The challenge of finding correct measurements for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions: A frame-critical analysis of the Kyoto protocol

Abstract: The Kyoto protocol was the first tangible approach to prevent increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In order to attain this objective, the parties of the protocol decided to put restrictions on anthropogenic emissions caused by production in developed countries. This territorially defined production-based method of measuring might have been a misguided path though. Researchers studying the negative effects of the production-based measuring model have proposed a consumption-based approach instead. The purpose of this study is to investigate why politicians have decided to measure emissions from production instead of consumption. I have used framing theory to analyze the problem-formulation of the protocol and how this constitutes the policy solutions. I have applied the theory from a frame-critical perspective and interpreted the taken-for-granted assumptions of the established policy. By analyzing the protocol from this perspective I have interpreted three assumptions that might lead the policy into this course: the neoliberal belief in the market, the consumer sovereignty and the state-centered norms. My interpretation is that these aspects are leading the conceptualization of climate change into a problem of unsustainable management of common resources, and thus the solutions are aimed for the production instead of the consumption.