1. Climate equity and global cooperation
Sivan Kartha
Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation/UNDP Seminar
14 February 2013
Stockholm 1

2. A global pathway “likely” to keep warming below 2C
File: Hairpin_22sk – Nordic Council (hist)
CAT 2.0 – peak by GtCo2e in 2020.
~2 in 3 chance of keeping warming below 2C
(1 in 3 of exceeding, non-trivial chance of exceeding 3%!)
Ax1 -40% below 1990 by 2020, -85% below 1990 by (CAAGR -4.5% over )
nAx1 -50% below peak by 2050 (CAAGR -2% over )

3. A global pathway “likely” to keep warming below 2C
Global emissions

4. Developed Country Emissions
A global pathway “likely” to keep warming below 2C
Global emissions
Developed Country Emissions

5. Developing Country Emissions Developed Country Emissions
A global pathway “likely” to keep warming below 2C
Global emissions
Developing Country Emissions
Developed Country Emissions

6. Income in year that emissions peak
Fraction of Annex 1 emissions 2015
United States 38%
Canada 5%
Australia 3%
Japan 7%
15%
EU27 28%
(of which EU12 5%)
Total: ~80%
Fraction of non Annex 1 emissions (2015 )
South Africa 1.3%
Iran 2.3%
Brazil 6.3%
9.9%
China 36.6%
India 8.7%
Indonesia 7.6%
LDCs 7.6%
Total: 23.9%
Total: 69%
China: ~$10000 (1930, almost, then 1940)
Indonesia: ~$5700 (1900)
India: ~$4600 (1882)
~$5000 (1890s)
93% of non-Annex 1 emissions arise in non-Annex 1 countries that are poorer than all Annex 1 countries in which 93% of Annex 1 emissions arise. Dividing line is about $15,000
Sources: World Development Indicators Databank (World Bank, April 2012); Incomes in 2005 PPP US$

7. Income in year that emissions peak
Sources: World Development Indicators Databank (World Bank, April 2012); Incomes in 2005 PPP US$

8. Income and Capacity income distributions (relative to a “development threshold”)
This leads us toward an indicative calculation for allocating a nation’s share of a global costs, whether it be the costs of mitigation or the costs of adaptation. With these three notions – Obligations, Capacity, and Responsibility – in hand, let us illustrate what this means quantitatively…
First, capacity...
The curves here represent reasonable approximations of the income distributions within these three countries. Each chart arrays people from poorest (on the left) to the wealthiest (on the right) member of these three countries, with the length of the X-axis scaled to the relative population of each country. (We’ve constructed such curves for all Parties to the UNFCCC, using data from the World Bank and the World Income Inequality Databases of per-capita incomes and GINI coefficients, respectively.)
The development threshold at $7,500 is shown, cutting through each country’s income distribution curve and thus dividing total national income into a fraction (yellow) below the development threshold, and a fraction (green) that the wealthier portion of the population earns in excess of the development threshold. The green area thus graphically reflects our estimate of each country’s capacity. If we think of the GDRs burden sharing system as a progressive global income tax (it’s actually more like a progressive global capacity and responsibility tax) the development threshold can be thought of as marking a “0% tax bracket”, set so as to shield the resources of those who’ve not yet reached the development threshold.
As it turns out, nearly 7% of India’s population earns more than $7,500. These are the members of that burgeoning “Indian middle class” that has so captured the attention of the media. In terms of shear numbers, they comprise a large and growing consuming class, one that is roughly the size of the population of the consuming class in, say, the United Kingdom or France. But this is there where the similarity ends. For these Indian consumers have a much lower aggregate income, and the fraction of India’s income that’s in excess of the $7,500 development threshold is less than one-sixth as large as the UK’s of France’s.
Similar observations can be made about the approximately 27% of China’s population that comprises its consuming class, which fully as large as the US population, nearly all of which is above the development threshold. However, China’s income above the development threshold is less than one-sixth as much as the US’s.
On thing that is plainly obvious is that the US, despite its much smaller population, has the lion’s share of the capacity – and (you’ll see in a moment) a similarly disproportionate national obligation. The obligation falling on those members of the global consuming class residing in India and China is small enough that it might be reasonable to excuse them altogether. However, as a political matter, it is not possible to do so. It is extremely unlikely that any working consensus to pay a large proportion of the total mitigation and adaptation bill could ever emerge in the US if the “wealthy” people in the Indian and Chinese nations were not also paying their “fair shares.”
Ultimately, this “Greenhouse Development Rights” approach seeks to define, in quantifiable terms, such national fair shares – fair in the sense of safeguarding the right to development, by – again – shielding those below the line from the costs of action.
The precisely analogous calculation can be done for responsibility….
Sources: World Development Indicators Databank , World Income Inequality Database , 2010 incomes in PPP US$(2005 )

9. THANK YOU Final comments
“Responsibility here, action there”: mechanisms for international cooperation.
Emergency mobilization: Implications of rapid & perhaps disruptive emission reduction
Lifestyles: Profound equity implications.
Political economy of climate (in)action: winners & losers, powerful & disempowered
THANK YOU

10. What’s equity got to do with it?
I. Moral Argument: draws upon widely applied ethical principles II. Legal argument: “…on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.” [UNFCCC ] “In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit to sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command.” [Rio Declaration, 1992] III. Effectiveness argument: that argues that an international collective arrangement that is perceived to be fair has greater legitimacy and is more likely to be internationally agreed and domestically implemented, reducing the risks of defection and a cooperative collapse

11. Emissions and Responsibility fossil CO2 (since 1990) (showing portion defined as “responsibility”)
This graph shows responsibility, for several countries and regions (not just three countries as in the previous chart). The GDRs framework defines responsibility in a manner precisely analogous to the way that it defines capacity. That is, it takes total emissions, and excludes the emissions that correspond to consumption below the development threshold.
This definition is a recognition of the distinction between emissions arising from meeting basic needs, and emissions corresponding to discretionary consumption, and reflects the premise that these different types of emissions are of fundamentally different natures: in essence, basic emissions do not imply responsibility, whereas discretionary consumption does. It thus preserves a right to development insofar as it allows people to strive toward the development threshold unencumbered by the need to meet emissions constraints. (Note, there are indeed emissions constraints, and these must be met, but not at the expense of those below the development threshold.)
Instead of showing the whole distribution across income classes in each country/region, as in the previous Capacity chart, we here collapse each curve and just show the relative area above and below the development threshold, which is the key thing. The total height of each bar reflects the cumulative emissions since The yellow portion shows the emissions corresponding to consumption below the development threshold, and the green portion the aggregate responsibility. (These are thus fully analogous to the yellow and green portions of the graphs in the previous slide of Capacity, except that they are not presented as a full distribution across the national populations.) Although our indicative calculation of responsibility takes 1990 as the start year, one can certainly argue that an earlier start year would be more appropriate. All else equal, it would increase the relative responsibility of the Annex 1 nations, which began the process of industrialization much earlier, compared to non-Annex 1 nations.
We’ve done our analysis taking only cumulative emissions going back to 1990, when the UNFCCC was being drafted, based on the argument that as of that time countries would have unequivocally known that they would ultimately bear responsibility for their ensuing emissions. However, a strong argument can also be made that knowledge is not the determining factor in responsibility, and that a reasonable indicator of responsibility should account for earlier emissions as well. (We intend to add that option to our future analyses.)
So what is the upshot, when you combine the capacity and responsibility in some sensible way, for example by taking the mean. What does it imply in terms of national obligations?

12. Figure 3.1: Ranges of pathways limiting global temperature increase with a “likely” (>66%) chance of staying below various
temperature limits (top panel). Time slices of the ranges are shown in the bottom panel for 2020, 2030, and 2050 global total
emissions, respectively. The small box around 2020 in the upper diagram indicates the emission levels consistent with the current
pledges as assessed in Chapter 2.
UNEP Gap Report 2012, p.23

13. Sea level rise in the long-term perspective