Anyone who’s following the “how the hell are we going to pay the costs of an emergency global climate transition in a reasonably fair way” debate should take a few minutes to read a short paper that Bert Metz just wrote under the title Making a Pledge and Review System Work: National Green Growth Plans, Policies, and a Different Approach to Equity.

This paper was written for a recent workshop, organized by the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and held there just after the Warsaw climate conference.  The workshop had the rather enigmatic title of Building the Hinge: Reinforcing National and Global Climate Governance Mechanisms, and it covered quite a lot of ground.  A summary of the proceedings is here.  Our focus is primarily on “Theme 4: Equity,” though the summary is very brief and, if you want the meat, it’s best to go back to Metz’s paper.

Metz posits an equity debate that is defined by the “Equity Reference Framework” approach on the one side and “Cost sharing” on the other. As long time supporters of the equity reference approach who are extremely concerned with cost sharing, we consider this to be a false dichotomy. In fact, we believe that the core of the climate equity challenge is, almost by definition, to contrive an approach that, while guided by an shared and constantly improving equity reference framework, nonetheless takes the uneven distribution of “mitigation potential,” and thus cost sharing, into proper account.

[Read more…]

“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.

[Read more…]

Actually, the newer acronym for “Common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” seems to be CBDRC.  And if you read CBDR&RC in a regime applicable to all — the fine  new paper by Harald Winkler & Lavanya Rajamani — you will learn a great deal about the subject indeed.  In particular, you’ll learn a great deal about the need for a “more nuanced interpretation” of CBDRC than the one that asserts that “equity” implies a continued (and unproblematic) defense on the Convention Annexes, as we have them today.   To quote the abstract: 

“The world has changed since the UNFCCC was negotiated in 1992. It is now less helpful to think only in terms of two groups of countries (e.g. Annex I and non-Annex I), and evident that there are significant differences between member states. This requires a more nuanced interpretation of the principles of equity and CBDR&RC, which is an integral part of the UNFCCC. The options for the different approaches outlined in this article might help in the construction of a more nuanced model. All must do more, while some must do more still than others.”

[Read more…]

Jeff Spross over at Climate Progress just posted a nice piece called Here’s Why The U.S. Is Morally Obligated To Act On Climate Change.  It’s mostly a quick take on GDRs, but it puts it into the US context in a pretty useful way.  It’s worth a look, and a sign that we are inching closer to dealing with reality.

Update: See as well Spross’ Can Climate Change And Poverty Both Be Defeated At Once?, which is many ways a followup to his earlier piece.  The foreground topic here is the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate study, which is just getting off the ground.  It’s goal?

“At a time when governments throughout the world are struggling to boost growth, increase access to energy, and improve food security, it is essential that the full costs and benefits of climate policies are more clearly understood,” said Lord Nicholas Stern, Vice-Chair of the Commission. “It cannot be a case of either achieving growth or tackling global warming. It must be both.”

A new piece by Alex Morales on bloomberg.com features the rather unambiguous title of Climate Fix That’s Fair Assigns U.S. Three Times Chinese Effort. It begins with these paras:

“A fair climate fix would assign the U.S. almost three times the effort of cutting carbon dioxide output as China, which in 2006 became the biggest emitter, research by the Stockholm Environment Institute suggests.

The U.S., the biggest historical emitter, would have responsibility for 29.1 percent of the greenhouse gas cuts needed in 2020 to keep the planet on a pathway that avoids the worst effects of global warming, according to the institute’s calculations. That compares with 10.4 percent for China, 22.9 percent for the European Union and 1.2 percent for India.

The research aims to quantify how the principle of equity can guide emissions targets being devised at United Nations climate talks among more than 190 nations that aim to write by 2015 a new treaty to take hold from 2020. Two weeks of discussions began today in Bonn, Germany. Debate about fairness has frequently stalled the discussions as nations wrangle over who bears the greatest responsibility for tackling climate change.”

The piece is worth reading, for it’s a glimpse into the next round of the climate talks, which seems like they may finally face reality. Ethical reality as well as scientific reality.

The piece extensively quotes the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Sivan Kartha, and features numbers from the Greenhouse Development Rights framework. The real news, though, is that the “fair shares” discussion is no longer confined to a few activist networks and research institutes. There are rumblings of a larger effort, perhaps even a semi-official one.

What’s not clear in this piece is that we can easily afford to save our civilization. This has always been the case, though the politics are rather challenging, and people have balked at drawing conclusions.

The difference now is that everyone can now see the elephant in the room.