The Oxford Approach to “Respective Capabilities”

Benito Müller and Lavan Mahadeva, under the auspices of the European Capacity Building Initiative, have released a very interesting proposal on operationalizing “respective capabilities.”  The Summary for Policy Makers is here, and the Technical Report is here.  Here’s the two-paragraph summary that Müller sent around:

“Whether or not the regime emerging from the current negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be based on an explicit cost/burden sharing formula, the debate about (implied) costs/burdens will be central. Such a debate cannot be genuinely meaningful in the absence of an acceptable operationalisation of Article 3.1 in general, and of the concept of ‘respective capability’ in particular.

The Brief proposes a measure for national ‘differentiated economic capabilities (‘ability to pay’) as integral part of an operationalisation. The primary purpose of the measure is to define or assess climate change cost/burden sharing (schemes). To illustrate the potential use of this methodology the Brief considers two examples: assessing the fairness of a given cost distribution; and developing a (rule-based) ‘graduation scheme’ regarding obligations to pay.”

It’s encouraging to see serious work on this front, in the first instance because true success in the climate negotiations – the stabilization of the climate system before we cross irreversible tipping points– is more or less impossible to imagine without a broad turn towards an open and constructive discussion of Respective Capabilities (RC).  This is because Capacity is fundamental to any coherent treatment of global climate justice.  As noted long ago by Ringius, Torvanger and Underdal, Capacity is one of the three criteria of equity that are “frequently invoked and rarely disputed.”  The others, classically, are Responsibility and Need,[1] and to this list we would add Ambition itself.

There is also more recent, more official, evidence that Capacity will play a major role in the negotiations.  Here, for example, are the ADP Co-chairs in their summary of the Doha discussions.

“Commitments should be defined and differentiated on the basis of equity, the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities, and historical responsibility”. . . “Countries with the greatest capacity should take on economy-wide quantified emission reduction targets, while other countries should contribute in accordance with their national circumstances and on the basis of equity” . . . “No Party should be forced to do something it is not capable of.”

So, what to say about the “Oxford approach” to Capacity?

This is actually a very good question, and the answer could be quite long.  For the moment, though, we just wish to welcome the Oxford approach, and note that it’s both  implicitly and explicitly constructed as a reply to the Greenhouse Development Rights approach.  In this regard, note two similarities between the Oxford approach and GDRs.

First, the Oxford approach explicitly considers national development need when calculating its Capacity.  To be sure, its approach to development need is extremely different from the one that GDRs takes, which it to account for this need by excluding all income below a “threshold” from the calculation of national Capacity.  The Oxford approach, in contrast, is to calculate a “gross capacity,” to scale that gross capacity in a globally progressive manner, and to subtract a “poverty adjustment” from that scaled gross capacity.  The differences here make a big difference, but at the highest level the goal of the two approaches is the same.  Let’s call it developmental justice in a climate constrained world.

Müller and Mahadeva introduce their view of the relevant differences between the two frameworks in a section of their SPM which they call “Prioritizing Poverty.”  To wit:

“Probably the best known formulation of a capability measure – at least in the world of climate change negotiations – is the concept of ‘capable income’ introduced in the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDR) approaches in order to develop their ‘Capacity indicator’ (which serves the same function as our capability index). It measures a country’s capability in terms of the ‘surplus’ annual income of its ‘rich’ inhabitants over and above a US $9000 ‘development threshold’. Poverty, in other words, is taken into account by exempting the income of poor people from being counted as ‘capable’.

This, however, means that no matter how large a country’s poor population (and its poverty problem), under the GDR capability measure it is deemed to have some capability to pay for climate change, and expected to share the burden/cost of climate change. This failure to reflect the magnitude of ‘development needs’ of countries with poor populations is, we believe, not compatible with the idea that countries should have the option to prioritize spending on poverty eradication over climate change cost/burdens.”

A second notable similarity between the Oxford proposal and GDRs is that both are designed to be used in a variety of ways, and in the context of multiple frameworks and architectures.  For example, in the context of a graduation system.  Or directly as a way to allocate costs.  Or as a core element of an “Equity Reference Framework” designed to focus and facilitate the larger policy debate.

To be clear, Müller and Mahadeva are not proposing “that equity in cost/burden sharing or graduation should only be measured in terms of respective capabilities.”  Rather, their “focus on capabilities in this context is due to the desire to complement some earlier work . . . on measuring (historic) responsibilities, and on how to combine different indices.”  In other words, they are developing a indicator that is designed to be used as part of a “basket” of equity indicators, much like the GDRs “Responsibility and Capacity Index” and, more generally, the “New Interpretation of CBDRRC”  that has been proposed by the Climate Action Network.