The differing capabilities to respond to the challenge of climate change across Annex Parties under the Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol marks the beginning of a new global effort to combat climate change. By constructing GDP and CO2 emissions as two counteracting performance criteria on a per capita basis, this paper aims to advance the understanding of performance variation among different Annex groups under pressure from climate change. This differs from the traditional application of evaluation and aims to identify inherent efficiency differences across systems rather than separately based on the potential inefficiency of individual countries. The ‘world frontier’ for Annex Parties consists of three layers: Annex II forms the first layer, EIT and Annex III form the second layer, and Annex IV forms the third layer. The inferior performance observed in other non-Annex II Parties (EIT, Annex III, and Annex IV Parties) or the existence of a multi-frontier structure is due to an inherent system affiliation rather than poor performance on the part of the individual country. Annex IV Parties can be particularly vulnerable to controls on an emission intensity basis. By not only serving as a reference for future allocation schemes, the results can shed light on the function of a flexible reduction mechanism for countries that cooperate based on their common but differentiated responsibilities.