News and views from the Blavatnik School of Government community 
In December 2015, the 21st conference of the parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) had made a decisive turning point in the world’s endeavour to avert dangerous changes in our climate. 195 nations pledged to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the […]
The December 2015 UN climate summit in Paris marked a historic step forward in international efforts to combat climate change, producing a new climate agreement that includes national commitments by 189 countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While these commitments will need to be fulfilled and then ratcheted up in […]
Listening to UN climate chief Christiana Figueres talk about the state of the global negotiations to slow down climate change, five weeks before COP21 in Paris, one could be tempted to be optimistic. But the history of the climate negotiations, and countries’ social and political realities, could make one question […]
Every year since 2005, the World Economic Forum in Geneva has published a Global Risks Report, analysing the major challenges facing the world. This year, failure to mitigate climate change was listed 5th out of 31 risks, followed at 6th by a greater incidence of extreme weather events. Thousands of miles away, residents of the small islands of Kiribati did not need to read the WEF report to learn that climate change is a serious threat to the world. Living on atolls where most land is less than 3-4m above sea level, they know firsthand how vulnerable they are and what is at stake if we fail to mitigate global climate change.
Most climate change activists and farmers see each other as enemies, rather than friends. Some climate activists remember the tractor driven by farmers up the steps of Parliament in the early 2000s to protest the “fart tax”, and notice the big agricultural hole in New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme (ETS). […]
‘Momentum’. It is a buzzword in politics. But, restoring it to its origins, I can recall, from the haziness of my high school physics education, a scientific law: that when opposing, inelastic, objects, each carried by its own momentum, collide, new forms of energy arise: heat and sound. This – […]
From boosting financial gains to reducing CO2 emissions, there are clear benefits from removing inefficient fossil fuel consumption subsidies. BSG Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Thomas Hale and Peter Ogden, Senior Fellow and Director of International Energy and Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress, explore a new policy tool that […]
India is doing a lot to combat climate change. It is time to let the world know, and to be more proactive in international climate negotiations. India is changing, yet the government’s position in international climate negotiations is not. Despite increasingly ambitious national policies, India’s climate diplomats have maintained essentially the same stance since negotiations began in 1992: developed countries must commit to a legally binding schedule of emission reductions, while developing countries retain their right to carbon-intensive development.