Differentiation is key to action on climate

How do developing countries ensure that the new climate regime will be a genuine attempt to make the pie bigger rather than enable some to seize a larger slice?

Developing country policymakers will do well to go through the World Social Science Report 2013: Changing Global Environments of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization released while the Warsaw Conference was in session. The report concludes that, "climate and global environmental change must be fundamentally reframed from a physical to a social problem".

Recent analysis is focusing on consumption patterns in cities as the driver of global emissions. For example, carbon dioxide emissions from transportation are expected to be responsible for half of global emissions by 2050, contributing more than the use of coal to generate electricity. Similarly, while global livestock production is responsible for 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon intensity is highest for beef, which contributes half of those emissions, yet beef consumption is low in developing countries. Energy efficiency has the potential to reduce half of global emissions till 2050, so it is these trends that need to be modified, not the growth of developing countries.

The developing country position should be that the problem the world is now facing is largely because the developed countries did not take adequate measures to cut their emissions from 1990 to 2012, otherwise there would have been models for developing countries to follow as they industrialized and their populations shifted to cities. Now, developing countries have to define these steps and it will take time. For developing countries the issue is not emissions reduction but rather modifying growth pathways.

What should be the approach to ensure that peer review of the information provided by developing countries recognizes the extent of poverty, their relatively smaller contributions to global emissions and the adverse impacts of climate change on developing countries?

This will require a new framework for peer review of the information. First, developing countries should state that their electrification, urbanization and middle class levels of well-being will be attained using a lesser per capita share of the global carbon resources than that of developed countries.

Second, they should stress that the peer review should focus on consumption patterns and set global standards for high emissions areas like shelter, food and mobility, as benchmarks to be achieved by all countries.

Third, no reference to annual emissions reductions can be made until developing countries achieve stabilized levels of well-being, as has happened in developed countries.

Fourth, the utilization of the carbon budget between 1850 and 2050 provides a means to compare the efforts of all countries, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its most recent report, has suggested that global monitoring be based on the carbon budget.

The author is a former advisor to the United Nations Environment Programme.

(China Daily 11/27/2013 page8)

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