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
World Wildlife Fund — “An Offer for Discussion”
Back before Copenhagen, the World Wildlife Fund released a study in which it compared Contraction and Convergence, Common but Differentiated Convergence, and Greenhouse Development Rights, and then almost endorsed GDRs. More recently, WWF India has taken that study off the shelf and presented its results in a number of prominent venues. The presentation, here, is notable for its clarity, and its open tone. It still almost endorses GDRs, but it really is “An offer for discussion.”
Also notable in this presentation is the completeness with which the remaining budget is presented:
To be consistent with staying well below 2 degree C
1. Emission budget of 1660 GtCO2eq between 1990 and 2050 excluding LUCF, or about 1000 GtCO2eq between 2010 and 2050 (taking account of emissions 1990 – 2010)
2 Assuming that emissions from LUCF remains constant at 2. Assuming that emissions from LUCF remains constant at 4GtCo2 until 2010 and decline to zero between 2010 and 2020; becoming a stable net sink of emissions afterwards
3. Allowable global emission of ~ 22 GtCO2eq/year globally on average 2010 – 2050. Compared to >50 GtCO2eq/y today.
And there’s also this note, which is almost in a class by itself:
‘Negative’ allowances for Annex I reflect on substantive funding requirements for poorer nations to get below their allowances
• Negative allowances for Annex 1 countries, also provide opportunities for emerging economies to grow, but by integrating low carbon development path. An emissions budget of about 900/1000 Gt CO2e (2009-2050) requires to leave about 80% of all known conventional and unconventional recoverable fossil fuel reserves under ground.
A Review of Public Sources for Financing Climate Adaptation and Mitigation
Written by a large, somewhat ad hoc consortium of NGOs as input into the deliberations of the UN High Level Advisory Group on Climate Finance (AGF), this paper is the most comprehensive civil society statement yet of how so-called “international” or “innovative” finance should properly work. It closely considers the necessary scale, the sources appropriate to, and the conditions necessary to the equitable and adequate operationalization of such finance. In this regard, it is the authoritative civil society statement, or at least it was, at the time of its publication.
Interestingly, this paper is evidence for the claim that the the “equity debate” is converging on a widely shared understanding. When equity frameworks enter into the analysis, only two, closely-related frameworks are considered relevant to the problem at hand in the negotiations. Unsurprisingly, they are the “climate debt framework” and Greenhouse Development Rights.
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.
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 plan to have it completed prior to the Cancun summit.
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:
Global Warming and distributive justice
Another short treatment of GDRs, in German. This time in Kurswechsel (Zeitschrift fur gesellschafts-, wirtschafts- und umweltpolitische Alternativen) in the context of a symposium on climate change and distributive justice. It looks good, and we wish we could read it. Alas, only one other piece is in English — Climate Change, Industrial Policies, and the way out of the crisis.
The post-Copenhagen Loopholes discussion
One recent, notable development in the movement response to the low ambition of the current negotiations has been a focus on the “loopholes” by which the Annex 1 countries avoid taking meaningful mitigation action. This response has been extremely wide — beginning with the “Gigatonnes gap” effort launched by CAN in Copenhagen and subsequently generalizing into an effort that is supported across most all sectors of the global movement.
This effort touches on the GDRs project, of course, for the simple reason that loopholes aim to reduce or even eliminate the total global effort that we seek to instead quantify and fairly divide. Our contribution to it has so far consisted of a presentation given by Sivan Kartha at a UN workshop that was recently held at the “Bonn III” intersessional. This presentation — described here – will be followed soon by a technical paper.
Climate Action Network debates GDRs and related approaches
Recently, the Climate Action Network has begun to take the effort-sharing question more seriously, a development for which we take some credit. In any case, we have made a considerable effort to participate in the CAN debate, and to learn from it. This effort has included a framing paper called Principle-based burden sharing in an MRV world, an invited statement to the CAN post-Copenhagen strategy conference, and a sustained, and influential, role in the subsequent “Common but differentiated Responsibilities and respective capabilities” working group. The headline here is that, as the post-Copenhagen negotiations continue, this working group only becomes more important — both AOSIS and the LDCs have requested input from CAN on the equity and effort questions.
Mainstreaming GDRs into the research & policy literature
In the last year, GDRs has been decisively mainstreamed into the energy research, climate policy, and climate ethics literatures. A perusal of the Notices and Media page of this website provides the details — some of which are quite striking — but the overall trend is notable in itself. It includes the established environmental networks (both Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have in the last year released major energy policy reports that include GDRs as part of their core analysis, and WWF continues to suggest that something like GDRs is going to be seen as necessary, as soon as we become serious about trying to stabilize the climate), the policy literature (including the literature in India and China, where the climate equity debate is heating up), and of course the academic literature, where GDRs in now established within the core of the expanding equity debate.
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?”
All GDRs Accomplishments