REPORTS ASSESSMENT REPORTS

Working Group III: Mitigation


Other reports in this collection

Continued from previous page

IEA
See International Energy Agency.

IGO
See Intergovernmental Organization.

Implementation
Implementation refers to the actions (legislation or regulations, judicial decrees, or other actions) that governments take to translate international accords into domestic law and policy. It includes those events and activities that occur after the issuing of authoritative public policy directives, which include the effort to administer and the substantive impacts on people and events. It is important to distinguish between the legal implementation of international commitments (in national law) and the effective implementation (measures that induce changes in the behaviour of target groups). Compliance is a matter of whether and to what extent countries do adhere to the provisions of the accord. Compliance focuses not only on whether implementing measures are in effect, but also on whether there is compliance with the implementing actions. Compliance measures the degree to which the actors whose behaviour is targeted by the agreement, whether they be local government units, corporations, organizations, or individuals, conform to the implementing measures and obligations.

Implementation costs
Costs involved in the implementation of mitigation options. These costs are associated with the necessary institutional changes, information requirements, market size, opportunities for technology gain and learning, and economic incentives needed (grants, subsidies, and taxes).

Income elasticity
The percentage change in the quantity of demand for a good or service, given a 1% change in income.

Industrial ecology
The set of relationships of a particular industry with its environment; often refers to the conscious planning of industrial processes so as to minimize their negative interference with the surrounding environment (e.g., by heat and materials cascading).

Industrialization
The conversion of a society from one based on manual labour to one based on the application of mechanical devices.

Inertia
Property by which matter continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by external force. In the context of climate change mitigation, it is associated with different forms of capital (e.g., physical man-made capital, natural capital, and social non-physical capital, including institutions, regulations, and norms).

Infrastructure
The basic installations and facilities upon which the operation and growth of a community depend, such as roads, schools, electric, gas and water utilities, transportation, and communications systems.

Integrated assessment
A method of analysis that combines results and models from the physical, biological, economic, and social sciences, and the interactions between these components, in a consistent framework to evaluate the status and the consequences of environmental change and the policy responses to it.

Interaction effect
The result or consequence of the interaction of climate change policy instruments with existing domestic tax systems, including both cost-increasing tax interaction and cost-reducing revenue-recycling effect. The former reflects the impact that greenhouse gas policies can have on the functioning of labour and capital markets through their effects on real wages and the real return to capital. By restricting the allowable greenhouse gas emissions, permits, regulations, or a carbon tax raise the costs of production and the prices of output, thus reducing the real return to labour and capital. For policies that raise revenue for the government, carbon taxes and auctioned permits, the revenues can be recycled to reduce existing distortionary taxes. See also double dividend.

Intergovernmental Organization (IGO)
Organizations constituted of governments. Examples include the World Bank, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and other UN and regional organizations. The Climate Convention allows accreditation of these IGOs to attend the negotiating sessions.

International emissions/carbon/energy tax
See emissions tax.

International Energy Agency (IEA)
Paris-based energy forum established in 1974. It is linked with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to enable member countries to take joint measures to meet oil supply emergencies, to share energy information, to co-ordinate their energy policies, and to co-operate in the development of rational energy programmes.

International product and/or technology standards
See Standards.

Continues on next page


Other reports in this collection

IPCC Homepage