Energy and Environment Program

The Climate Stabilization and International Cooperation Roundtable

The Aspen Institute, in collaboration with the Wirth Chair at the University of Colorado at Denver, hosted the first Climate Stabilization and International Cooperation Roundtable in Wye, Maryland, from January 21 to 22, 2009, to surface the institutional policies necessary for the oversight of any new international agreement on climate change as contemplated by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen (2009) and beyond.

This roundtable was intended to creatively break new ground on the question of what direction international institutional design should take, last seen on any scale since the mid-20th century.  The purpose of the meeting was not to reach consensus on specific recommendations.  Instead, this roundtable raised challenging, unanswered questions among the community of US experts who lead policy development on climate change about how a new international agreement should be administered and what institutions, existing or to be created, should be involved.

Future roundtables will will further consider options necessary to build compatibility and predictability in domestic, regional and international carbon policies and markets. The goal will be to identify the most prominent and coherent policy pathways necessary for establishing and monitoring credible emissions inventories in view of the competing demands among the different regimes of climate, trade and finance.

Background: Putting a price on carbon, harnessed to a global market for emissions permits, is a critically important step in the goal of reducing 30 gigatons of CO2 emissions by 2030 (i.e., 450 ppm) or 2050 (i.e.., 550 ppm), both because of the direct reductions it will cause and because of the new technologies it will stimulate.  In order to meet this goal, international markets for trading carbon permits between sectors and national inventories must be compatible, and there must be institutional competence for authenticating carbon inventories.

Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented prosperity, international markets suffer from weak governance, and therefore weak legitimacy.  Unlike national markets, which tend to be supported by domestic regulatory and political institutions, international markets are only “weakly embedded,” meaning that the rules do not exist or apply unevenly and inconsistently.  There is also no currently anticipated system for responsibly managing and certifying corporate and national inventory systems for international GHG emissions flows.  These mechanisms are critical for market compatibility and for carbon trading to operate confidently.  A post-Kyoto world must address the need for a credible international body to coordinate and facilitate these systems.

 The Aspen Institute: The Aspen Institute’s neutrality, extensive convening experience, and unique dialogue foster stimulating and substantive exchanges of ideas, and all discussions at this meeting are off the record. The “no-quotation rule” encourages candor and the exploration of new ideas.