美国应对全球气候变化的科技计划

2002年2月，美国总统布什改组了美国应对全球气候变化的领导机构，以协调和指导美国应对全球气候变化的科技活动。在新的领导体制下，美国气候变化科学研究和与气候相关的技术开发项目集成到了一个前所未有的程度，形成了相互关联的两大科技计划，即气候变化科学计划（CCSP）和气候变化技术计划（CCTP），并设立了相应的气候变化科技计划管理机构。 本文对上述两大计划，以及美国未来应对全球气候变化、减少温室气体排放的近期和中长期技术选择进行了调研，供参考。     

低碳农业发展核心目标:减缓和适应气候变化

减缓和适应是人类应对气候变化行动中两种相辅相成的措施。中国农业在应对气候变化中,减缓和适应同等重要:一方面,农业在减缓气候变化中具有独特的作用;另一方面,农业适应气候变化比减缓气候变化更为现实的迫切。积极发展低碳现代农业实现减排增汇,中国农业生态系统可以作为一种非常重要的固碳增汇措施,纳入全球CO2减排措施中去。中国低碳农业在减缓和适应气候变化中具有巨大潜力。     

美国《第三次气候变化国家评估报告》解读及其启示

2014年5月,美国发布《第三次气候变化国家评估报告》,报告内容包括美国的气候变化事实,气候变化对水资源、农业、林业、能源、交通等主要经济部门的影响,气候变化对美国十大区域的影响,以及美国应对气候变化的战略等四大部分。该报告是美国迄今最全面、权威和透明的气候变化评估报告。通过对报告的内容、发布背景及特点进行介绍和分析,从我国国内气候变化科学研究、基于风险的气候变化决策、加强气候变化科普宣传以及中美气候变化合作等方面,提出了相关政策建议。     

气候变化对德国农业的影响与相关对策

本文分析和研究了气候变化对德国农业和林业的正反两方面的影响,肯定了德国农业和林业对气候保护、减少温室气体排放的积极作用。阐述了德国为减少温室气体排放采取的相应措施,如改进传统农业,扩大现代农业,大力生产可再生长原料,促进可再生能源的利用。这些做法对我国发展现代农业,促进农业和林业领域节能减排具有积极的参考作用。     

美国国家公园应对气候变化的经验及其对中国国家公园建设的启示

2017年随着《建设国家公园体制总体方案》的出台，中国的国家公园建设逐渐步入正轨。然而我国人口众多，幅员辽阔，气候条件复杂且生态环境脆弱，正在建立的国家公园极易受到气候变化所带来的不利影响，且我国关于国家公园应对气候变化的研究较少。美国的国家公园体制较为完善，在应对气候变化方面已有较为深入的探索。通过文献调研和比较分析法，以佛罗里达州大沼泽地国家公园和亚利桑那州大峡谷国家公园为例，分析其应对气候变化的方法与经验，并从气候监测、国家公园管理、适应性规划以及环境教育等方面对我国国家公园应对气候变化提出建议，使正在建设中的中国特色国家公园体制稳步推进。     

气候变化全球治理的处境、困境与路径

应对气候变化的全球治理无疑是当今世界最受关注的治理实践。与人们的期望相背,气候治理的实践一直都是并将在可见的将来都会是举步维艰的。之所以如此,是由气候治理的内在困境所决定的;因此,有效的治理路径只能是立足于现实困境之上的谨慎探索。     

气候变化对欧洲农业的系统影响及对策

本文基于欧洲气候变化的历史演进与未来情景,系统分析了气候变化对欧洲农业的历史和潜在影响,提供了欧洲农业应对气候变化的适应性措施,及其对中国未来农业发展的启示和建议。     

Climate Change Policy Options for Asian Economies: Findings from an Integrated Assessment Model

This study outlines potential futures for the global economy through the 2050 with a specific focus on the countries of Asia. With underlying assumptions about population and output growth, a baseline scenario assesses the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and the ensuing impacts on the climate. Under the baseline scenario, Asia's high growth leads to a strong rotation in global output and emissions by the year 2050. The analytical framework traces back the changes in temperature to economic damages – limited to the agricultural sectors. Parts of Asia are likely to see much higher dependence on food imports as a consequence of these damages. Various carbon tax scenarios are implemented to assess the potential for reducing carbon emissions. Because of the structure of their economies, Asian countries are likely to bear the greatest burden in reducing emissions in an efficient global tax scheme, but there is significant scope to ease this burden through financial transfers.     

The economic consequences of substituting carbon payments for crop subsidies in U.S. agriculture

There is a growing body of literature on the costs of sequestering carbon. However, no studies have examined the interplay between farm commodity programs and carbon sequestration programs. This study investigates two dimensions of the interaction between farm commodity programs and afforestation programs, using a price-endogenous sector model of agriculture in the United States. First, this study compares the fiscal and welfare costs of achieving specific carbon targets through afforestation, with and without current farm programs. Second, it examines the welfare, fiscal, and carbon consequences of replacing existing farm subsidies, wholly or in part, with payments for carbon. Two approaches, Hicksian and Marshallian, are investigated. In the first, the sector model is used to quantify the carbon consequences and fiscal costs associated with various combinations of farm commodity and carbon sequestration programs that leave consumers and producers in the U.S. agricultural sector no worse off than under existing farm programs. The second approach focuses on the carbon and welfare consequences of various farm commodity and carbon sequestration programs that hold total program fiscal costs constant at current levels. Althouth the methodology and data are applied to the United States, the issues addressed are common in a number of developed nations, particularly within the European Union (EU). Adapting existing sector models in these nations to perform similar analyses would provide policy makers with more precise information about the nature of the trade-offs involved with second-best policies for replacing farm commodity subsidies with tree planting subsidies.The research reported in this paper was partially funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under contract number 68W90077. It does not reflect the official position of that agency. Mention of trade names does not constitute endorsement.     

Estimates of the Damage Costs of Climate Change. Part 1: Benchmark Estimates

A selection of the potential impacts of climate change – on agriculture,forestry, unmanaged ecosystems, sea level rise, human mortality, energyconsumption, and water resources – are estimated and valued in monetaryterms. Estimates are derived from globally comprehensive, internallyconsistent studies using GCM based scenarios. An underestimate of theuncertainty is given. New impact studies can be included following themeta-analytical methods described here. A 1 °C increase in the globalmean surface air temperature would have, on balance, a positive effect onthe OECD, China, and the Middle East, and a negative effect on othercountries. Confidence intervals of regionally aggregated impacts, however,include both positive and negative impacts for all regions. Global estimatesdepend on the aggregation rule. Using a simple sum, world impact of a1 °C warming would be a positive 2% of GDP, with a standarddeviation of 1%. Using globally averaged values, world impact would be anegative 3% (standard deviation: 1%). Using equity weighting, worldimpact would amount to 0% (standard deviation: 1%).     

Estimates of the Damage Costs of Climate Change, Part II. Dynamic Estimates

Monetised estimates of the impact of climate change are derived. Impacts areexpressed as functions of climate change and `vulnerability'. Vulnerabilityis measured by a series of indicators, such as per capita income, populationabove 65, and economic structure. Impacts are estimated for nine worldregions, for the period 2000–2200, for agriculture, forestry, waterresources, energy consumption, sea level rise, ecosystems, fatal vector-borne diseases, and fatal cardiovascular and respiratory disorders.Uncertainties are large, often including sign switches. In the short term,the estimated sensitivity of a sector to climate change is found to be thecrucial parameter. In the longer term, the change in the vulnerability of thesector is often more important for the total impact. Impacts can be negativeor positive, depending on the time, region, and sector one is looking at.Negative impacts tend to dominate in the later years and in the poorerregions.     

Political Economy of International Policy on the Transfer of Environmentally Sound Technologies in Global Climate Change Regime

Global governance on climate change has embraced the transfer of environmentally sound technologies as a crucial means of implementation to meet mitigation and adaptation. During the negotiation toward the Paris Agreement that replaced the Kyoto Protocol under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negotiation on technology development and transfer experienced contestation between developed and developing countries over policy direction and options. Under this context, why, in which policy options, and how developed and developing countries have clashed have not been fully explored yet in the issue area of climate change. This paper attempts to unpack the negotiations over technology development and transfer as a part of the Paris Agreement by three dimensions of marketisation, privatisation, and de-regulatory approach on the theoretical ground of discursive contestation between neo-liberalism and structuralism. This research, revealing the ground and the range of stretched contestant policy options, will provide a means to discern whether policies and modalities to be adopted to implement the Paris Agreement are skewed toward developed countries or developing countries.     

Endogenous Land use and the Ricardian Valuation of Climate Change

The Ricardian technique uses cross-sectional variation in the capitalized value of climate in land to infer the agricultural costs or benefits of dynamic climate change. While a practical approach for predicting the consequences of global warming with readily available data, it may yield biased results when land-use decisions depend on the climate attributes being valued and when land has unobserved attributes that differ with the use to which it is put. This paper illustrates the conditions under which such a bias will occur, describes an empirical model that corrects for it, and estimates that model with agricultural census data from Brazil. The approach, moreover, allows constraints on adjustment to be explicitly incorporated into the Ricardian framework, relaxing one of that technique’s most conspicuous assumptions. I would like to thank Patrick Bayer, Steven Berry, Robert Evenson, Michael Hanemann, Robert Mendelsohn, Bill Nordhaus, Kerry Smith, Karl Storchmann, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the University of California – Santa Barbara and the Research Triangle Institute for their useful insights and helpful comments. All remaining errors and omissions are my own. Fabiana Tito provided excellent research assistance, and Denisard Alves and Robert Evenson generously supplied the data.     

欧盟等发达国家应对气候变化法律制度探析

人类应对气候变化进入关键时期,各国纷纷通过国内立法来履行《气候变化框架公约》及《京都议定书》所确定的共同但有区别的责任。欧美日国家应对气候变化的法律制度与我国的经济发展利益攸关,对我国参与国际气候谈判具有重大影响。我国尚未制定专门的气候变化法,应探析他国应对气候变化的立法经验,遵循科学发展观的理念,完善有中国特色的气候变化应对法律制度体系。     

Climate change,health care access and regional influence on components of U.S. agricultural productivity

This article examines factors driving three components of total factor productivity change (TFPC) in U.S. agriculture – technical change (TC), technical efficiency change (TEC), and scale and mix efficiency change (SMEC). We also examine TFPC and contrast implications derived from the component models with those from a directly estimated TFPC model. Our results show that TC and SMEC are both significantly impacted by innovation through public research and improved human capital through education and health care access. TEC and SMEC are significantly affected by farm size, and the latter is significantly affected by public policy. The ratio of family-to-total labour, terms of trade and precipitation have significant impacts on all three components, but extension has no significant impact on any component. Climate change variables are the most impactful factors on each component as well as on TFPC. While the impact of climate change is heterogeneous across regions and components, its estimated historical impact is most often positive. Nearly all TFPC elasticities estimated directly are qualitatively the same as those calculated from the component models and quantitatively similar.     

Discursive Contestation on Technological Innovation and the Institutional Design of the UNFCCC in the New Climate Change Regime

ABSTRACT

Under the new climate change regime ushered in by the 2015 Paris Agreement, technology development and transfer have emerged as essential means of global action for climate change mitigation and adaptation. In particular, technological innovation has appeared as a leading component to be accelerated, encouraged, and enabled under the Paris Agreement. However, while making the rule book to implement the Paris Agreement, a clash has occurred between developed and developing countries over the meaning of technological innovation and the intervening policies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to support innovation in developing countries. By exploring rule-making processes and expert-meetings under the UNFCCC, this paper examines how this discursive contestation has progressed in relation to the meaning of technological innovation and the creation of an appropriate institutional design to support developing countries’ achievement of technological innovation. The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of discursive contestation between the two discourses of de-regulatory ecological modernisation and green governmentality with right-to-development. This research concludes by positing some policy implications.     

气候变化与中国苹果主产区空间变迁

基于1984—2012年中国苹果生产及气候面板数据,从大区和省区两个层面考察了苹果生产区域格局变化的趋势,指出近三十年来,中国苹果主产区出现了由东向西、向西北黄土高原及新疆地区迁移的现象,且随着气温变暖,各省苹果种植边界逐渐北移。利用基于蛛网模型的空间面板计量模型分析了气候变化对中国苹果生产空间布局的影响,结果显示,气温对苹果生产布局的变迁有正的影响,而日照时数和受灾面积则呈负的影响;苹果生产存在显著的正空间溢出效应;非农机会、比较收益、技术进步和政策等因素对生产布局也有影响。     

Diminishing Returns: Carbon Market Crisis and the Future of Market-Dependent Climate Change Finance

The current and future costs of meeting climate change mitigation needs in the global South vastly exceed levels of available funding from public sources in the North. As a possible solution to this problem, policy-makers and various observers have pushed increasingly for the adoption of market-based carbon financing strategies, with the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) representing the most consistent application of this approach to date. Nevertheless, market-based carbon finance remains highly volatile given its heavy dependence on conditions in the broader global carbon market which remains in the throes of a devastating crisis, earning carbon the distinction of 2011s worst performing global commodity. By demonstrating that it is through carbon's market price that finance-generating investment in the CDM is largely derived, and which also determines the ex post value of CDM projects, this paper argues for the decoupling of climate change finance from carbon's market value. The need to do so is particularly pressing since, it is argued, the current crisis in the global carbon market reflects an embedded crisis tendency in that market, born in part from the political machinations through which it was born and which leaves it prone to persisting crises of oversupply.     

2009财年美国农业部预算概况

2009财年,美国政府农业部预算为970亿美元,比2008财年增长了5．1％。营养援助和农作物保险部分的增长幅度最大,自主支配部分为210亿美元,比上年增长了1．6％;自然资源保护、研究以及农村发展预算有所减少;畜牧业、植物保护和食品安全计划预算南所增加。     

Global predictive power of the upside and downside variances of the U.S. equity market

Given the pace of increasing globalization and the pioneering role of the U.S. economy, we anlayze the global impact of the U.S. equity market’s uncertainty. The asymmetric impact of upside (downside) uncertainty, related with the upward (downward) movements of the underlying assets, has raised substantial concerns recently. We comprehensively analyze the global predictability of the upside and downside variances of the U.S. equity market, implied by S&P-500 calls and puts, respectively. We contribute to the literature on the asymmetric impacts of the upside and downside variances of the U.S. equity market in an international setting. Our study also complements the study on predicting international stock returns. Moreover, substantial economic value can be generated from the perspective of asset allocation. The main channel for the positive (negative) predictability of upside (downside) variance stems from its positive (negative) impacts on international investment, highlighting the leading role of the U.S. economy.