Fair Shares — The Basics
13 March 2014
Everybody always talks about equity, but no one ever does anything about it. In hoping that someday Parties might, ECO would like to present this quick cheat sheet.
It’s not true that “equity is in the eye of the beholder”. Sure, there’s a lot to disagree about, but the UNFCCC really does give us somewhere to stand. Three places, actually, for when all is said and done, the Convention affirms three high-level precepts: 1) Avoid dangerous climate change, 2) Divide the effort of doing so on the basis of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” and 3) Protect “the right to sustainable development.” If it’s consistent with these 3 principles, it’s probably fair, or at least a fair enough start.
It’s CBDR+RC, not CBDR. Those last words in the second principle – “respective capabilities” – may be challenging, but they’re not any more challenging than “historical responsibility”. And in any case, they’re not going away anytime soon. Just because some Parties wish that the responsibility issue would simply fade away, that doesn’t mean that other Parties are being helpful by trying to push capabilities off the boat. Two wrongs, as they say, don’t make a right. Not even a development right.
The climate crisis is a global commons problem – with the emphasis on the word “global”. However you understand your climate obligations, they’re global obligations nonetheless. The responsibility that each nation has to do its fair share is a responsibility to all the other nations, or rather, to all the people (and creatures!) of the world. If you have a lot of responsibility and capability, in addition to more tonnes of carbon to mitigate than is possible within your own borders – then doing your fair share means additionally providing the finance and technology to mitigate elsewhere. Which is to say that finance is part of your mitigation obligation.
Finally, we don’t have to absolutely agree about what’s fair and what’s not. An approximate agreement is a whole lot better than stalemate and standoff.
If we think of the problem politically, the world needs to be able to identify climate leaders (who are actually doing their fair share) and climate laggards (who are doing, or proposing to do, less). Here a rough common understanding is quite enough. ECO thinks that if we can gain such an understanding, all else will follow.
Well, maybe not “all else” because no common understanding will substitute ambitious finance. We know Paris is not only about finance, but if we don’t get it then COP 21 is going to be grim affair indeed.