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Tokyo’s Linked CO2 Cap-and-Trade Program: A Blueprint for Cooperative Market-Based Megacity Climate Policy?

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Governance for a Sustainable Future

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Abstract

Megacities play a key role in climate policy. In this regard, Tokyo—the world’s biggest metropolis—leads the world with respect to the use of local carbon pricing, having implemented a cap-and-trade program more than a decade ago. Over the past 20 years, cap-and-trade schemes have proliferated across the world and at different levels of governance, due to their merits of environmental effectiveness and economic efficiency. Against this background, in this chapter we describe the design of the domestically linked Tokyo Metropolitan Government Cap-and-Trade Program; evaluate it based on ambitious sustainability criteria; and analyze its results using the latest performance data. We also take a closer look at the underlying politics that made this innovative approach to local climate policy possible. In doing so, we show that, despite some design flaws, Tokyo’s linked carbon market has performed well—particularly with respect to emission reductions—and can thus act as a blueprint for sustainable climate policy from the bottom up.

This chapter largely builds on research published in Rudolph and Aydos (2021), Rudolph and Morotomi (2016), and Rudolph and Kawakatsu (2013, 2019).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Church and Society, Protestant Church of Westphalia, Bielefeld, Germany

    Sven Rudolph

  2. Kyoto Prefectural University, Kyoto, Japan

    Takeshi Kawakatsu

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  1. Sven Rudolph
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  2. Takeshi Kawakatsu
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Correspondence to Sven Rudolph .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan

    Yukio Adachi

  2. Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan

    Makoto Usami

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Rudolph, S., Kawakatsu, T. (2023). Tokyo’s Linked CO2 Cap-and-Trade Program: A Blueprint for Cooperative Market-Based Megacity Climate Policy?. In: Adachi, Y., Usami, M. (eds) Governance for a Sustainable Future. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4771-3_10

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