Topic: Equity / Justice
It’s not just that the challenges for the international climate policy have to be managed quickly there is also a need for a just solution. The struggle for a fair agreement is an important topic discussed in the negotiations.
The HBF, Christian Aid and other institutions support the “Greenhouse Development Rights Framework” written by EcoEquity and the Stockholm Environment Institute. GDRs is an approach that makes the principle of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change of “common but differentiated responsibility and respective capability” of member states tangible by providing a transparent “responsibility and capacity” indicator and defining a development threshold. Only above this threshold can it be assumed that individuals have already realised their right to development and that they are therefore able to afford both financial and technical efforts for dealing with climate change. The right to development applies to individuals and not to states, so inequalities within states are taken into account. The underlying principles and resulting obligations of this framework are applicable to emission reduction targets as well as e.g. to the contribution of states to an international adaptation fund. The political consequences are clear:
- 1. Industrial nations have a dual obligation: They have to achieve massive emission reductions in their national economies (see the paper A call for Leadership, which criticizes the emission targets of the European Union from a GDRs perspective). But they also have an obligation to contribute in financial and other ways to climate change strategies in developing and emerging countries.
- 2. The elites and consumers from developing countries and emerging markets whose income lies above the threshold also have a clearly defined responsibility and capacity to contribute to climate protection and climate adaptation, and they have to accept this responsibility.
Greenhouse Development Rights Framework
Besides the GDRs there are other proposals for effort sharing in a future climate agreement, such as:
The South-North Dialogue, which was initiated by the Wuppertal Institute and the Energy Research Centre in South Africa. The Dialogue with scientists from industrial and developing countries has lead to a package of policy recommendations providing a strong reduction of emissions in Northern countries, but also involves responsibilities of developing countries in a post-Kyoto agreement: South-North Dialogue - Equity in the Greenhouse.
Another proposal is burden sharing „per capita“. This strategy measures CO2 emissions per capita. National emissions are not considered absolutely, but are rather compared in relation to the number of their citizens. Thus China is the biggest CO2 polluter regarding absolute emissions, but with relative emissions of 3.2 tons per capita it lies well below the United States with 20 tons per capita. However, burden sharing per capita is intended to include developing countries and emerging markets with higher CO2 emissions per capita in emission trading, so that China would have to accept emission reduction targets as well. German chancellor Angela Merkel has declared that based on long-term considerations per capita emissions of 2 tons will be sustainably acceptable.
A recent study by Ecofys compares the GDR approach with other established approaches:
Report Distribution of emission allowances under the Greenhouse Development Rights by Ecofys, Authors: Niklas Höhne and Sara Moltmann.
