Bali must fix binding emission targets on a per-capita basis to include all countries fairly

One of the major justifications for the US not signing Kyoto is that the treaty does not contain any legally binding emission reduction targets for China and India, although these countries have become respectively the largest and fourth largest emitter of green house gases. India and China – in return – claim that any path of development that would not harm the climate is too expensive for them; the West has to pay for a historical responsibility that stems from its past emissions, which brought about anthropogenic climate change in the first place. In this way the blame is passed from one nation to the other, and in the meantime all three countries keep on increasing their gross emissions.

One of the factors that brought about this tragic ping-pong game is that throughout the negotiations in Kyoto the Annex 1 countries (the industrialised nations with the highest level of greenhouse gas emissions) were not willing to discuss per-capita emission rights. Kyoto left open the question of how much CO2-equivalent countries ultimately have to reduce in their emissions. With the end of the road of emissions reductions deliberately left in the dark, it was consequently not possible to fix how much low-emitting countries could still increase their emissions. When frequently criticising the Kyoto Protocol for its lack of binding emission targets for developing countries, Western politicians seem to ignore that their unwillingness to fix universal emission targets gave birth to this problem.

To address climate change meaningfully, emission restrictions undoubtedly have to be imposed on all countries, including non-Annex 1 countries like India and China. To achieve this, the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali needs to change its negotiation from one about emission reductions to a rights-based approach of maximum allowable emissions. Using ethical decision making systems such as John Rawls' “Original Position”, it follows that such a right for emissions would need to be defined per-capita. Any system that does not allocate per-capita rights of emissions would mean that there would be humans of different values. The world's climate being a common good, all humans have an equal share in it. This is especially relevant as the capacity to emit is a need to produce many types of goods. To allocate more rights to emit to one person compared to another would mean to judge that one person is given a higher capacity to own goods/use services which emit greenhouse gases. So if the international community allowed Country A higher emission rights per citizen compared to Country B, this would mean to establish in international law that Country A is given the right to a higher capacity for wealth than Country B. Of course countries are different in wealth but by fixing carbon allowances differently also the allowed capacities for wealth creation would be influenced. Such a discrimination would clearly be incompatible with the Original Position and also with the Categorial Imperative or Utilitarianism.

If, however, the conference in Bali decided for clear per-capita rights for emission, greenhouse gas emissions could be restricted for all countries. For current low-emitters this would be advantageous in that they would know where the boundaries lie and develop their industries accordingly to maximise the welfare they can get out of their total amount of emission allowances. And for high-emitters like the UK per-capita rights would give certainty as to what value emissions need to be decreased, thereby giving the chance for a more long-term planning both by politics and business. No matter how much a country emits now, under a per-capita rights based scheme all countries would have incentives to reduce their emissions. Furthermore per-capita emission rights would provide the basis for real international emissions trading. There would be legally binding emission targets also for China and India just like the USA demanded. And – satisfying China and India's common argument that sustainable development would be too costly for them – the cost of this change would be reduced through real participation in one international emissions trading market.

Concluding, through per-capita emission rights the major arguments for inaction of these three top emitters could be resolved and climate change be mitigated both efficiently as ethically if the conference next week in Bali makes the right steps.

- by Dirk Heine

This entry was posted by Neil Keating, on Thursday, 13 December 2007. You can leave your response.