ABSTRACT

Before and during the Rio Summit many environmentalists and experts argued simply that the climate convention was weak and vague. The Rio Convention entails some very promising and interesting elements and may be seen as the first in a new generation of environmental agreements. From Norway the idea was picked up and argued that it should be enlarged to a more general approach that would introduce mechanisms for cost effectiveness, not only across sources and sinks, but also across sectors and borders. The universal commitments relate mainly to the creation of national inventories on sources and sinks and to the securing of a flow of information and knowledge. Free-riding is only one aspect of complicated burden-sharing issues that arise when countries on different levels of development with different energy systems, try to agree on a joint effort to reduce emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels.