GDRs Accomplishments

• 12-10-2009
• Draft: Principle-based, comparable Annex 1 targets

• 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.



• 12-08-2009
• 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…)



• 09-01-2009
• 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.



• 07-06-2009
• 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.

  (more…)



• 03-27-2009
• GDRs gets a strong vote of support from South Africa

• The recent negotiations (AWG-KP, Bonn, March 27) saw South Africa speak for GDRs in the opening plenary.   The context was principle-based burden sharing amoung the developed (Annex 1) countries, and South Africa showed a set of options that included a modified version of the GDRs Responsibility and Capacity Index.   Suffice it to say that we were quite pleased, but that some folks found the recommended Annex 1 targets to be rather… challenging.

  For the background research behind this endorsement, see this report.



• 12-05-2008
• COP14 in Poznan

• The 14th Conference of Parties in Poznan, Poland is a major event for Greenhouse Development Rights.   The GDRs side event is a big deal, including the head of Mexican delegation, as well as representatives from Norwegian Finance Ministry and UNFCCC Secretariat.  There are lots of other GDRs events as well.  This is the first COP in which GDRs is actively promoted (see the Countdown to Copenhagen campaign) by a large number of campaign organizations, including not just Christian Aid but also many other members of the 17 member Aprodev network.



• 11-13-2008
• Electoral programme of the German Greens for the European elections 2009 endorses GDRs

• For those who read German…

  Wir wollen, dass die Europäische Union und ihre Mitgliedstaaten auf Grundlage
  ihrer historischen Verantwortung und ihrer wirtschaftlichen Fähigkeit zur
  Finanzierung notwendiger  Anpassungs- und Reduktionsmaßnahmen in
  Entwicklungsländern beitragen. Das Recht auf Entwicklung muss im Mittelpunkt
  dieser Politik stehen. Wir unterstützen den Ansatz der  *Greenhouse Development
  Rights". Dabei werden die Reichen aller Länder in die  Reduktionsbemühungen
  einbezogen, während Menschen, die unter einer bestimmten  Wohlstandsgrenze
  leben, das Recht auf Entwicklung haben.



• 10-15-2008
• The second Equity Summit in Chennai, India

• In October of 2008 the Climate Action Network International has its second “Equity Summit,” in Chennai India.  About 140 people attend, from around the world, and this time it was not “Contraction and Convergence” which played the role of “the alternative,” but rather the Greenhouse Development Rights framework, which had a large number of visible supporters.



• 07-15-2008
• GDRs in Thailand

• In July 2008, Tom Athanasiou presents Greenhouse Development Rights at the founding conference of the Climate Justice Now network in Bangkok Thailand.  Also in Bangkok, the first country report focusing on a developing country – Thailand, of course – is released.



• 05-15-2008
• First GDRs country reports published

• In May, in Oslo Norway, the first of the GDRs “country reports” is published, and launched with a series of meetings and media events.  These reports compare a stated national climate-policy-of-record to the national climate obligation, as calculated by the GDRs reference case.



• 01-22-2008
• GDRs gains more support in 2008

• Greenhouse Development Rights speaking tour continues, and goes international, and becomes, in many ways, the year’s major activity.  As it proceeds, GDRs gradually collects more and more supporters around the world.  Formal organization of a “Friends of Greenhouse Development Rights” circle that includes not only Christian Aid but also Oxfam International, and a widening circle of individual supporters from most major international climate networks.



• 12-01-2007
• GDRs at the COP13 in Bali

• Bali was a milestone for the Greenhouse Development Rights project.  Not only did the first edition of the GDRs  book look great, but our side event (the slides are archived here; the UN’s archived video, which may or may not work, is listed at 10:30 AM on this page) went very well indeed.   In fact it was packed.  And GDRs was also presented or discussed in six other side events, which may be some sort of record.  It was certainly a sign that, against the background of  “negotiations as usual,” there was substantial interest in facing the real challenge — a principle-based burden sharing system designed to be fair, and thus viable, even under the stress of an emergency transition.

  (more…)



• 11-01-2007
• GDRs presentation to UN Dept of Economic and Social Affairs

• GDRs has a major breakthrough into high policy comes late in the year, with an influential presentation to an experts group convened by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.



• 09-01-2007
• First edition of Greenhouse Development Rights book

• In early December, the German Heinrich Böll Foundation publishes the first edition of the Greenhouse Development Rights book: The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World.   This book is subsequently widely distributed and lifts the GDRs framework to a new level of visibility.



• 08-09-2007
• First major GDRs media coverage

• In late 2006, Tom Athanasiou conducted the first major Greenhouse Development Rights speaking tour, in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane Australia.  At it, he picked up GDR’s first major piece of mainstream press attention, in the Sydney Morning Herald.



• 01-01-2007
• EcoEquity hired by Friends of the Earth International

• EcoEquity is hired by Friends of the Earth International to do a formal evaluation of its international climate campaign.  Project involves dozens of detailed interviews from FOE affiliate organizations around the world.   The final report was never published publicly, but is widely distributed within NGO networks (you can get it here).  We like to think that it was useful in clarifying some key movement debates, particularly those  around the role of market mechanisms in the international climate regime.



• 12-01-2006
• Climate Policy Frameworks and Proposals

• In late 2006, EcoEquity, under contract for the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, published A Brief, Adequacy and Equity-Based Evaluation of Some Prominent Climate Policy Frameworks and Proposals, an incisive and reasonably comprehensive overview and critique of “principle based” approaches to differentiation.



• 06-01-2006
• The launch of GDRs

• Working together, the Stockholm Environment Institute and EcoEquity (after having jointly abandoned the Per Capita Plus project) developed and launched the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) framework.   This was a major event in their collaboration, and entirely redefined it.



• 12-07-2005
• International Financial Mechanisms

• EcoEquity managed, in a blog it published during 2005’s Montreal climate conference, to finally engage the anti-emission-trading mainstream of the climate-justice movement in a public debate about international financial mechanisms.  This debate is still extremely revealing, and is worth reading.



• 12-07-2005
• Resident Climate Commentator

• Tom Athanasiou became the resident climate commentator at the online foreign policy think tank Foreign Policy in Focus.  See for example, Where We Stand, which was written just before the 2005’s Montreal climate conference.



• 01-01-2005
• An honest but extremely demanding target

• In late 2006, Paul Baer, by way of consulting he was doing for the UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research, influenced the International Climate Change Taskforce to endorse a long-term climate stabilization target of 400 ppm CO2-equivalent.  This is, as far as we know, the first time this honest but extremely demanding target was publicly tied to the 2°C threshold.



• 07-01-2002
• Joining forces with the Tellus Institute

• In 2002, EcoEquity joined forces with Steve Bernow (now deceased) and Sivan Kartha, both of which were at that time scientists at the Boston-based Tellus Institute.   Together, we worked to develop the Contraction and Convergence approach to global climate justice into a more robust system capable of accounting for both per-capita emissions rights and varying national circumstances.  This became known as the “Per Capita Plus” project.



• 06-15-2002
• Dead Heat

• Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer of EcoEquity published Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming (Seven Stories Press, 2002).  The book was well received, has been widely quoted, and is used in academic courses at Princeton and the University of Washington, among others.



• 06-01-2002
• Equity Summit

• In 2002, EcoEquity’s Tom Athanasiou served as one of the core organizers of the Climate Action Network’s 2002 “Equity Summit” in Bali, a key climate movement strategy retreat in which the demands of equity were closely examined and debated.



• 01-01-2002
• EcoEquity website

• EcoEquity established itself by maintaining a well-regarded, well-trafficked website in which it published a number of noted essays.  These  focused on the politics and philosophy of equity in the climate debate, but also sought to summarize emerging climate science in a clear and straight-forward manner.



• 01-01-2000
• EcoEquity Established

• EcoEquity was established in 2000 to be a trusted, expert presence in a number of key climate networks, including (domestically) the U.S. Environmental Justice movement, where it has long been a member of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative and (internationally) the Climate Action Network.