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Systemic sustainability: the ultimate frontier
Yet black is greener than green
War: The elephant in the sustainability room
A convenient tale
PDCs to advance reductions beyond NDCs
COP21: Historic, historical or hysterical?
COP20: CBDR or ECBDR?
Doha: Gateway or Giveaway?
An epic battle in the wrong war
What it takes to be sustainable
Making the Copenhagen Accord equitable
Post-2012 climate regime: equitable, effective, sufficient?
An equitable and effective climate regime
Are global citizens equal before the Climate Convention?
Decarbonising with renewables? Extremely difficult
Financial crisis and sustainable development
Post-2012 climate regime: equitable, effective, sufficient?

The likely adoption of a post-2012 climate treaty based on the Kyoto Protocol would keep the Protocol’s inequitable emission rights.

Assuming reduction targets of 20% by 2020, this analysis shows that the new “Kyoto II” treaty would grant Annex I parties per-capita emission rights 2.8 times the equitable level. As a consequence, regarding CO2 emissions from fossil fuels alone, developing parties would lose at current prices US$152 billion per year in equitable carbon trading.

Equity also implies settling past emissions of those parties that exceeded their equitable share. This analysis estimates that in the period 1995-2007 developed parties incurred in an historical emission debt of US$2.3 trillion at current prices, due to non-LULUCF CO2 emissions alone. During the Kyoto commitment period 2008-2012 the debt will further increase by US$1.1 trillion at current prices.

An equitable treaty would be far less complex than Kyoto II: the parties agree on a global emission target that is equitably distributed on per-capita basis; parties exceeding their allocation purchase unused emission rights from other parties.

An equitable treaty would be more effective than Kyoto II, as inequity is at the root of the burden-sharing impasse between parties that is crippling the Climate Convention.

Complete article (.pdf)

Mhai Selph, January 2010


© 2010 Mhai Selph  All rights reserved