Legal Aspects of Carbon Trading

Since 2005 the carbon market has grown to a value of nearly $100 billion per annum. This new book examines all the main legal and policy issues which are raised by emissions trading and carbon finance. It covers not only the Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms but also the regional emission trading scheme in the EU and emerging schemes in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. The Parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention are in the process of negotiating a successor regime to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol whose first commitment period ends in 2012. As scientists predict that the threat of dangerous climate change requires much more radical mitigation actions, the negotiations aim for a more comprehensive and wide ranging agreement which includes new players - such as the US - as well as taking account of new sources (including aircraft emissions) and new mechanisms such as the creation of incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This volume builds on the success of the editors' previous volume published by OUP in 2005: Legal Aspects of Implementing the Kyoto Protocol Mechanisms: Making Kyoto Work, which remains the standard work of reference for legal practitioners and researchers on carbon finance and trading under the Kyoto Protocol.

Auteur

David Freestone is the Lobingier Visiting Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at The George Washington University Law School in Washington D.C. He is a former Deputy General Counsel at the World Bank, and a Visiting Professor at the UN University Institute of Advanced Studies. From 1996-2004 he was head of the World Bank's Environment and International Law Group, and, inter alia, legal adviser to the World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund team. Prior to joining the Bank in 1996, he held a faculty chair in international law at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, where he is still an honorary professor. Dr. Freestone has written widely on international environmental law, is the General Editor of the "Legal Aspects of Sustainable Development " a monograph series published by Martinus Nijhoff and is the founding editor of the "International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law. " He is the 2007 winner of the Elizabeth Haub Gold Medal for Environmental Law. Charlotte Streck is a founding partner and Director of Climate Focus, a consultancy company specialized in climate change law and policy and the global carbon market. Until February 2005, Charlotte was Senior Counsel with the World Bank in Washington, DC. In this capacity she was responsible for establishing carbon funds and legal structuring of World Bank carbon transactions in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia. Before she joined the World Bank in 2000, she cooperated with the "Global Public Policy Project ", which provided strategic advice for the Secretary General of the UN. She authored and co-authored several books and numerous articles on environmental law and policy, is a board member of the Global Public Policy Institute, an adjunct lecturer at the University of Potsdam, senior fellow of the Center of International Sustainable Development Law at McGill University, and an Advisor to the Prince of Wales Rainforest Project.