A CAN Briefing Paper on Equity - A Fair Way to Measure Climate Action What is equity? The international climate negotiations are complex. Many tough questions need to be asked and answered if we’re to achieve a comprehensive global climate action plan in 2015. One of the key sticking points is how to fairly divide climate action – and costs – between countries. Nations around the world not only emit at different levels now; they also have radically different levels of historical responsibility for the current climate crisis, and vastly different financial and technological capabilities to deal with it. What’s more, poor countries - or poor people for that matter - that have done little to cause the climate crisis are often the most vulnerable to climate-related destruction. The convention of the UNFCCC, or the rule book, already acknowledges that countries have “common, but differentiated responsibilities” to deal with the climate crisis and in accordance with “respective capabilities,” and that countries have “a right to, and should promote, sustainable development.” But little has been done to quantify what these statements could actually mean for different countries - with regard to emissions reduction targets and in terms of contributions to international funds to help poorer countries effectively tackle climate change. What is CAN doing? Rather than shying away from discussing how to calculate each nation’s fair share of the shared global effort that is now before us, CAN believes it’s essential that this issue is tackled head on. Otherwise the attempt to sign a comprehensive, global climate action plan in Paris in 2015 will fail. Our “equity working group” is developing detailed briefing papers and recommended policies around this complex issue, and advocating for a coherent equity policy with country delegates at the UNFCCC negotiations. What is CAN proposing? We all know that Copenhagen failed to make the needed breakthrough on climate action. One factor was that the climate action pledges made by countries were weak and often vague, and there was no easy way for them to be compared or assessed or strengthened. Fairness was barely recognized as an important element within the pledges, and as a result the overall climate action to date has been dangerously low. This must change. Countries must know that their pledges will be evaluated in terms of the UNFCCC’s equity principles, and the negotiations must provide them with every incentive and opportunity to pledge their fair share. To this end, CAN recommends that countries agree through the UNFCCC to adopt an “Equity Reference Framework” that allows countries to know what will be expected of them. In practice, this would mean an agreed list of “equity indicators” acting as an independent umpire, allowing countries to judge whether each other’s proposed contributions are at least approximately fair, or if they are holding back and hoping to get a “free ride.” Not that such indicators could ever be the end of the story, but they’d give us a shared framework, one that would empower creative negotiation. The point is to help governments developing climate action policy to understand how their pledges are likely to be viewed by the international community, thereby encouraging increased action. While agreeing to a list of equity indicators will be tricky, we’ve already got a lot to work with. CAN argues that pledges need to acknowledge five factors: • adequacy, • responsibility, • capability, • adaptation need, and • development need. Firstly, the pledges have to keep warming within the internationally agreed threshold of 2°C, after which catastrophic impacts will be more likely felt. The IPCC has just put some very useful carbon budgets onto the table which show how much pollution we can emit and still have a good chance of staying within the threshold. And when it comes to responsibility and capability, don’t forget that the UNFCCC’s rule book already includes these two key principles. And we already have a variety of straight-forward measures of poverty, development and adaptation need - such as per-capita GDP and life expectancy rates, just for starters - which could be used and are already being actively debated. The truth is that we already agree about a great deal. The wealthy countries have reaped the rewards of 200 years of industrialization, and now many other countries are straining for their shares of the human commonwealth. The global economy is dynamic, and the future unwritten. One advantage of using indicators is that the numbers could be crunched at regular intervals to take into account changing circumstances in each country, allowing for goals and targets to be realigned as necessary. Some countries are concerned that if we try to find a way to share climate action fairly between countries, that it will result in a deadlock in the climate talks. CAN believes just the opposite – that we have to discuss this elephant in the room, and that if we don’t we risk another failure. And we have no time for another failure. ENDS
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 13:38:42 +0000
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