INECE SPECIAL REPORT ON CLIMATE COMPLIANCE
 INECE's Special Report on Climate Compliance explains the role of compliance and enforcement in ensuring effective implementation of domestic and international policies to mitigate climate change.
The Special Report features an overview of the argument for compliance in a climate policy context, analysis of the role of compliance in assuring environmental and financial integrity of carbon markets, a review of compliance mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, lessons from the Montreal Protocol, practical strategies for improving national implementation of climate requirements, and country case studies.
Download the Special Report on Climate Compliance. Hard copies of the report are being distributed in Copenhagen.
INECE Activities on Climate Compliance
Ensuring Environmental and Financial Integrity of Carbon Markets
Climate mitigation strategies must be both effective and efficient, and emissions trading and other flexibility mechanisms are considered useful for keeping costs down. But markets only work if compliance is high. Otherwise, investors will be reluctant to participate. To help ensure that markets work as intended, INECE is launching a Carbon Market Compliance Network to help ensure environmental benefits and financial integrity.
Strengthening Compliance with Existing Requirements
INECE’s efforts focus on strengthening compliance with existing laws that can help mitigate climate change. This includes laws regulating emissions of black carbon (soot). Although designed primarily to protect public health, compliance with these laws provides climate co-benefits, as black carbon is the second or third largest contributor to climate warming. In addition, because black carbon stays in the atmosphere only a few weeks, improving compliance with these laws provides fast mitigation that can help reduce the risk of passing thresholds, or tipping points, for abrupt and irreversible climate impacts. INECE issued a Compliance Alert on Black Carbon to focus attention on this important climate mitigation strategy.
Protecting Forests
Forest destruction is another major driver of climate change, contributing up to 20% of emissions. INECE issued a second Compliance Alert focusing on an amendment to the U.S. Lacey Act that makes it a powerful compliance tool for protecting forests.
Building Capacity for Compliance Across the Regulatory Cycle
When implementing domestic climate mitigation strategies, environmental managers must have adequate knowledge and capacity to design effective requirements, monitor compliance, and conduct compliance response, and measure and manage their compliance and enforcement resources and activities. INECE resources, including its work on indicators and its Principles of Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Handbook, support policymakers around the world in designing effective requirements, monitoring compliance, and conducting enforcement response.
Improving Compliance with Existing Multilateral Environmental Agreements
Improving compliance with other existing multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) also can enhance climate co-benefits. These include MEAs addressing shipping, regional air pollution, and protection of the stratospheric ozone layer. The ozone MEA, known as the Montreal Protocol, is in fact the most effective climate treaty to date. The Montreal Protocol has provided direct climate mitigation of up to 222 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent between 1990 and 2010, at a cost of about $2.7 billion. This compares to the Kyoto Protocol, which has set a goal of 5 to 10 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent mitigation during the initial commitment period, which runs from 2008-2012.
|
