Climate Equity Reference Project
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
