Efficiency and Equity of Climate Change Policy: an Introduction

Abstract

The Kyoto Protocol has raised almost as many questions as it has solved, and scientific and political arguments have tended to become intertwined in the resultant controversies. In particular, if the necessity of short-term climate policies is often debated, the optimal policy to be implemented is even more controversial. Both efficiency and equity of different policy proposals are curently being discussed, without achieving the sufficient consensus which would be necessary to adequately implement the Kyoto Protocol. One of the goals of the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment (hereafter referred to as EFIEA) is to assess how integrated assessment approaches can help to identify the relevant policy questions on the one hand, and consensus answers to these questions on the other hand. The second EFIEA Policy Workshop¹ was specifically devoted to highlighting policy questions and answers related to climate issues by gathering representatives from science and economics, governments and NGOs, business and the EU Commission.