A European Take on the Climate Equity debate

With equity being the big thing in the climate talks yesterday, let me try to share a European take on this complicated but interesting debate.

Usually, being a blogger at the UN climate talks means that you will have to spend some time during the day scratching your head and wondering what would be the most relevant and most important issue to highlight among the many discussions that have taken place since the morning.

Yesterday however was one of those rare days when the answer to this dilemma seems self-evident: it is almost as if we had a theme day here at the negotiations, with most of the discussions of the day evolving around the concept of “equity”. Equity has become a central element of the discussions for a couple of reasons. First, India has been really vocal in advocating for a stronger reference to the concept to justify its claim that its own development needs should have priority over any climate actions expected from the country. Also, as countries have recently agreed to launch a new round of negotiations to determine the responsibility of most countries (both developed and developing nations) after 2020, delegates are looking for a way to allocate this responsibility between very different actors.

So yesterday, equity was the main buzzword in the corridor of the Maritim with a 6 hours long workshop, a press conference and an evening panel all dedicated to this theme. The issue with this notion is that it allows for a very diverse range of interpretation as their is not, at this stage, one single definition of what equity would mean in terms of the role expected from each country in mitigating climate change. Priti, our Indian tracker, wrote a post yesterday commenting on India rigid position on the equity issue, while Nala provided an extremely interesting insight on the Chinese perspective on this issue (I really recommend these two blogs). Let me just complete this range of views commenting on the EU relation to the concept.

The EU presentation during the workshop yesterday was welcomed by most as very constructive. Instead on hammering their own interest, the EU highlighted that the issue of dividing responsibility among countries is an integral part of the EU decision making, as it is facing a similar challenge internally than the UNFCCC is expected to address: define on what basis to define which countries are expected to do more than others.

A couple of months ago, I had the chance to chat with the EU Commissioner for Climate Connie Hedegaard at a buffet following an event. She mentioned the difficult discussions expected around the topic of equity and explained that while the EU was ready to play a constructive role in these discussions, they were looking for a practical approach to equity that could serve as a basis for discussion. I mentioned the Greenhouse Development Framework, but it seemed unknown to her. I wish she had been here in Bonn: Shivan Kartha, from the Stockholm Environmental Institute, made a few presentations today in Bonn on the model developed by his team already a few years ago.

His approach is very straightforward and enables to identify a formula to determine what the responsibility of every country could be in relation to climate action. The most interesting element in this approach is to consider the issue of inequalities within a country, allocating responsibility only to the middle and upper class within each countries. It also takes into consideration respectively the “capacity” and the “historical responsibility” of each country (you can find out more yourself here for instance).

Every time I have seen Shivan give his smooth presentation, I have felt reassured by the fact that one can actually come up with a concrete proposal to calculate what the fair share of climate action could be for each country. In relation to the EU, the Greenhouse Development Rights approach leads to two conclusions. Internally, the responsibility of the 12 new member states is disproportionably small compared to it of the Western EU members (the GDR framework allocates only 10% of responsibility for European emissions to the Eastern countries). And more generally, this would require a tremendous effort by the EU, about twice as much as what the EU is ready in the context of a global agreement.

The path of the EU towards an equitable contribution to climate action remains a long way ahead; let’s us see how fast we move towards this direction.