COP15 Post | News from the UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

The world has still not learned the first lesson of climate change – to share atmospheric space so growth can be shared equally. But this will require political sagacity, leadership and courage. Global warming is possibly the biggest and most difficult economic and political issue the world has ever needed to confront. The question is if the rich world, responsible for the stock of emissions already in the common atmosphere, will find the resources to pay the victims of its economic excesses? Will it find the resources to pay for the much-needed transition to low carbon economies? The issues are clear. But the answers are lost in prevarication and pretence.

The reason is simple: climate change is related to economic growth. It is, as is famously said, the ‘market’s biggest failure’. In spite of years of protracted negotiations and targets set under the Kyoto Protocol (opened for signature on 16 March 1998, it entered into force in February 2005) no country has been able to de-link economic growth from the growth of emissions. No country has shown how to build a low carbon economy, as yet.

The inconvenient truth is not that climate change is real, but that confronting climate change is about sharing that growth between nations and people. The rich must reduce so that the poor can grow. This was the basis of the climate agreement the world signed in Rio (at the first Earth Summit in 1992). This was the basis of the Kyoto Protocol, which committed the industrialized world to reduce its emissions by roughly 6 per cent over 1990 levels by 2008-2012. But the world has never been serious about this agreement.

The facts are clear. Between 1990 and 2006, carbon dioxide emissions of the industrialized rich countries have increased by 14.5 per cent. Furthermore, emissions from the growth-related energy sector have increased by 15 per cent. This is unacceptable.

This is when we know that climate change is about historical emissions, as a ton of carbon dioxide emitted a century ago is equal to a ton of carbon dioxide emitted today. According to estimates, industrialized countries are responsible for seven out of every ten tons of carbon dioxide that has been emitted in the atmosphere from the start of the industrial revolution. This is the natural debt of nations, which like the financial debt, must be repaid. But this is not all. Even in terms of current emissions, the difference is clear. Between 1980 and 2005, the total emissions of the US were almost double that of China and more than seven times that of India. In per capita terms, such injustice is even more unacceptable, indeed immoral.

The way ahead

Firstly, the rich world must reduce emissions drastically. Let there be no disagreements or excuses on this matter. There is a stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, built up over centuries in the process of creating nations wealth. This has already made climate unstable. Poorer nations will now add to this stock through their drive for economic growth. But that is not an excuse for rich world not to take on tough and deep binding emission reduction targets. The principle has to be they must reduce so that we can grow.

The second part of this agreement is that poor and emerging rich countries need to grow. Their engagement will not be legally binding but based on national targets and programs. The question is to find low-carbon growth strategies for emerging countries, without compromising their right to develop.

This can be done. It is clear that countries like India and China provide the world the opportunity to “avoid” additional emissions. The reason is that they are still in the process of building energy, transport or industrial infrastructure. They can make investments in leapfrog technologies to avoid pollution. In other words, build our cities on public transport; our energy security on local and distributed systems – from biofuels to renewable; our industries using the most energy – and so pollution – efficient technologies.

These countries also know it is not in their interest to first pollute, then to clean up; or first to be inefficient, then save energy. But technologies that exist are costly. It is not as if China and India are bent on first investing in dirty and fuel-inefficient technologies. They invest in these, as the now rich world has done: first add to emissions; make money; then invest in efficiency. The agreement must recognize this fact and provide technology and funds to make the transition in the world. It is this that is most critical.

A quota system

The world must seriously consider the concept of equal per capita emission entitlements so that the rich reduce and the poor do not go beyond their climate quota.

This allocation of the earth’s global sinks to each nation, based on its population, will create a system of per capita emission entitlements, which taken together are the “permissible” level of emission of each country. This would create the framework for trading between nations, as the country that exceeded its annual quota of carbon dioxide could trade with those countries with “permissible” emissions. This would create the financial incentives for countries to keep their emissions as low as possible and to invest in zero-carbon trajectories.

As much as the world needs to design a system of equity between nations, nations of the world need to design a system of equity within the nation. For instance, it is not the rich in India who emit less than their share of the global quota. It is the poor in India, who do not have access to energy who provide us the breathing space. India, for instance, had per capita carbon emissions of 1.5 tons per year in 2005.  Yet this figure hides huge disparities. The urban-industrial sector is energy-intensive and wasteful, while the rural subsistence sector is energy-poor and frugal. Currently it is estimated that only 31 percent of rural households use electricity. Connecting all of India’s villages to grid-based electricity will be expensive and difficult. It is here that the option of leapfrogging to off-grid solutions based on renewable energy technologies becomes most economically viable. If India’s entitlements were assigned on an equal per capita basis, so that the country’s richer citizens must pay the poor for excess energy use, this would provide both the resources and the incentives for current low energy users to adopt zero-emission technologies. In this way, too, a rights-based framework would stimulate powerful demand for investments in new renewable energy technologies.

This rights based agenda is critical in the resolution of the climate change challenge. The fact is that climate change teaches us more than anything else that the world is one; if the rich world pumped in excessive quantities of carbon dioxide yesterday, the emerging rich world will do it today. It also tells that the only way to build controls would be to ensure that there is fairness and equity in the agreement, so that this biggest cooperative enterprise is possible.

Sunita Narain is an Indian environmentalist and political activist. She is director of the India-based Centre for Science and Environment and of the Society for Environmental Communications. She is also publisher of the magazine Down To Earth.

The article is from The Courier of UNESCO number 2009-10, edited by the Danish journalist Niels Boel