Comparing countries’ climate mitigation efforts in a post-Kyoto world

This chapter is about how international coordination over climate mitigation efforts might move forward, focusing primarily on the issue of cross-country comparability of mitigation efforts. 1 Clearly, nations are more likely to participate in, and comply with, an agreement that they consider a “fair” deal – one, in particular, where comparable countries (e.g., different industrialized countries) undertake comparable effort, and non-comparable countries (e.g., least developed countries versus advanced countries) undertake differentiated effort. 2 It is difficult to understate the importance of transparent and credible cross-country comparisons for progress in the design of international climate policy architecture.