
As the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) in Marrakech draws to a close, it is becoming…
A new Special Issue of the Climate Policy Journal focuses on the governance of European climate change efforts. Drawing on the…
All 36 countries that committed to emission caps under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change complied with their commitments, according to…
As the first climate change negotiations after December’s landmark Paris Agreement open in Bonn this week, controversies around levels of funding for…
Transitional justice – a theory and practice enabling purposeful transitions from periods of deep injustices into more peaceful regimes – was probably not…
By Joy Hyvarinen Many have welcomed the new Paris Agreement on climate change, but there is also recognition of its weaknesses….
By Alice Bows-Larkin “All adrift” was many years in the making. My research journey started with a focus on aviation and climate…
By Pieter Pauw The issue of private sector adaptation and adaptation finance is hotly debated by researchers, climate negotiators, business and civil…
By Wolfgang Obergassel, Hans Bolscher, Jeroen van der Laan, Jelmer Hoogzaad and Jos Sijm At the 2011 COP in Durban, Parties decided…
By Michael Grubb, Heleen de Coninck and Ambuj D. Sagar In Climate Policy’s latest editorial, Editor-in-Chief, Michael Grubb, together with Climate Strategies Chair…
By Emily Tyler and Brent Cloete The Paris COP in November 2015 is expected to usher in a dramatic change in the…
By Peter Minang and Meine van Noordwijk The REDD+ process is an internationally agreed mechanism whereby developing countries are rewarded for reducing…
By Heleen de Coninck, with contributions from Climate Strategies and CDKN teams What can researchers contribute to the current efforts to break the…
By Joanna Depledge Twenty years ago today, on 21 March 1994, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came into…
By Tim Rayner and Andrew Jordan As the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change convenes…
By Charlotte Streck Over the last three decades, climate change has graduated from an environmental concern to a matter of geopolitics…
By John Barrett While there have been a number of papers that calculate consumption-based GHG emissions, we were keen to present…
By Anna Korppoo I was asked after Bonn whether Russia, Ukraine and Belarus blocking SBI seemed justified. Blocking SBI (or any…
By David Levy A milestone on the road to catastrophic climate change was reached last Thursday, May 9th, when the Mauna…
By Robert Gampfer Over the past two decades, civil society organizations (CSOs) have become integral to global climate negotiations. In 2011,…
In this latest editorial for Climate Policy (vol.13, no.3), Editor-in-Chief Michael Grubb puts forward his perspective on the Doha Climate Conference…
Some reflections on the Climate Policy Special Issue (vol 13, supp 01, 2013) “Low carbon drivers for a sustainable world”.
By Dana R. Fisher and Joseph Waggle November 2012 was a fantastic time to be a progressive American. On 6 November,…
By Frank Jotzo At the Doha COP, Australia announced it will come on board Kyoto 2, with a commitment to reduce…
By Guri Bang, Jon Hovi and Detlef L. Sprinz Since 1990, there has been a build up of 13 MEAS that…
In June 2011, Climate Policy published a review by Axel Michaelowa on the book “Upsetting the offset: the political economy of…
By Michael Grubb –
Where now for the global negotiations? Compared to the aspirations of two years ago, the outlook for the Durban COP looks grim. After the traumas of Copenhagen, the ambitions of Cancun were modest – to reach an agreement, almost any agreement. Many bitter pills were swallowed to that end. The resulting deal looked more like a broad update to the UNFCCC framework, than a serious proposal on what to do after the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period expires.