Recent Publications

Executive Summary: Following the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009, the Energy, Climate, and Innovation Program (ECI) in the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP), The Fletcher School, Tufts University carried out a consultative process with policymakers, scholars, and leaders from non-profit organizations regarding the current state of global climate change negotiations. The purpose of this initiative was to identify specific analytical gaps and topics for scholarly inquiry that can be taken up by academic institutions and researchers in order to better serve international climate policy discussions in the future.

The consultation team hosted working group discussions at The Fletcher School and conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with individuals from diverse professional fields and regions of the world from January – April 2010. A full list of those consulted is provided in Appendix A. From the wealth of insights that emerged, we identified recurrent themes and distilled them into specific research priority areas.

This white paper highlights those topics that the consultations revealed to be most pressing and in need of solid analysis and sound empirical research. The paper is neither about the politics of climate policy nor intended to be a prescription for next steps in climate change negotiations. The consultation team also makes no pretense toward comprehensiveness; we recognize that research has been done and is currently being done in some of the areas identified below and also that there are many worthy areas of research not identified by this consultative process.

The paper outlines four cross-cutting research needs, followed by seven priority research areas:

• financing;

• measurement, reporting, and verification;

• technology transfer and diffusion;

• the politics of international climate policy;

• legal structures;

• adaptation to climate change; and

• the role of trade policy in climate change policy.

In each area, a short description of the issues at stake and the associated analytical needs is given, followed by a set of specific research questions. We hope these questions serve as catalysts and inspirations for targeted research that is directly relevant to climate change negotiators and stakeholders in the months to come.