Aff is legally binding.

Nevertheless, China's inclusion in a Climate Forum will not be easy. China is suspicious of the G7 initiative and is not inclined to participate in an international format it did not initiate. The Forum should therefore take a proactive stance, accept some risk of confrontation to encourage greater ambition over time, and assume competition between countries. The paper proposes to create a flexible Climate Forum, enabling sub-groups of members to form. Specifically, members would be able to choose the sectors in which they wish to cooperate, decide which members they want to cooperate with, and the time frame of this cooperation. This flexibility will encourage the inclusion of large emitters such as China and India, which are a priori reluctant to join a climate club based on the G7 initiative. By enabling them to cooperate in specific sectors they deem crucial for their decarbonization, the Forum would incentivize countries to increase their participation gradually. Governance: design an open and inclusive Climate Forum To achieve the Forum’s goals, different levels of membership should be considered, involving different levels of integration by sector and by policy. The Forum should allow different subgroups of members to cooperate on certain issues. Companies operating in sectors covered by the Forum should be allowed in as proactive members. Membership requirements must ensure the effectiveness of the Climate Forum, such as the implementation of legally binding policies on the carbon intensity of goods. Carbon pricing: the achievable establishment of a compliance mechanism in a Climate Forum The Forum should be a cooperation platform upon which member countries can work toward harmonizing their carbon pricing policies. The Forum should recognize carbon price heterogeneity in the short to medium-term and become an instrument for cooperation on border carbon adjustment, without aiming at a common carbon border adjustment mechanism for member countries.