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Sivan Kartha Stockholm Environment Institute Tufts Climate Change Literacy Seminar

Climate Change and Developmental Justice The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World. Sivan Kartha Stockholm Environment Institute Tufts Climate Change Literacy Seminar January 15, 2008. Acknowledgements. The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World:

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Sivan Kartha Stockholm Environment Institute Tufts Climate Change Literacy Seminar

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  1. Climate Change and Developmental JusticeThe Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World Sivan Kartha Stockholm Environment Institute Tufts Climate Change Literacy Seminar January 15, 2008

  2. Acknowledgements The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework • Collaborator • Paul Baer (Ecoequity) • Tom Athanasiou (Ecoequity) • Eric Kemp-Benedict (SEI) • Support • Heinrich Böll Foundation (Germany) • Christian Aid (UK) • Stockholm Environment Institute core funds • Mistra - Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Sweden)

  3. Greenland Ice Sheet: here today… 2ºC is already risking catastrophic impacts

  4. What does an “Emergency Climate Program” imply for the South’s development pathway? 80% global reductions by 2050 Development pathway in South 90% in North by 2050 What kind of climate regime can enable this to happen…?

  5. … in the midst of a development crisis? • 2 billion people are without access to clean cooking fuels • More than 1.5 billion without electricity • More than 1 billion people have inadequate access to fresh water • Approximately 800 million people are chronically undernourished • 2 million children die per year from diarrhea • HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people each day and another 8,200 people are infected.

  6. A viable climate regime must… • Ensure mitigationconsistent with an emergency climate stabilization program globally • Enable the depth and extent of adaptationinevitably needed • While at the same time safeguarding the right to development

  7. A “Greenhouse Development Rights” approach • Asserts a development threshold • Assigns national obligations “progressively” in terms of that threshold • Obliges those people (whether in the North or the South) with incomes and emissions above the threshold to pay the global costs of an emergency program of mitigation and adaptation • Allows people with incomes and emissions below the threshold to prioritize development

  8. Development threshold? What should a “Right to Development” preserve? • Traditional poverty line: $1/day? …$2/day? (World Bank’s “destitution line” and “extreme poverty line”) • $16/day? (“Global poverty line” after Pritchet (2006)) • Let’s say: $25/day (PPP $9,000/yr) (~150% × global poverty line, PPP-adjusted)

  9. Quantifying Obligations based on Capacity and Responsibility Obligation: National share of global mitigation and adaptation burdens Capacity: resources to pay w/o sacrificing necessities We use income (PPP), excluding income below the $9,000 development threshold Responsibility: contribution to the climate problem We use cumulative per capita CO2 emissions, excluding “subsistence” emissions (i.e., emissions corresponding to consumption below the development threshold)

  10. Income and Capacity National income distributions showing capacity (in green) as fraction of income above the development threshold India China US $9,000/capita (PPP) “development threshold”

  11. Emissions vs. Responsibility Cumulative fossil CO2 emissions since 1990 compared to responsibility, which excludes “subsistence” emissions

  12. National Obligations

  13. Global Mitigation Burden

  14. National “Obligation Wedges”

  15. US Obligations under a GDRs Framework Physical domestic reductions as 90% by 2050, but US obligations are much greater. Must be met internationally.

  16. Chinese participation in a GDRs World The vast majority of reductions in the South come from Annex 1 reduction commitments, rather than non-Annex 1 reduction commitments.

  17. Final Comments • Large North-South transfers (financial, technological) are unavoidable. • Realistic? Not today. • The alternative to something like this is a weak regime with little chance of preventing catastrophic climate change • This is about politics, not virtue.

  18. Paper available: www.ecoequity.org/GDRs Dataset and tool that allows you to examine calculations presented here and explore alternatives: gdrs.sourceforge.net

  19. Emergency pathways: details Ref: Baer and Mastrandrea (2006) Carbon concentrations in these scenarios peak and decline (rather than stabilize).

  20. Alternative development thresholds

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