The new GDRs paper is being circulated for comment. It’s called Principle-based, comparable Annex 1 targets and you can download it here. We’d like to hear from you — write us at gdrs_authors@googlegroups.com.
The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework
The Greenhouse Development Rights framework is designed to support a global emergency climate mobilization while, at the same time, preserving the rights of all people to reach a dignified level of sustainable human development free of the privations of poverty.
Notices & Media
GDRs in the Indian equity debate
The equity debate has taken on some new life lately, particularly in India, where the government is actively reconsidering its position on fair-shares approaches to global climate diplomacy. There’s no word yet on what India’s new position will be, but the recent publication of Meeting Equity in a Finite Carbon World: Global Carbon Budgets and Burden Sharing in Mitigation Actions, a “background” report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, indicates that, at least in some circles, the debate is being taken seriously. Indeed, Tata’s background report was followed by a high-level conference that discussed it, and then the publication of Global Carbon Budgets and Equity in Climate Change, an extremely interesting and forthright set of conference papers and post-conference reflections.
The goal of the Tata report, clearly, was to promote a focused, high-level discussion of the “carbon-budget” approach, whereby all people receive an equal allocation to the earth’s cumulative carbon budget. In this is was apparently quite successful. There is much to say here, and a great deal to like, but for the moment we will make only two points. (more…)
Greenpeace International’s energy [r]evolution scenario
We are very pleased to say that Greenpeace International’s new Energy [R]evolution study finds a prominent place for the Greenhouse Development Rights approach to global, fair-shares, cost sharing. This, to be sure, is a largely techno-economic study, but Greenpeace does not imagine that rapid technological change will occur in the absence of a major commitment to equity and fairness.
With equity, though, and using only existing technology, the sky’s the limit.
The Energy [R]evolution demonstrates how the world can get from where we are now, to where we need to be in terms of phasing out fossil fuels, cutting CO2 while ensuring energy security. This includes illustrating how the world’s carbon emissions from the energy and transport sectors alone can peak by 2015 and be cut by over 80 percent by 2050. This phase-out of fossil fuels offers substantial other benefits such as independence from world market fossil fuel prices as well as the creation of millions of new green jobs.
Slow progress on climate negotiations
This notice, from June 1, 2010 issue of the Financial Express in Dhaka in Bangladesh, is notable because it succinctly illustrates the way in Greenhouse Development Rights has come to define the equity debate in much of the world. Note, in particular, that the focus is on the development threshold:
“There must be a radical change in governance the world over, with equity within and among nations as core principles. Alternative development philosophers and activists have proposed many innovative ways of realizing such equity and climate justice, provided these are made to work by a truly democratic, transparent global authority that is ecologically educated and committed. A Greenhouse Development Rights Framework was proposed by some last year. Under this, a $20 a day in purchasing power parity threshold on income/emission was determined. People below this —- meaning the vast majority, including much of the low-income, lower middle classes in poor countries —- would have no emissions-reduction obligation. Those above the threshold would be obliged to undertake cuts according to their responsibility( for climate change) and capability (for mitigation and adaptation). They would also have to help the poor cope with the impacts of climate change.
The Economics of Climate Change in China: Towards a Low Carbon Economy
Although The Economics of Climate Change in China: Towards a Low Carbon Eonomy carries a formal release date of September 2010, the book is already finished – so we’ll take the opportunity here to note its existence. Chapter 8 is entitled “Comparison of Equity Frameworks and a China Analysis of the Greenhouse Development Rights Concept,” and it’s followed immediately by another named “A Deep Carbon Reduction Scenario for China.” Here’s the core of the abstract:
“This ground-breaking economic study, led by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Chinese Economists 50 Forum, brings together leading international thinkers in economics, climate change, and development, to tackle some of the most challenging issues relating to China’s low-carbon development. This study maps out a deep carbon reduction scenario and analyses economic policies that shift carbon use, and shows how China can take strong and decisive action to make deep reductions in carbon emission over the next 40 years while maintaining high economic growth and minimizing adverse effects of a low-carbon transition. Moreover, these reductions can be achieved within the finite global carbon budget for greenhouse gas emissions, as determined by the hard constraints of climate science.”
GDRs in Climate Ethics: Essential Readings
The definitive (academic philosophical) climate ethics reader was just published by Oxford University Press, and we’re happy to say that it contains a chapter on GDRs. The book is Climate Ethics: Essential Readings, and it’s edited by Stephen Gardiner, Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson and Henry Shue.
The GDRs essay is “Greenhouse Development Rights: A Framework for Climate Protection that is ‘More Fair’ than Equal per Capita Emissions Rights,” a focus that makes good sense given the state of the philosophical debate. (Peter Singer also has an essay, “One Atmosphere,” in which he defends the per-capita approach.)
Paul Baer, of the GDRs author’s group, also has a second chapter all his own, one called ‘Adaptation: Who Pays Whom?”
GDRs News
Europe’s Share of the Climate Challenge
A major new report, just released today by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Friends of the Earth Europe, shows that — despite an increasingly widespread sense that climate catastrophe can no longer be averted — radical action, on the necessary scale, is still a very much within the realm of possibility. (more…)
A 350 ppm Emergency Pathway
Click here to download a PDF of this paper.
The first phase of the 350 campaign has been a wild success. “350″ is now an international symbol of emergency climate stabilization. More importantly, the 350 target reflects a scientifically-grounded assessment of what global climate protection really means. But what would it actually take to bring the atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO2) concentration back to 350 parts per million? This memo provides a quick, up-to-date overview of the issues here, which are significant to any plausible emergency emissions-reduction effort. It focuses on the extremely limited size of the global CO2 budget that would remain to us in a 350 ppm future, and on the shape of the emissions pathway that’s needed if we’re to keep within that budget. In particular, it specifies a representative emissions pathway consistent with a 350 ppm concentration target. By way of context, it then compares this 350 pathway to an emission pathway consistent with a 2°C temperature target, and to other, supposedly 2°C-compliant pathways that have significantly lower odds of actually satisfying their target. Finally, it offers a brief glimpse of the challenges that all true emergency climate-reduction targets raise in this North / South divided world.
(more…)
Principle-based burden sharing and the Copenhagen transition
Earlier this year, in preparation for a pre-Copenhagen NGO policy summit, we prepared a framing and background paper called Principle-based Annex 1 Differentiation in the Copenhagen Accord. It’s quite interesting, we think, as a guide to thought and debate, but do note that it was written with an expert audience in mind.
The conference was, we think, quite a successful one. At least it was successful for us, for at it we realized that there was a clear need, one widely perceived within the NGO community, for a new kind of GDRs study, one designed to cast as much light as possible on the effort-sharing debate as we now know it. To move forward with that study, we prepared a detailed Terms of Reference for a study which we call Principle-based burden sharing in an MRV world.
We are now moving ahead on this study, and hope to have it completed in September.
One billion high emitters
We feature this, a pointer to Sharing global CO2 emission reductions among one billion high emitters, since it is in certain ways quite parallel to our own approach. More precisely, the recent proposal by Chakravarty et al., just published in the Proceedings of the [US] National Academy of Sciences, as Greenwire notes, “loosely builds on the idea of ‘greenhouse development rights,’” which is does by by way of analytical machinery quite similar to our own. There are of course differences, which we will note below, but above all we welcome this analysis as an important contribution to the debate.
Second edition of the Greenhouse Development Rights book
The second edition of the Greenhouse Development Rights book is now available.
Download the entire second edition here. Download a brief (6 pages) nicely laid-out version of the executive summary here. Download the longer (10 pages) version of the executive summary here.
The second edition of the Greenhouse Development Rights book is quite similar to the first, which was published in November of 2007. However, it contains a number of important changes. Many are localized matters of precision and style. But others are more significant:
GDRs in Climate Ethics: Essential Readings
The definitive (academic philosophical) climate ethics reader was just published by Oxford University Press, and we’re happy to say that it contains a chapter on GDRs. The book is Climate Ethics: Essential Readings, and it’s edited by Stephen Gardiner, Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson and Henry Shue.
The GDRs essay is “Greenhouse Development Rights: A Framework for Climate Protection that is ‘More Fair’ than Equal per Capita Emissions Rights,” a focus that makes good sense given the state of the philosophical debate. (Peter Singer also has an essay, “One Atmosphere,” in which he defends the per-capita approach.)
Paul Baer, of the GDRs author’s group, also has a second chapter all his own, one called ‘Adaptation: Who Pays Whom?”
The right to development in a climate constrained world
The essay version, but this time in German!
The book, edited by Martin Voss, is Der Klimawandel: Sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven.
Inequality within Nations in the Global Climate Policy Debate
The last year has seen a massive uptick — under the signs of “carbon debt” and “historical responsibility” and even, in rhetorically extreme cases, “reparations” — in the amount of attention being paid to the problem of inequality between nations, in the context of the global climate policy debate.
Much less systematic attention — again in the context of the global climate policy debate (as opposed to domestic debates, where thanks to the environmental justice movement the topic is very much in play) — has been paid to the problem of inequality within nations. This article, The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: Drawing attention to inequality within nations in the global climate policy debate, just released by Development and Change (by invitation for special issue on climate change and capitalism), thus begins to fill a very large, and very important hole.
Going Clean – The Economics of China’s Low-carbon Development
It is difficult to overstate the importance of Going Clean, which was produced by a high-level group that included analysts from both the West and the Chinese Economists 50 Forum. Nor is it easy to overstate the role that the GDRs analysis plays in Going Green’s underlying analysis of the climate challenge.
Among its most notable points, Going Green provides a clear estimate the emissions budget that would be available to China in a world that was seriously committed to holding the 2ºC line:
“If the industrialized (Annex 1) countries were to commit to more ambitious targets of reducing their emissions to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 95 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050, their future emissions would amount to 200 Gt CO2. This would leave 460 Gt CO2 for the non-Annex 1 countries. If we assume that China’s part of this remaining budget is proportional to its share of current non-Annex 1 emissions, its future budget would be 220 Gt CO2.”
Just as significantly, it shows that this is an achievable goal, though only in the context of a fair global regime. (more…)
All GDRs Accomplishments