ARBORESCENCE CAPITAL

Act today to protect the climate of tomorrow

The international climatic negotiation started in 1992 at the Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro. It gathered speed with the signature of the Kyoto protocol in 1997. The next step is the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Copenhagen, planned in December 2009. Participating states will then decide how to cooperate and how to act after 2012 in the face of climate change.

How to reduce the impact of global warming on our economy?

That is the question underlying this book written by one of the best European specialists. Explaining the most important issues of the Copenhagen conference, Christian de Perthuis sets up the economic road map which has to drive us to the next decades.

The author analyzes in a rigorous and very informed way the multiple facets of global warming. According to him, acting at a lower cost implies the integration into the economic field of new rules, pricing greenhouse gas emissions.

Having presented the various elements of the climate puzzle, he details the measures included in the Kyoto protocol and the European CO2 cap-and-trade system. Kyoto partially failed for two reasons: the withdrawal of the United States, the first world issuer of greenhouse gases; an erroneous interpretation of the principle of differentiated responsibility, which allowed emerging and oil exporting countries to opt-out.

To respect its commitments, Europe set up a carbon market, the major axis of tomorrow economy. For Christian de Perthuis, carbon credits, a new public resource created in the emission permit market, has to become a tool in the climate negotiation. His work describes exactly the way a good management of these credits would allow to reshape the functioning of the energy system and that of agriculture and forest over the next decades.

The author advocates, for the sake of equity, an intensification of the North-South cooperation in terms of adaptation to climate change, in order to facilitate emerging countries commitment to the concerted action against global warming.

Christian de Perthuis is Associated Professor at the University Paris-Dauphine and scientific advisor of Mission Climat, a research team on the carbon economy within Caisse des Depots. He has contributed to the implementation of French domestic projects. He has set up links with several foreign research centers (CEEPR of MIRT, University College of Dublin, Stanford University, Öko Institute) and is recognized as one of the best European specialists of the economics of climate change. He is the author of numerous essays and books on sustainable development.

For more information: Sabine Arman – Tél :+ 33 1 44 52 80 80 - info@sabinearman.com