Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-2 (section)

=== 2.8.1 Introduction ===

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The key to achieving climate change mitigation targets includes crafting environmentally effective, economically efficient and socially equitable policies. For the purposes of this section, policies are defined broadly as actions to guide decisions to reach explicit goals and, accordingly, climate (mitigation) policies are the ones whose primary objective is to reduce GHG emissions. They include a range of domains from economic and institutional to research and development (R&amp;D) and social policies, and are implemented by various instruments (e.g., market-based and regulatory in the economic domain) and measures (e.g., legal provisions and governance arrangements in the institutional domain) (Chapter 13, and see ‘mitigation policies’ in Glossary). Yet GHG emissions are also affected by policies enacted in various social, economic and environmental areas to pursue primarily non-climatic objectives. This section presents succinct assessments of the outcomes and effectiveness of a few selected policy instruments applied in the last two decades that target climate protection (Sections 2.8.2 and 2.8.3) and GHG emissions impacts of selected other policies primarily aimed at improvements in environmental quality and natural resource management ( [[#2.8.4|Section 2.8.4]] ). [[#footnote-002|12]]

It is rather difficult, though not impossible, to discern the genuine impacts of climate and non-climate policies on GHG emissions. Most current and past policies target only a small part of global emissions in a limited geographical area and/or from a small number of economic sectors. However, in addition to the targeted region or sector, policies and measures tend to affect GHG emissions in other parts of the world. Emissions leakage is the key channel by which such phenomena and complex interactions occur. [[#footnote-001|13]] Uncertainties in impacts, synergies, and trade-offs between policies and measures also complicate the evaluation of emissions impacts. These make it challenging to identify the impacts of any specific policy or measure on emissions of any specific region or sector. Rigorous statistical analyses are necessary for building strong empirical evidence, but the experience with climate-related policy experiments to date is limited.

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