Latin America's Climate Mitigation Challenges: Sources of Emission, Regional Goals and Policy Priorities

We analyze data on greenhouse gas emissions to describe where Latin America stands with respect to the world in terms of the level and composition of those emissions. We then explore several issues related to mitigation in the region and present three main observations. First, the effort-sharing literature suggests that Latin America should do more than currently is doing in terms of mitigation. Second, decoupling in the region might be more challenging than elsewhere given the sectoral composition of emissions. Third, environmental issues are a lower priority to the Latin American electorate than surveys about preferences might suggest.