Which countries will contribute to the Green Climate Fund, and how much?

What will it take to get to the $15 billion target?  The Greenhouse Development Rights framework is still one of the best places to go for an answer.  Witness this comment by Annaka Peterson Carvalho is the Senior Program Officer of the Adaptation Finance Accountability Initiative, led by World Resources Institute, Overseas Development Institute, and Oxfam.

In a wide ranging and insightful interview, Yeb Saño — the Philippines lead who rose to fame when, saddened by the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan and frustrated by the slow pace of international action, he fasted through two weeks of U.N. climate change treaty talks, has just publicly endorsed Greenhouse Development Rights.

The interview, on ClimateWire, is wide ranging and very interesting.  Here’s the relevant passage:

CW: According to the latest IPCC report, about half of cumulative emissions between 1750 and 2010 occurred in the last 40 years. Much of that was from China. Doesn’t that beg the question — how much longer will emerging economies be able to use the historic responsibility argument to avoid taking legal obligations, as well?

Saño: Yes, as time goes by, everyone’s historic responsibility will increase. Yes, some emerging economies have been growing faster than we’ve expected. The problem with the optic there is, these countries have done even more than Annex I countries. We’ve seen the China story change drastically in the last decade, and then shift again. Recently, they’ve made some really significant pronouncements where the use of coal is concerned. So it becomes a lot more difficult to keep on pointing the finger at emerging economies when they are also emerging as doing a lot more.

We feel that every ton of carbon dioxide that is emitted into the atmosphere has a corresponding responsibility from where it is emitted from. How do we distribute that? That is the challenge. The Philippines’ point of view is that every country can participate in this regime. I think the key is not to distribute responsibility according to merely the level of emissions per country, but there has to be a certain consideration of the level of welfare of the citizens of each country.

It’s a critical balancing act. Countries like Saudi Arabia and even China will always have the right to invoke the climate convention. [But] speaking from the point of survival, I think we have reached a point where Annex I countries alone can’t solve climate change. That is a fact. We have gone way past that point where rich countries can solve climate change alone. The solution will have to lie in global solidarity, and each country that can contribute must contribute.

CW: And yet Saudi Arabia, with which the Philippines aligns itself in the U.N. talks, has maintained that the contribution of non-Annex I countries in any new agreement should be only to adapt to climate change, while Annex I countries should continue to be the ones to take legal responsibility for cutting emissions. So which is it?

Saño: We cannot force countries which are not Annex I countries to take on obligations of the same nature as Annex I countries. However, I think countries must set aside narrow national interests and be able to contribute in an ambitious way, not just towards a post-2020 regime but an immediate regime. My country cannot afford to wait six more years for the whole world to take action, and six years of no legally binding emissions cuts for me is a catastrophe.

This is a global endeavor, and if we are to subscribe to narrow national interests, we can go our separate ways and forget about solving climate change.

What the Philippines, I think, would like to advocate for is a Greenhouse Development Rights approach. I know that’s not going to resonate well with many countries, both in the north and in the south, but it’s really about rights. It’s about the life of a single Filipino having the same value as one American or one European. We all deserve equitable access to the planet. That should be the primary parameter, rather than economic competitiveness.

Equity and spectrum of mitigation commitments in the 2015 agreement is really a fine piece of work!

We don’t just say this because it’s fair minded and forward looking. We say it because, though we’re pretty full-time on global climate equity, we rarely see stuff as helpful as this.

Equity and Spectrum was just published by the Nordic Council, which is evidently “the official inter-parliamentary body in the Nordic Region” It was authored by Steffen Kallbekken, Håkon Sælen and Arild Underdal, and it’s essential reading for one reason above all — the Paris showdown is less than two years away, and there’s some work to be done before it arrives.

Warsaw was a bad sign. The authors of Equity and Spectrum say that, “at best, modest progress” was made, but they are being too kind. Moreover, they probably know it. Take a look at their summary of the COP19 outcome (section 4.3) and you’ll see what I mean. Warsaw was in many ways a dark and embittering experience, and the more I think about it the more I see it as a warning, one that we had best heed.

The key point of this comment: The authors of Equity and Spectrum have to a large (but not entire) degree reached the same conclusions as we, the authors of this Greenhouse Development Rights framework, and as the Equity working group of the Climate Action Network.  They cite the GDRs work, and discuss the Climate Action Network’s Equity Reference Framework proposal in detail, and it is the later discussion — and how they integrate it into a larger discussion about the path forward — which we were so pleased to see.  They unfortunately miss the fact that the CAN work is essentially a generalization of the “responsibility and capacity index” approach that underlies GDRs, but you can’t have everything.

Here’s how they introduce their position, early in their paper:

“We argue that a potentially feasible and constructive way forward is a mutual recognition approach. This approach implies that parties should accept a set or norms, and a range of interpretations of these norms, as legitimate (i.e. as consistent with the CBDR/RC). Parties should also respect a principle of reciprocity, which means that any (interpretation of a) principle of fairness invoked by oneself can legitimately be invoked also by others.”

This is exactly right, and extremely important, for it does indeed appear to offer a way forward. Which is to say that if we’re all very clever, and very lucky, this will be widely recognized by COP20 in Lima in December. And put into motion as well.

[Read more…]

Very nice piece from the Thomson Reuters Foundation AlterNet folks on the Equity Reference Calculator and Pledge Scorecard.

A State-of-the-Art Review of the Notion of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities in International Negotiations

Different Perspectives on Differentiated Responsibilities — a 63 page academic and literature review published by the German Development Institute — is an very nice piece of work.  We don’t entirely agree with it, and its of limited utility when it comes to the current challenge — finding a path to a dynamic equity reference framework that win broad international acceptance — but it is a very good literature review, and quite helpful in placing the Greenhouse Development Rights approach in context.

This being the GDRs site, we must add that the precis of our system (page 12) is both concise and fair.