Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
stable level will be a
negative
-sum game. In other words, any increase
in emissions (by poor countries) must be matched by an even bigger
decrease (by rich countries).
This all sounds very revolutionary. Yet much of it is enshrined in the 1992
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed and
ratified by 154 nations. Right at the start, this document recognized that
“the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse
gases has originated in developed countries, that per capita emissions in
developing countries are still relatively low and that the share of global
emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social
and development needs”. The Convention laid out the basis of an eventual
agreement between industrialized and developing countries “in accordance
with their common but differentiated responsibilities”, a phrase commonly
shortened just to the initials CBDR by climate negotiators.
There are moral and practical arguments for differentiated cuts. The
main moral argument is that industrialized countries bear the historic
responsibility for the industrial revolution and build-up of greenhouse
gases, so they should bear the brunt of cleaning up the mess. The main
practical argument is that the richer and stronger economies of industrial-
ized countries are better able to bear this brunt. And moral and practical
factors come together in the “polluter pays” principle: that polluters ought
to pay, and that having to pay is a practical incentive not to repeat the
offence.
The differentiation is reflected in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, implement-
ing the UNFCCC. The Kyoto treaty requires only the industrialized coun-
tries to reduce emissions, although they can meet part of their commit-
ment by investing in emission reductions in developing countries under
the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). These investments earn a
credit, which investors can use to meet their own Kyoto commitments or
sell them on to Europe's Emission Trading Scheme. Some critics complain
that the CDM offers industrialized countries a partial cop-out from the
task of reducing emissions at home, but it also provides special - or dif-
ferentiated - help to developing countries with emissions.
Contract and converge?
If the process of differentiated emission or fossil-fuel-based energy cuts
were to continue, it could theoretically one day lead to everyone in the
world having the same level of greenhouse-gas emissions per head. This
is the hope of the Global Commons Institute, which came up in 1995 with
