From the Kyoto Protocol to the Long Term Cooperative Action: Critical implications and opportunities for a New Market based Mechanism (NMM)

Market (and non-market) mechanisms for the reduction of GHG emissions, were not able to contain the rise in global temperatures.
Among the new and advanced solutions within the context of the carbon market, the adoption of a new market mechanism (NMM) that can help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases on a global level through adopting the so-called sectoral crediting mechanism or trading has recently been proposed.

To understand if and how this new market mechanism can be effective and whether it can really be implemented in the near future is the main purpose of this research thesis.
The new instrument has been the subject of significant and articulated debates within recent international meetings and relevant Conference of the Parties (COP): therefore a similar measure is expected in view of a possible agreement / Post-Kyoto Protocol in 2015.
The idea is to create an ambitious market-based approach, extended to all developing countries and economies and complementary to the flexible mechanisms already in place, by way of taking advantage of the benefits that are derived from the experience gained through the existing market instruments.
Such an approach could offer many opportunities for companies that may participate, for countries in the developing world who would adopt more efficient methods and technologies for the reduction of emissions, and more generally, to create a new market demand for permits and credits within the internal carbon market.

Given the complexity of this ambitious new proposal, it is reasonable to think that, in theory, a NMM might still encounter too many political, economic and technical obstacles within developing countries that adopt it. The thesis proposes as a possible solution to overcome these obstacles, to adopt a mechanism NMM with a hybrid structure of governance and variably designed architecture that takes into account the specificities of each country where it should be implemented. Such a solution requires a long time to be implemented, and in consideration of the increasingly complex requirements of part of the old and new flexible market systems, which even today many economies must seriously deal with, the thesis focuses on how it is necessary to put in a joint effort by the entire community to develop and disseminate knowledge about an NMM, evaluating through further policy analysis, technical, economic and empirical research, especially in the context of the experience already gained.
All this might enable the development, possibly by 2020, of an effective NMM that is able to increase the ambition to contain and reduce global warming which is increasingly necessary and urgent for the global environmental system.