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One of the crucial questions of our time is whether international environmental regimes can and will manage to save the climate and other global environmental commons, such as biodiversity. Oran Young from the University of California, Santa Barbara, provides crucial insights in his meta-analysis, just published in PNAS. Rather than trying to summarize his observations, I aim to highlight a few points.

Interestingly, political scientists judge international regimes systematically more positive than economists, probably reflecting different assumptions and mindsets. Nonetheless, analysts agree there is a full spectrum of international regimes, ranging from the rather successful ones (such as the Montreal protocol on ozone) to the rather unsuccessful ones (such as Kyoto), and many in between. According to a metastudy by Breitmeier et al., international regimes contributed significantly or very strongly in about half of the cases where environmental problems improved. Another observations is that regimes can be successful even in non-hierarchical, non-enforcable circumstances. It turns out that some "easy" problems are systemically messed-up whereas some "hard" problems are surprisingly successful dealt with. Instead, regime design matters a lot: Attention to details can be more crucial then the path chosen (both incentive-based and command and control regulations can lead to success).

Perhaps motivating for the climate issue: a coalition of influential actors can drive a regime towards some sort of success, even if the a single dominant actor remains passive. Fairness and legitimacy are preconditions for success, especially given the mostly non-enforceable character of international regimes. Indeed, Young suggests that we need an understanding of the conditions under which fairness and legitimacy can be productive forces.

Will there be a successful climate regime? We don't know. We can only try. Young suggests some innovative routes that scientists and policy makers should explore.

A broad literature investigates the impact of urban form and transport energy use, clearly demonstrating the benefits of compactness for lowering energy use and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Myriad qualifications apply, of course, highlighting the importance of street accessibility and job-housing balance (e.g. Ewing and Cervero, 2010).

Ewing and Rong (2010) finally explored the other side of the story: the impact of urban form on residential energy use, relying on US data. Intuitively, sprawled residences have higher space requirement and need more energy for heating. The authors show that single-family detached housing consumes 54% more energy for heating and 26% more energy for cooling than otherwise comparable multi-family housing. With equal income, black, Hispanic and Asian household are more likely to live in multifamily housing than white households do. Multifamily housing is highly correlated with compactness.

The Urban Heat Island effect introduces another dimension. Compact neighborhoods are warmer than sprawled neighborhoods, causing less heating demand but higher cooling demand. The less-heating effect dominates in most regions in the US. The exception is the Sunbelt, where higher temperatures require higher additional cooling demand, creating an energy penalty for more compact housing. With global warming, this energy penalty is likely to increase.

Altogether the housing effect clearly dominates the energy balance. An average household in a compact neighborhood (one standard deviation above mean) consumes 20% less energy than the average household in a sprawled neighborhood (one standard deviation below mean). Let us look forward to seeing other detailed studies on this issue, also from other parts of the world. 

Amazonian deforestation is a major regional and global disaster, rapidly diminishing natural capital, contribution to mass extinction, and to climate change via land-use emissions. Evidently, the drivers of deforestation need to be closely scrutinized. Imori et al. (2011) contribute to this debate and perform an input-output analysis on Amazon deforestation in 2005. They find that cattle, soybean and to lesser degree sugar cane are main culprits of deforestation. The study does not investigate market-mediated effects. For example, the possibility that sugarcane production around Sao Paolo substitutes for cattle, which, in turn, is pushed into the Amazon region is not analyzed (Lapola et al., 2011). The authors point out that cattle and soybean provide employment in a region that otherwise offers few opportunities. Employment and economic growth targets are thus in direct conflict with forest protection. Soybean is mostly exported (e.g. for feeding industrially produced chicken in Germany). From a consumption-based perspective, importing countries of soybean are also responsible for Brazilian deforestation. A relevant CO2 tax on consumption of soybean (and cattle) in OECD countries or on production in Brazil could reduce the pressure on continued deforestation. Global efforts of forest protection are probably well advised to advance approaches that provide high employment and give ownership of forest protection to local communities.

Life-style wise, Berlin is an attractive city. New York hipsters flood some parts of the city, young entrepeneurs create a vibrant high-tech community in Mitte, Berlin's center. A secret of its attractivity lies in history: A number of smaller cities merged into Berlin around 100 years ago, creating a poly-centric structure. Berlin thus consists of numerous relatively quite villages that are well-connected by public transit.

That said, political dynamics point into a different direction. This week, coalition negotations of the upcoming Berlin government between the Social-Democrats and the Green Party flow apart. Reason: The construction of another urban freeway segment. The new and old mayor Klaus Wowereit insists on building more freeway, a condition the Green Party could not accept.

So is there a rational of additional freeway capacity? In the traditional paradigm, freeways and other roads increase mobility, and by this, contribute to economic growth. This paradigm seems obsolete in scientific research:

·          The economic growth framework still exists if only because of lack of alternatives. But the Sen-Stiglitz-Fitoussi report starts to offer a viable alternative.

·           The additional economic growth effect works only for mostly incomplete transport networks, but not anymore for saturated networks (see e.g. Hurlin, 2006). 

·           Road-way capacity induces additional demand, without alleviating congestion (e.g., Noland, 2001).

·          Even for US-cities, a "No-more-freeway" scenario seems to outperform additional urban freeway construction in terms of cost-effectiveness (Zhang and Xu, 2011).

·          Urban motorized transport causes huge social externalities beyond congestion, such as air pollution, noise pollution, inequitable access, accidents, climate change, and increase oil dependence (see e.g., Creutzig and He, 2009).

The Berlin freeway would in addition require the deconstruction of a number of building and take away space from urban gardening ("Kleingärten"). Nonethess, if the freeway would address a significant bottleneck, there could a rational behind the construction. But the most recent study on this issue concludes, that in contrary, the freeway would induce constant congestion in the urban village where it ends, as crossings cannot be adapted to the incoming flow of vehicles. 

Air pollution is commonly measured with immobile detectors attached to buildings. Measured pollution levels do not necessarily relate to the impact of air pollution as experienced on the street. Josh Apte and colleagues addressed the question of air pollution as experienced by commuters by measuring concentration of pollutants in a transportation micro-environment, i.e. in a moving auto-rickshaw in New Delhi.

New Delhi, as other cities in rapidly developing countries, is plagued by chronic congestion and air pollution, producing massive social costs for its inhabitants.

The main results of this study are three-fold. First, measured exposure concentrations are higher in New Delhi than measured before in other megacities. Second, high short-duration peak concentrations, integrated over time of exposure, are a main culprit of the overall high exposure. Third, the total exposure of one commute in an auto-rickshaw approximately corresponds to the total daily exposure experienced by city inhabitants in rich countries.

While New Delhi switched its public bus fleet from diesel to clean natural gas, this seemed to not have been sufficient to reduce air pollution to acceptable levels. In fact, on-street air pollution is likely to even worsen because of increased vehicle ownership an on-going trend to diesel LDV.

The high costs and impacts of air pollution seem to warrant much tighter regulation of vehicle emissions also in developing countries. In addition, enforced parking management and a more comprehensive bus rapid transit system with dedicated bus lanes may not only benefit air quality but increase also transport efficiency.

Read also this blog here, and watch the video tracking on-street exposure.

Since Newman's and Kenworthy's work in 1989, the role of urban density has been controversely discussed as a mean to reduce gasoline consumption. Newman and Kenworthy's results are very suggestive - see figure below: With higher urban density, fuel consumption goes down with 1/x. Numerous studies have confirmed the basic relationship in different settings. However, the causal relationship still remains illusive (note that transport economists have worked on this issue since the 1970ties, but communities use different language and communicaton between communities remains sparse).

A key criticsm affects not the general results but the proper role of control variables that may co-correlate with urban density (e.g. Mindali et al., 2004). Karathodorou, Graham, and Noland recently published a paper that looks more closely on how a number of variables - including urban density - influence fuel demand. They decompose fuel demand into car ownership, fuel efficiency, and distance traveled by car, and look how each of these factors is influenced by urban density. Fuel efficiency seems to be not significantly correlated with urban density, perhaps because stop-and-go efficiency loss of denser urban areas is compensated by smaller cars more suitable for parking in dense urban areas. However, car ownership and transport activity are both significantly correlated to urban density. Using the Millenium Cities Database for Sustainable Transport, the authors find that the elasticity of car ownership with respect to urban density is around 0.12. The elasticity of distance traveled with respect to urban density is around 0.23-0.24.

While these numbers still not reveal causal relationships, this refined analysis sharpens the intuition on the role of urban density. 

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"It is a dark day for Europe's leading role in tackling climate change", said the British energy secretary Chris Huhne. Poland had just rejected to sign on the Commission's "Roadmap for moving to a competitive low-carbon economy in 2050". According to this roadmap, indicative intermediate target for 2020, 2030 and 2040 would have been set, e.g. suggesting but not mandating a 25% reduction target for 2020 below 1990 levels. However, even the indication was not bearable for Poland, risking increased friction to other EU member states just before taking over the EU presidency.

Indeed, this is not the first time that Poland applies the brakes on EU climate policy, balking at previous allocations of emission certificates. The reason is not hard to identify: Poland is dependent on brown coal, the most polluting of fossil fuels.

It is clear that the EU has to offer Poland ways out of this dependency, e.g. providing support in to build-up an alternative infrastructures and energy saving measures. And in fact, it is likely that such a deal was part of the negotiations – but to no avail.

David Vincent from the British Carbon Trust has done a more thorough analysis of the Polish situation. In brief, the Polish elite does not yet see the benefits of a low-carbon economy; the coal lobby (coal companies but also miners' unions and allies in government) is traditionally strong while the environmental voice is rather quiet. Possibly, a Carbon Trust for Poland, supporting business in implementing low-carbon solutions, but also more activity from civil society could contribute to a mental change and subsequent policy change.

Image by RaeA via Flickr

by Julia Römer and Felix Creutzig

Walking constitutes a particularly low-impact mode of transportation. While pedestrians can cover only relatively short distances, walking can have a high modal share and even substitute car trips if mixed-use and accessibility conditions enable neighborhood shopping and satisfaction of service demand.

What particular conditions are favorable for pedestrians? Here we summarize some insights from a recent report on Pedestrian Quality Needs in Europe (Methorst et al., 2010).

First, the safety of a pedestrian path network is a major factor because of its huge impact on use or avoidance of sidewalks. Safety includes two dimensions: traffic safety - being save from accidents and motorised vehicles; and subjective feeling of safety. Measures that reduce motorised traffic, lower motorised traffic speed or reduce crossing times of pedestrians increase traffic safety.One example is the implementation of so called Home Zones with reduced speed limits of 10 miles an hour. To improve the subjective feeling of safety the sidewalk's design has to be pedestrian-friendly. An adequate illumination of a sidewalk at night is an example for improvement.

Second, a pedestrian path network has to give pedestrians the chance to get to their destination as quickly as possible. Barriers, needless detour or waiting time leads to modal shift to less environmentally-friendly modes. Measures that improve the directness of a pedestrian path network, the connection with public transport or reduce waiting time therefore make sense. Examples are the implementation of scramble signals on large intersections, or same level pedestrian networks.

Third, walking has to be more attractive compared to other transport modes. Important indicators for the attractiveness of a pedestrian path network are accessibility and land-use. Pedestrian networks can be made more attractive by diverse design of the built environment, a multitude of options for pedestrian use, and active street life.

The report on Pedestrian Quality Needs brings together crucial insights on pedestrians. Nonetheless, scientific analysis is still far away from operationalizing pedestrian demand and supply in a systemic perspective.

Methorst R., Monterde i Bort H., Risser R., Sauter D., Tight M. & Walker J. (Eds.) (2010) Pedestrians' Quality Needs. Final Report of the COST project 358, Cheltenham: Walk21.

In a recent post, I reported on current climate policies for road transport - these policies are challenged by increasing market shares of alternative fuels and technologies. These fuels have a carbon footprint that is increasingly determined by upstream processing, recovery, and general equilibrium effects. Notably, biofuels such as corn ethanol induce deforestation which itself is a major source of front-up CO2 emissions (ignoring other effects such as biodiversity loss). Not all biofuels, however, have the same carbon footprint. How can biofuels for transport and their life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions then be effectively regulated? As pointed out in the corresponding paper, fuel mandates but also the Californian Low Carbon Fuel Standard or the European Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) are insufficient for not accounting for a series of general equilibrium effects. The European Commission, in fact, is currently reviewing its stance, and may review the FQD in this summer. But what kind of measure can improve the biofuel conundrum? The twin paper by Flachsland et al. studies a potential role of emission trading also for the transport sector. Now, this is an effective measure in terms of bringing a level-playing field across all fuels. In fact, if a cap is global in scope, and covers all relevant sectors, we could sleep quietly: wherever emissions appear they will be accounted for, and it is not relevant whether they are induced by biofuels or not. It matters only that they get a price tag, and that people try to reduce emissions. However, a global cap is not in sight, and an inclusion of agricultural emissions also seems utopian currently. Hence, we are still stuck with the GHG accounting problem for biofuels (and potentially relevant general equilibrium effects for other fuels such as electricity) when transport is included in the European Emission Trading Scheme. One possibility is to treat biofuels by default as having at least gasoline-equivalent emissions (see DeCicco, 2009). Fuel providers can then prove that their feedstock has neglible indirect effect and low fertilizer (N20) and processing emissions, gaining credits if certified. This would reverse the burden of proof. Properly implemented, it can be seen as an implemented precautionary principle - better safe the forests and its carbon stock then being sorry big time.

Despite globally increasing awareness of climate change and a number of regional climate policies, growth in greenhouse gas emission is undamped. The emissions are not spread equally over nations. In fact, it is popular wisdom, that the US and China are the big elephants in the room, or in other words, the world's biggest emitters of CO2. In a seminal paper - just published in PNAS - Glen Peters, Jan Minx and colleagues investigate the temporal change in consumption-based CO2 emissions across world regions. The key result: Emissions embedded in products traded from developing countries, including China, to OECD countries exceed the reduction of these countries, as pledged in the Kyoto protocol. In other words: From a consumer perspective, seemingly climate-friendly countries of Europe lose part of their cutting-edge image.

There are other interesting insights. For example, the ratio of emissions of Annex-B (with Kyoto pledge) to non-Annex-B countries (no Kyoto pledge) was 2-1 in 1990 but more or less levelized to 2:2 by 2008, indicating tremendous change in the way our world economy is structured. As Jan Minx, from the Department Economics of Climate Change of the Technical University Berlin and co-author of the PNAS article explains: "Most of the change in in global emission patterns is mirrored in China and Russia: While Chinese emissions increased dramatically in the last two decades, significantly also fueling increasing consumption in OECD countries, emissions from Russia and Ukraine fell significantly after 1990". In this regard, one can understand inter-temporal carbon emission patterns, production and consumption-based, as signifiers of global structural change. While it is now China and Russia, other countries such as India could be of equal importance in the upcoming decades. The picture is completed by the exploding importance of global trade: whereas 4.3Gt CO2 were embedded in international trade in 1990 (20%), it was 7.8Gt CO2 in 2008 (26%). Hence, emissions embedded in trade grew faster than emissions of other source. The recent geo-history of carbon can then be summarized as: the rise of China plus the ongoing globalization of production processes.

Glen P. Peters, Jan C. Minx, Christopher L. Weber and Ottmar Edenhofer (2011). Growth in emission transfers via international trade from 1990 to 2008. PNAS; published ahead of print April 25, 2011,doi:10.1073/pnas.1006388108