FAIR 1.0 (Framework to Assess International Regimes for differentiation of commitments): An interactive model to explore options for differentiation of future commitments in international climate policy making. User documentation

The model includes three different approaches for evaluating international commitment regimes:

1. Increasing participation: in this mode the number of parties involved and their level of commitment gradually increase according to participation and differentiation rules, such as per- capita income, per capita emissions, or contribution to global warming.
2. Convergence: in this mode all parties participate in the burden-sharing regime, with emission rights converging to equal per capita levels over time.
3. Triptych: different burden sharing rules are applied for different sectors (e.g. convergence of per capita emissions in the domestic sector, efficiency and de-carbonisation targets for the industry sector and the power generation sector).

The first two modes are representatives of top-down methodologies, so from global emission ceilings to regional emission budgets, whereas the triptych approach is more bottom-up in character, although it can be combined with specific emission targets (as illustrated in the case of the EU). In order to construct and evaluate global emission profiles, the FAIR model also has the mode: Scenario construction. In this mode the impacts in terms of the main climate indicators can be scanned of a constructed or well-defined global emissions profile.