Governing by expertise: the contested politics of (accounting for) land-based mitigation in a new climate agreement

Abstract

This article analyzes the contested politics of including (and accounting for) land-based mitigation in a post-2020 climate agreement. Emissions from land have been only partially included to date within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol. The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015 and “applicable to all” for the post-2020 period, raises the possibility of unprecedented reliance on land-based mitigation. This has significant consequences for furthering both ambition and equity in global climate mitigation efforts. Yet, what are these consequences, and how have they manifested themselves in the existing (pre-2020) multilateral climate regime? W..