A Paper for the Second EFIEA climate policy workshop " From Kyoto to the Hague - European perspectives on making the Kyoto

Traffic is a sector that has growing problems facing the challenges that the Kyoto protocol suggests for global climate protection. The problems seem to be worsening as well in less developed as in the more developed countries. Europe is no exception in this manner, since the CO 2 emissions have increased at the same rate as traffic volumes in the late 1980's and in the 1990's, despite of technical development. Finland has followed this pattern, too. The specific focus of the study is the fairly close correlation of three variables in 1970-1996 in Finland: GDP, road traffic volume and CO 2 emissions from road traffic. There are several strategies for stopping the growth of the CO 2 emissions. In this study, future scenarios of traffic are presented and they are operationalised into the development options of GDP, road traffic volume and CO 2 emissions from road traffic for 1997-2025. On the basis of a review on social scientific literature of different environmental policy strategies, a total of five scenarios are constructed: Business as Usual, Economic and Technological Optimism, Ecological Modernisation, Structural Change and Deep Ecology. The scenarios are then applied more specifically into the future of GDP, road traffic volume and the CO 2 emissions from road traffic in Finland. The study concludes that there are several strategies available in meeting the challenges of climate change in general and Kyoto protocol in particular. No single strategy can be recommended on the basis of scientific literature on environmental policy, because the choice is essentially a matter of values, politics and theory of the nature of climate change. Social scientific environmental research can, however, produce a set of alternative strategic scenarios for decision-makers.