The project "Climate policy in developing countries. Efficiency and institutional performance" was funded by the Academy of Finland during 2003-2004. The objectives of the research work were two-fold. On the one hand the target is to carry out comparative sustainability analyses of the energy and CO2 efficiencies in the developing countries and, based on these, to construct a model for burden sharing among the different countries. On the other hand, the target was to carry out a comparative analysis of the institutional arrangements related to climate policy in developing countries and to evaluate the performance of the institutions.
The first objective of the research work was to develop dynamic efficiency measures and apply them in the analysis of the energy and climate sectors of developing countries. The research work consisted of several areas: (i) methodological development, (ii) database development (iii) socio-economic context analysis, (iv) empirical case studies and (v) policy studies.
The analysis of socio-economic and historical context of energy and climate policy in developing countries formed an essential part of the research to guarantee the relevance and applicability of the results. This is especially important in the more detailed sectoral case studies.
The second objective of the project was to study national level institutional arrangements in developing countries in the field of climate policy. The formation of national level institutions as a function of several factors were studied. These factors consisted of interaction of (1) international environmental regimes (especially Kyoto Protocol but also biodiversity regime in the case of CDM sink projects), (2) international economic regimes (such as trade and investment) and the globalisation of economies, (3) socio-cultural systems and (4) the governance structures, practices and histories of the countries.
In addition to sustainability, efficiency and equity are other important dimensions for evaluating the performance. There are several different approaches of equity in the climate regime. In the project different burden sharing approaches were evaluated also from the institutional performance perspective. Also national level differences of institutions were analysed and their efficiency and equity dimensions compared.
Further information:
Jyrki Luukkanen
Research Director
jyrki.luukkanen@tse.fi
> Finland Futures Research Centre