The effectiveness of the clean development mechanism and emissions trading within the climate change regime
Date
2011-09-20
Authors
Niemack, Auriel
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Abstract
This research evaluates the effectiveness of the climate change regime within South
Africa, focusing on the implementation of the Flexible Mechanisms of the United
Nations Kyoto Protocol. The two flexible mechanisms are the Clean Development
Mechanism and Emissions Trading. Regime effectiveness is the dominant analytical
approach to understanding and evaluating the effectiveness of international
environmental agreements. Various methods of evaluating regime effectiveness have
emerged in the past two-three decades, and this research adapts these methods to the
South African context. Regime effectiveness as an approach is used to inform the inputs
of institutional design, as well as regular reviewing and changes of the institutional
design. This in turn influences a state’s stance on international cooperation in a given
issue-area. The problems, successes and weaknesses that emerge from the South African
CDM project case-studies are evaluated against the adapted framework for domestic
regime effectiveness, and the findings and recommendations presented in the concluding chapter.