6/2008 - Reducing greenhouse gas emissions at home or abroad?

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions at home or abroad has become the dilemma within contemporary climate change policy, touching upon various concepts such as cost-effectiveness, environmental effectiveness, equity, and sustainable development, and challenging the North-South relationship in itself. Although Annex I Parties to the Kyoto Protocol are legally obligated, through the supplementarity requirement, to meet their Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets to a certain extent through ‘domestic actions’, most Parties prefer to make use of flexibility mechanisms arguing that actions to reduce emissions should be taken where it is cheapest given the fact that the effect on the atmosphere will be the same.