Climate Adaptation Finance and Justice. A Criteria-Based Assessment of Policy Instruments

Although the international community repetitively pledged considerable amounts of adaptation finance to the global South, only little has been provided so far. Different instruments have been proposed to generate more funding and this paper aims at identifying those that are most suitable to raise adaptation finance in a just way. The instrument assessment is based on the following main criteria: fairness, effectiveness and feasibility. The criteria are applied to four instruments: contributions from domestic budgets, international carbon taxes collected at the national level, border tax adjustments as well as selling emissions allowances in domestic trading schemes. Domestic emission trading schemes and border tax adjustments achieve the best-or rather, the least bad-results. Two further findings are that (feasible) instruments are unable make agents pay for past excessive emissions and that all instruments generate rather small amounts of funding. As a consequence of the latter, adaptation finance will continue to be highly insufficient in all likelihood.

US backsliding will overshadow Bonn climate talks

Significance The Bonn session will begin under the shadow of uncertain US participation in the Paris Agreement climate framework reached in 2015. Ongoing technical discussions will focus on agreeing further rules to implement the Paris Agreement, but most of these topics are only expected to be finalised in 2018, when an interim ‘facilitative dialogue’ is scheduled to be convened on taking stock of progress and scaling up global climate ambition. Impacts US research funding cuts and restrictions on federal agencies will hinder the collection of climate data. Climate ambitions in large developing countries will focus on areas with co-benefits for other policies, especially air pollution. The prospect of carbon border tax adjustments in retaliation against decreased US climate ambition is more likely under Trump.

Remarks by Warren Maruyama

Well, thanks, Gary, and thanks to the American Society of International Law for convening this panel. And I guess we should also thank Donald Trump, because whatever one may think about his policies, he's been great for trade lawyers, trade professors, trade consultants, trade experts. And even tax people, who never had the time of day for us trade types, now have to listen to us go on and on about these obscure parts of WTO law regarding border tax adjustments, which are just as incomprehensible as my tax return.