Greenhouse Development Rights: A Proposal for a Fair Global Climate Treaty

Abstract

One of the core debates concerning equity in the response to the threat of anthropogenic climate change is how the responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be allocated, or, correspondingly, how the right to emit greenhouse gases should be allocated. Two alternative approaches that have been widely promoted are, first, to assign obligations to the industrialized countries on the basis of both their ability to pay (wealth) and their responsibility for the majority of prior emissions, or, second, to assign emissions rights on a (possibly modified) equal per capita basis. Both these proposals ignore intra-national distributional equity. Instead, we develop a policy framework we call 'Greenhouse Development Rights' (GDRs) which allocates obligations to pay for climate policies (both mitigation and adaptation) on the basis of an individually quantified metric of capacity (ability to pay) and responsibility (prior emissions). Crucially, the GDRs framework looks at the distribution of income within countries and treats people of equal wealth similarly, whatever country they live in. Thus even poor countries have obligations proportional to the size and wealth of their middle and upper classes, defined relative to a 'development threshold'. While this method nominally identifies the 'right to development' as applying to people, not countries, as a proposal for a treaty among sovereign nations, there is no obvious way to give legal meaning to that right. In this paper, then, we raise some of the philosophical and political questions that arise in trying to quantify capacity and responsibility and to use the 'right to development' as a principle for allocating costs.*

A development-based approach to global climate policy

“…Allocating GHG emissions based on development equity has been acknowledged across the climate ethics literature (e.g., Jamieson 2001;Singer 2004;Gardiner 2004;Shue 1993;Lomborg 2001;Baer et al 2009;Moellendorf 2011). In the context of climate change, the principle of development Fig.…”

Procedural Justice in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

“…Given that allocation rules are not typically considered in isolation, but rather as Multi-criteria rules, it is necessary to make a judgement about the importance 41 See: Babiker and Eckhaus 2002. 42 For a discussion of Multi-criteria approaches, see: Metz et al 2002. 43 Baer et al 2009;Kanie et al 2010, p. 306. 44 See: Meyer 2007.…”

Equity, burden sharing and development pathways: reframing international climate negotiations

“…by combining per capita GDP, per capita emissions and emissions intensity of Gross GDP (Ringius et al 1998); historical responsibilities and equal entitlements (Neumayer 2000); historical responsibilities and ability to pay (Smith et al 1993), thus accounting for the distribution of income within countries (Baer et al 2009). 17 Whether the resulting allowance allocation rules can be related to any above-mentioned principle is unclear.…”