ABSTRACT
There are two main approaches to respond climate change: reducing and stabilising the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and adapting to the climate change already in the pipeline. Climate change mitigation is an example of a global public good each country is encouraged to incur costs, sometimes significant ones, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as the benefits of such efforts are shared globally. The main policies and measures to address climate change mitigation are based on economic instruments like pollution taxes or flexible market instruments like emission trading schemes. The traditional regulatory tools and new third-generation instruments such as voluntary actions and labels also play an important role in climate change mitigation. All these instruments have their own strengths and weaknesses in overcoming main barriers of climate change mitigation actions which need to be addressed. The main climate change mitigation instruments are critically analysed and assessed in this chapter.
