IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/ecoaaa/887-en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Political Economy of Climate Change Mitigation Policies: How to Build a Constituency to Address Global Warming?

Author

Listed:
  • Alain de Serres

    (OECD)

  • John Llewellyn

    (Llewellyn Consulting)

  • Preston Llewellyn

    (Llewellyn Consulting)

Abstract

Developments over the past few years have shown that reforms to address climate change are no less difficult to implement than reforms in other areas, even if the objective of limiting global warming is broadly accepted. In the case of global public goods such as the climate, the political challenge is further complicated by the need to convince voters that domestic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is worth taking, notwithstanding the cost and uncertainties regarding other countries’ commitments. This paper seeks to draw a number of political-economy lessons from reform experience in other economic areas, and considers how these lessons can be applied to the particular case of climate change mitigation policy. It examines the main ingredients for building a constituency for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction policies at home, stressing the need to establish the credibility of the overall objective and intermediate targets. It also reviews the challenges faced in securing successful implementation of the least-cost set of policies, focusing on how to address the concerns raised by the uneven distribution of costs and benefits of pricing instruments without undermining their effectiveness. L'économie politique de l'atténuation du changement climatique : comment assurer un soutien populaire en faveur d'actions pour enrayer le réchauffement planétaire Les discussions des dernières années ont montré que la mise en place de mesures pour atténuer le changement climatique peut s’avérer aussi difficile que la conduite de réformes économiques dans d’autres secteurs, même si l’objectif de limiter le réchauffement de la planète est largement accepté. Dans le cas d’un bien public comme le climat, le défi politique est accentué par la nécessité de convaincre les électeurs du bien fondé de l’action au plan national, malgré les coûts et les incertitudes concernant l’engagement des autres pays. Cette étude vise à tirer certains enseignements de l’expérience en matière de politique économique acquise lors de la mise en place de réformes majeures dans d’autres champs d’action, et à voir dans quelle mesure ces enseignements peuvent s’appliquer au cas particulier de la lutte au changement climatique. Les principaux ingrédients pour assurer un large soutien à des mesures efficaces de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serres sont passés en revue, de même que les défis que posent leur mise en place, ce qui nécessite de prendre en compte les inquiétudes concernant la distribution inégale des coûts et des bénéfices des instruments de prix en tout évitant de saper leur efficacité.

Suggested Citation

  • Alain de Serres & John Llewellyn & Preston Llewellyn, 2011. "The Political Economy of Climate Change Mitigation Policies: How to Build a Constituency to Address Global Warming?," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 887, OECD Publishing.
  • Handle: RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:887-en
    DOI: 10.1787/5kg5d5nhcnkb-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1787/5kg5d5nhcnkb-en
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1787/5kg5d5nhcnkb-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    atténuation du changement climatique; carbon tax; climate change mitigation; competitiveness; compétitivité; cost-effectiveness; efficacité par rapport aux coûts; political economy; taxes carbone; économie politique;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:887-en. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edoecfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.