Consumption-Based Approaches in International Climate Policy

This book analyses the potentials and consequences of a change from production-based to consumption-based approaches in international climate policy. With the help of an analytical model, the author investigates the effects of different policy variants on environmental effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, carbon leakage, competitiveness and the global distribution of income. The economic, legal and political background and the often contradictory findings on consumption-based approaches are reviewed in great detail. In the final chapters, options for practical policy design are developed. The book concludes that a switch to consumption orientation is not a policy tool whereby industrialized countries can unilaterally improve climate policy effectiveness, but should rather be seen as a possible intermediate step on the way to a fully multilateral mitigation strategy.

Christian Lininger is a journalist specializing in foreign affairs and an economist. For two decades he has covered international politics from around the globe for the ORF, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. Currently, he works as the ORF’s Moscow correspondent. Lininger’s economic research interests are international economics, environmental economics and climate policy. While writing this book, Lininger worked at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz, Austria.