Burden Sharing and Cohesion Countries in European Climate Policy

28 Pages·2000·0.21 MB·English

Dessai, Suraje; Michaelowa, Axel
Working Paper
Burden sharing and cohesion countries in European
climate policy: The Portuguese example
HWWA Discussion Paper, No. 89
Provided in Cooperation with:
Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv (HWWA)
Suggested Citation: Dessai, Suraje; Michaelowa, Axel (2000) : Burden sharing and cohesion
countries in European climate policy: The Portuguese example, HWWA Discussion Paper, No.
89, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA), Hamburg
This Version is available at:
http://hdl.handle.net/10419/19462
Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use:
Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your
Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes.
Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial
Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them
machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise
use the documents in public.
Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen
(insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open
gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you
genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated
licence.
BURDEN SHARING AND
COHESION COUNTRIES IN
EUROPEAN CLIMATE
POLICY:
THE PORTUGUESE EXAMPLE
Suraje Dessai
Axel Michaelowa
HWWA DISCUSSION PAPER
89
Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv (HWWA)
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
2000
ISSN 1432-4458
The HWWA is a member of:
• Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (WGL)
•••• Arbeitsgemeinschaft deutscher wirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Forschungsinstitute
(ARGE)
•••• Association d’Instituts Européens de Conjoncture Economique (AIECE)
Burden Sharing and
Cohesion Countries
in European Climate Policy:
The Portuguese Example
Suraje Dessai
Axel Michaelowa
This Discussion Paper is part of the HWWA‘s research programme
„International Climate Policy“.
Axel Michaelowa has been supported by a grant of the German National Research
Foundation (DFG) under its Priority Programme „Governance in the European Union“.
Suraje Dessai is grateful to Nuno Lacasta and Andrew Jordan for helpful comments on
earlier drafts of this paper.
HWWA DISCUSSION PAPER
Edited by the Department
WORLD ECONOMY
Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv (HWWA)
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Neuer Jungfernstieg 21 - 20347 Hamburg
Telefon: [phone]
Telefax: 040/428 34 451
e-mail: [email protected]
Internet: http://www.hwwa.de/
Axel Michaelowa
177 Bd. de la République, F-92219 St.-Cloud
e-mail: [email protected]
Suraje Dessai
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ, Großbritannien
e-mail: [email protected]
Contents
Abstract 6
Zusammenfassung 6
1. INTRODUCTION 9
2. CLIMATE POLICY AND INTEREST GROUPS 9
3. EU CLIMATE POLICY AND COHESION COUNTRIES 11
3.1 Cohesion Member States 13
3.2 The Burden Sharing Agreement 14
4. PORTUGAL’S NATIONAL CONTEXT 16
4.1 Portuguese society 17
4.2 Institutional Framework 18
4.3 Greenhouse gas emissions and projections 19
4.4 Policies and measures 20
5. CONCLUSIONS 22
References 24
Abstract
The EU has been a leader in international climate policy. However, due to activities of
interest groups, domestic action, an area which the EU has strongly defended, is proving
difficult to carry out, particularly for cohesion member states. Although their behaviour
resembles free-riding, at least in an international dimension, Cohesion country targets
are actually challenging in the face of their economic boom.
Portugal accepted limiting its GHGs emissions to a 27% increase up to 2010 whereas
current projections lead to doubt that Portugal is capable of achieving its target unless
more stringent policies are implemented. Underdeveloped institutional capacities and
lack of abatement interests accompanied by the rapid economic and road traffic growth
are the main causes of the inefficiency of current "quasi-policies".
If Portugal is unable to comply, a consistent EU-wide climate policy is impossible and
the risk that the EU as a whole fails to reach its Kyoto targets rises considerably. To
reduce this risk, the EU could try to introduce strong enforcement rules and sanctions to
prevent member states overshooting their targets. This will be extremely difficult as past
efforts to enforce EU regulation have shown. A second way may be to use EU enlarge-
ment to enlarge the bubble by the accession countries and thus gain a safety margin. The
third and easiest way would be to give the EU Commission the power to buy emission
permits from abroad if the target is not reached and reduce EU transfers to those
countries that have not reached their target proportionally to their degree of non-
attainment. This would open a safety valve while leaving an incentive to countries not
to default on their target.
Even if the EU manages to keep its bubble intact, Portugal represents the problem of
future high emitters which will be followed by developing countries in the near future.
Moreover, Portugal also represents an equity dilemma vis-à-vis developing nations as it
will be difficult to ask the latter to limit their emissions when a developed country such
as Portugal will have them increased.
Zusammenfassung
Die EU hat bislang eine führende Rolle in der internationalen Klimapolitik einge-
nommen. Allerdings ist die von der EU betonte Umsetzung heimischer Emissions-
verringerungsmaßnahmen gegen den Widerstand mächtiger Interessengruppen nur
6
schwer durchsetzbar, insbesondere für Kohäsionsländer. Obwohl die Emissionsziele
dieser Länder international eher als Beleg für Freifahrerverhalten gesehen werden, sind
sie angesichts des ökonomischen Aufschwungs ehrgeizig.
Portugal akzeptierte die Begrenzung seines Treibhausgaswachstums auf 27% bis 2010.
Jedoch zeigen aktuelle Prognosen, dass die Zielerreichung zweifelhaft ist, sofern nicht
wirksamere Politiken eingeführt werden. Unterentwickelte Institutionen und das Fehlen
von Interessengruppen, die von Emissionsverringerung profitieren, gehen mit starkem
Wirtschafts- und Verkehrswachstum einher und sind Hauptgrund der Ineffizienz der
derzeitigen "Quasi-Politik".
Wenn Portugal sein Ziel nicht erreicht, wird eine konsistente EU-Klimapolitik
unmöglich und das Risiko nimmt zu, daß die EU ihr Kyoto-Ziel nicht erreicht. Es
könnte durch die Einführung strenger Sanktionen gegenüber Mitgliedsstaaten, die ihre
Ziele verfehlen, reduziert werden. Allerdings zeigen Erfahrungen mit der Durchsetzung
von EU-Regeln, daß dies mit erheblichen Schwierigkeiten verbunden ist. Eine zweite
Möglichkeit ist die Nutzung der EU-Erweiterung zur Erweiterung der Emissions-
gemeinschaft, die damit eine Sicherheitsreserve gewinnen würde. Die dritte und
einfachste Möglichkeit wäre, der EU-Kommission die Möglichkeit einzuräumen,
Emissionsrechte einzukaufen, falls das Ziel nicht erreicht wird. Die Finanzierung würde
durch die Reduzierung von EU-Transfers an die Länder erfolgen, die ihr Ziel nicht
erreicht haben. Eine derartige, proportionale Transferverringerung würde einen Anreiz
schaffen, das Ziel zu erreichen. Selbst wenn die EU-Zielgemeinschaft intakt bleibt, zeigt
Portugal das Problem zukünftiger Großemittenten auf, das für Entwicklungsländer
relevant werden wird. Darüber hinaus gibt es auch ein Gerechtigkeitsproblem: wie
können Entwicklungsländer überzeugt werden, ihre Emissionen zu verringern, wenn
selbst Industrieländer wie Portugal sie erhöhen dürfen?
7
8
1. INTRODUCTION
Increasing scientific evidence has shown that increases in greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, mainly due to fossil fuel burning and land use change, are gradually but
certainly changing the Earth’s climate in an unprecedented manner. This evidence
forced climate change to enter the political agenda in the early 1990s, becoming an
effective part of international politics with the signature of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) in 1992. The EU has played a key
role in these international negotiations by the 1990 declaration to stabilise their
emissions of CO in 2000 at the 1990 level (Haigh, 1993). An EU-wide energy/carbon
2
tax was to backup the stabilisation strategy, but has not been agreed so far. The EU also
pushed the legally binding GHG emission targets of the Kyoto Protocol for
industrialised countries. Just before Kyoto, the EU proposed an ambitious 15% cut for
three GHGs by the year 2010 compared to 1990 levels (EC, 1997a). At Kyoto, however,
it was decided that the EU was to reduce its emissions by 8% for six GHGs. The
adoption of Article 4, in the Kyoto Protocol, was fundamental for the perpetuation of
the EU “bubble”. This article, almost solely implemented for EU purposes, allows
Parties with emission reduction commitments to jointly meet those commitments by
entering into an agreement that redistributes the total reductions among the parties to the
agreement (“burden sharing”).
However, on the level of implementation of policy instruments EU performance has
been lacklustre which is also the case for domestic climate policies. This is due to the
intense and effective involvement of interest groups in the design of EU-wide and
domestic policies in contrast to international climate negotiations (Michaelowa, 1998).
2. CLIMATE POLICY AND INTEREST GROUPS
The theory of public choice is particularly relevant to climate policy as it touches every
economic sector and thus matters to all interest groups in the economy. The array of
uncertainties linked to the climate issue allows interest groups to choose divergent
positions without being scientifically discredited. Due to the overarching nature of the
issue, they can choose from a huge array of instruments1.

1 In 1996 the U.N. climate change secretariat listed almost 1000 instruments and measures of climate
policy.
9