Andrew Macintosh

International aviation emissions to 2025: Can emissions be stabilised without restricting demand?

Abstract International aviation is growing rapidly, resulting in rising aviation greenhouse gas emissions. Concerns about the growth trajectory of the industry and emissions have led to calls for market measures such as emissions trading and carbon levies to be introduced to restrict demand and prompt innovation. This paper provides an overview of the science on aviations contribution to climate change, analyses key trends in the industry since 1990, projects international civil aviation emissions to 2025 and analyses the emission intensity improvements that are necessary to offset rising international demand. The findings suggest international aviation carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will increase by more than 110 per cent between 2005 and 2025 (from 416Mt to between 876 and 1013Mt) and that it is unlikely emissions could be stabilised at levels consistent with risk averse climate targets without restricting demand.

Coastal climate hazards and urban planning: how planning responses can lead to maladaptation

Urban planning has the potential to be a powerful tool for facilitating efficient and equitable adaptation to climate change-related coastal hazards (‘coastal climate hazards’). However, if urban planning measures are poorly designed or implemented, it can increase costs and vulnerability, and unfairly affect the interests of particular groups. Through a case study on the coastal climate hazard planning framework in Victoria, Australia, this paper aims to illustrate how urban planning measures can lead to maladaptation and draw lessons for the future design and implementation of planning responses. Five main policy lessons are drawn from the case study. First, planning frameworks should encourage the adoption of robust approaches that are as insensitive to the uncertainties associated with coastal climate hazards as possible. Secondly, policy makers need to be mindful of the opportunity costs and equity implications of planning responses. Thirdly, to be sustainable, planning responses must be robust to social and political factors, something that can be achieved through the use of flexible approaches that allow continued use and development of land but on conditions that protect the interests of governments and communities. Fourthly, policy makers need to be mindful of transaction costs. Finally, when devolving planning responsibilities to lower levels of government, policy makers need to ensure that the objectives of planning frameworks are clear, there is minimal ambiguity in decision guidelines, and that the resourcing and capacity constraints of planning bodies are appropriately considered.

The Australian Government's environmental impact assessment (EIA) regime: Using surveys to identify proponent views on cost-effectiveness

The aim of this article is to discuss direct effectiveness of SEA following the framework of the SEA Directive of the European Union in order to recommend measures to increase it. In the article an analytical framework for analysing SEA effectiveness is developed taking aspects of planning theory and social learning, strategicness, integratedness and timing of SEA into account. The framework is applied on the SEA concept of the European Union and put in the context of SEA and spatial planning in Austria. Finally, recommendations are made to enhance SEA effectiveness by different measures addressing different aspects of the SEA system and the SEA implementation in planning processes, such as the abandonment of screening, the advancement of SEA ‘ownership’ by planners and the reflection of a rational-collaborative SEA and planning model, as well as the ways environmental objectives and the appraisal of alternatives are implemented in a planning and SEA process.

Environmental Protection and Ecology

This article explores the meaning of environmental protection and the mechanisms and governance structures that are used to achieve environmental objectives. A taxonomy of domestic environmental policy instruments is provided, along with a discussion of the efficiency, effectiveness, and equity issues associated with the different approaches. The article also reviews the international governance system that has been established to facilitate environmental protection. Readers are provided with a brief introduction to international environmental law, the international environmental bureaucracy, and international environmental financial mechanisms and their role in protecting the environment.

The Carbon Farming Initiative: removing the obstacles to its success

In December 2011, the Australian Government introduced the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI), a project-based, baseline-and-credit offset scheme for emissions and removals from the land use, land use change and forestry, agriculture and waste sectors. The scheme is one of the most robust of its kind, having several innovative design features developed to deal with integrity and perverse impact risks, and promote co-benefits. Despite this, there are a number of issues undermining the capacity of the CFI to realize cheap abatement opportunities and improve environmental outcomes. This paper provides an overview of the CFI and an analysis of the obstacles to its success. Suggestions for improvements are made, including substituting a flexible permanence period–permanence deduction mechanism for the existing 100-year rule and modifying the risk of reversal buffer and leakage deduction processes to improve returns to project proponents.

LULUCF in the post-2012 regime: fixing the problems of the past?

One of the reasons why the Kyoto Protocol has been environmentally ineffective is the flaws in the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) accounting rules, including voluntary accounting for Article 3.4 activities, the adoption of a definition of forest management that allowed parties to preferentially include and exclude forest lands, and allowing parties with net emissions from LULUCF in 1990 to include deforestation emissions in their 1990 emissions base year. Three proposed amendments to the LULUCF rules for the post-2012 regime are discussed and analysed: (1) a force majeure rule, (2) a baseline-and-credit system for forest management and (3) an ‘emissions-to-atmosphere’ approach for harvested wood products. Although these proposals have the potential to significantly improve the accounting framework, there are still significant problems such as the failure to account for the biophysical effects of forest activities, uncertainties associated with the application of the forest management baseline-and-credit system and continuing optional coverage of Article 3.4 activities.

Policy design, spatial planning and climate change adaptation: a case study from Australia

There are gaps in the existing climate change adaptation literature concerning the design of spatial planning instruments and the relationship between policy instruments and the sociopolitical barriers to adaptation reform. To help address this gap, this article presents a typology of spatial planning instruments for adaptation and analyses the pattern of instrument choice in Australian planning processes in order to shed light on contextual factors that can impede adaptation. The analysis highlights how policy design can amplify the barriers to adaptation by arranging policy actors in ways inimical to reform and stripping decision makers of the instruments necessary to make and sustain desired policy changes.

Under what circumstances do wood products from native forests benefit climate change mitigation

Climate change mitigation benefits from the land sector are not being fully realised because of uncertainty and controversy about the role of native forest management. The dominant policy view, as stated in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, is that sustainable forest harvesting yielding wood products, generates the largest mitigation benefit. We demonstrate that changing native forest management from commercial harvesting to conservation can make an important contribution to mitigation. Conservation of native forests results in an immediate and substantial reduction in net emissions relative to a reference case of commercial harvesting. We calibrated models to simulate scenarios of native forest management for two Australian case studies: mixed-eucalypt in New South Wales and Mountain Ash in Victoria. Carbon stocks in the harvested forest included forest biomass, wood and paper products, waste in landfill, and bioenergy that substituted for fossil fuel energy. The conservation forest included forest biomass, and subtracted stocks for the foregone products that were substituted by non-wood products or plantation products. Total carbon stocks were lower in harvested forest than in conservation forest in both case studies over the 100-year simulation period. We tested a range of potential parameter values reported in the literature: none could increase the combined carbon stock in products, slash, landfill and substitution sufficiently to exceed the increase in carbon stock due to changing management of native forest to conservation. The key parameters determining carbon stock change under different forest management scenarios are those affecting accumulation of carbon in forest biomass, rather than parameters affecting transfers among wood products. This analysis helps prioritise mitigation activities to focus on maximising forest biomass. International forest-related policies, including negotiations under the UNFCCC, have failed to recognize fully the mitigation value of native forest conservation. Our analyses provide evidence for decision-making about the circumstances under which forest management provides mitigation benefits.

Complementary climate change policies: A framework for evaluation

There has been much debate about the role of carbon prices in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. However there has been far less attention paid to the evaluation of complementary and other non-price policies designed to accompany the carbon price. The purpose of this article is to develop a framework for considering the case for, and effectiveness of, the wide range of existing and proposed complementary policies that are designed to accompany the carbon price in the effort to reduce Australias greenhouse gas emissions. The article concludes that an effective evaluation of complementary policies should include identifying the market failure the policy is aimed at correcting. The complementary policy should work in conjunction with, not opposition to, other polices aimed at reducing emissions. It should be complementary with the policies of other levels of government and it should also consider issues of efficiency, equity, accountability and adaptability.

Are forest management reference levels incompatible with robust climate outcomes? A case study on Australia

The Kyoto Protocol’s forest management (FM) accounting framework contains a number of deficiencies that increase the risk of parties recording credits and debits that do not reflect the additional direct anthropogenic influence on net forest emissions. To rectify these flaws, it has been proposed that the current ‘gross–net’ approach be replaced with a baseline-and-credit system (FM reference levels), under which credits and debits would be determined on the basis of deviation of net FM emissions from a preset reference level. This article reviews the proposed FM reference level system and uses a case study on Australia to highlight its pros and cons. It is concluded that, while the system has the potential to lead to improved outcomes, these benefits are threatened by the refusal of several parties to adopt a principled approach to setting reference levels. Even if these fundamental issues are overcome, the success of the system will rely on improved transparency and a willingness of parties to make ex post adjustments to exclude non-anthropogenic and non-additional changes in net forest emissions from their accounts.