Climate Change and Local Governance: What to Expect from COP21

Bocconi's IEFE (Centre for Research on Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy), will be the co-organizer of Multi-Level Climate Governance: An Integrated analysis of National, Regional and Local Policies, one of the side-events at Paris COP21, on 9 December, 3:00pm

Fifty-thousand people are participating in the 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP21) which will last until 11 December. The COP meets every year since 1995 to check the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), signed in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. COP 21's official objective is to achieve a legally binding agreement on climate, which makes it the most ambitious COP since COP3, when the Kyoto Protocol was signed.

"What we can expect", IEFE's Edoardo Croci says, "is not an agreement on compulsory quantitative targets: this time countries will be able to choose their own paths. The upside is that in Paris, differently than in Kyoto, developing countries are also present, and participating countries are responsible for 90% of the emissions. We know we are not going to reach the goal of 2°C increase above pre-industrial levels, as the result of the undertaken commitments is 3°C, but the framework envisages that the targets will be checked, and if needed made more stringent, every five years. Furthermore", Croci continues, "new market tools will be used: the aspiration is to introduce a global carbon-tax, but it's still a distant goal".

The side-event about Multi-Level Climate Governance finds its motive in the complexity of the new framework, which needs the involvement of all the governance levels.

The event is organized by IEFE in joint with Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and University of Edinburgh. Edoardo Croci will be one of the speakers.