ACCIT

Abstract:

International agreements (such as the UNFCC Kyoto Protocol) on greenhouse gas emission reduction have established respective emission accounting systems as a basis to set reduction targets for the individual participants and to monitor their progress. These accounting frameworks are based on the so called 'Production-Based Principle' (PBP), in which environmental responsibilities are restricted to geographical borders and thus capture only the environmental impacts linked to the domestic production of goods and exports. This project seeks to augment this view by applying the 'Consumption Based Principle' (CBP) which implies a reattribution of embodied environmental impacts associated with exports and an extension of the countries' domestic environmental responsibilities by those impacts which take place abroad. Methodologically a multiregional Input-Output model will be deployed to carry out the CBP-analysis for Austria, the EU and major world regions and economies. By means of a Structural Path Analysis