During the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2015 (COP21) and its resulting Paris Agreement, 195 countries agreed to set out a global action plan to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The Agreement was predominantly enthusiastically received by policy makers and the media. Current assessments of the scientific community, however, sketch a more skeptical view on the prospects of the Paris Agreement. As a core element, the agreement is based on nationally determined contributions, which however only cover about one third of the emissions reductions to be on a least-cost pathway for reaching the 2°C goal. The project “Incentives, Fairness and Compliance in International Environmental Agreements” (InFairCom) analyses pending issues for a successful implementation of the Paris Agreement. It examines necessary conditions for the dynamic review process of joint mitigation efforts and financial transfers to implement, monitor and foster nationally determined contributions to converge towards the long-term climate objectives. InFairCom combines several distinct but complementary methodological approaches including meta-analyses of existing agreements, qualified judicial assessments, theoretical economic models linked with experimental and empirical applications.

Further information on the project website: kooperationen.zew.de/en/infaircom/home.html