Translating international commitments to domestic action : Mercury co-benefits, sustainable development, and climate policy in China

National commitments on the Paris Agreement on climate change interact with other global environment and sustainability objectives, such as the Minamata Convention on Mercury and the global Sustainable Development Goals. Understanding the interactions between climate change, air pollution, and sustainable development can help decision-makers identify more effective policies that can address environmental and economic goals simultaneously. To address environmental goals, I assess how mercury co-benefits (positive side effects that are peripheral to a policy's main goal) of a national climate policy in China could contribute to the country's commitments under the Minamata Convention. I examine climate policy scenarios in 2030 corresponding to various levels of carbon intensity reductions in addition to a business-as-usual scenario and an end-of-pipe control scenario that meets China's commitments under the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Economic analysis from a computable general equilibrium model of China's economy provides information on changes in economic activity resulting from the climate policy scenarios. Using the economic data from this model, I scale 2007 mercury emissions in a variety of sectors to 2030.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Mulvaney, Kathleen Mara

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Noelle E. Selin.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
• Engineering Systems Division.
• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111243

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/111243