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International
Recent International News: COP-15 in Copenhagen
Background
How can Carbon Share be useful in the development of a post-Kyoto international climate treaty?
A group of citizens in the UK, Ireland, and elsewhere are promoting Cap and Share, promoted by the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability (FEASTA), and others. In Cap and Share, like Carbon Share, emission permits are distributed to all residents, who sell them to upstream fossil fuel companies, which are required to hold the Shares as permits for GHG emissions. The Cap and Share (and Carbon Share) concept may be scaled up to the international regime and could be discussed at the UN international climate conference in Copenhagen.
A citizen's initiative is beginning to look at how a Global Climate Trust could administer such a program. People around the world are coordinating to put together a Global Climate Trust, which could develop the rules to administer an international Cap and Share or Cap and Dividend program.
Any cap and trade program could be hijacked by lobbyists for special interests, so it will take a serious effort to motivate civil society to support it, but the concept has human rights and equality at its core, and can be combined with Contraction and Convergence to include China and India, and provides a better basis for international negotiation than the Kyoto Protocol.
The per capita aspect of Carbon Share may be very important as a framework for a future international climate treaty. For more information, check out a per capita framework called Contraction & Convergence,developed by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute. Here is a great graph that shows C&C in more detail.
Source: Aubrey Meyer and GCI
Will the UNFCCC begin discussing this approach?
Will the UNEP conduct a technical review of this approach?
COP-15
COP-15 was the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Climate Change Convention took place in Copenhagen December 2009. Foreign ministers and heads of state discussed plans for 2013-2020, after the Kyoto Protocol expires.
Many things have changed since 1997 when Kyoto was negotiated. The science of climate change is much stronger and more dire. We've learned from the shortcomings of the European Trading System (ETS) (too many giveaways to industry) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) (an international offsets program with too little oversight, lacking additionality, not verifiable, etc.). Geopolitically, China and India must be at the table in the new treaty. And, the experience of the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the past decade shows how a unified coalition of developing countries can make an impact, even when others try to ignore them.
Aubrey Meyer wrote that the “leaked Danish text” discussed in Copenhagen contained a version of Contraction & Convergence:
“Support the goal of a reduction of global annual emissions in 2050 by at least 50 percent versus 1990 annual emissions, equivalent to at least 58 percent versus 2005 annual emissions. The Parties contributions towards the goal should take into account common but different responsibility and respective capabilities and a long term convergence of per capita emissions.”
The next COP will take place in Cancun, Mexico in December 2010. After the lack of progress in Copenhagen, many are looking to other forums to move the discussion forward as well. (more information coming soon)
More commentary
India senior negotiator Chandrashekar Dasgupta said in Copenhagen: "There are two things that we are seeking climate adequacy and climate justice (equity)," Dasgupta said. "Our position has always been very clear... every human being has an equal right to resources of the atmosphere; therefore you have to take the per capita approach taking also into account the historical emissions."
Sunita Narain, an Indian environmentalist and political activist, and director of the India-based Centre for Science and Environment and of the Society for Environmental Communications. She is also publisher of the magazine Down To Earth. The following text can be found here:
"The inconvenient truth is not that climate change is real, but that confronting climate change is about sharing that growth between nations and people. The rich must reduce so that the poor can grow.
As much as the world needs to design a system of equity between nations, nations of the world need to design a system of equity within the nation. For instance, it is not the rich in India who emit less than their share of the global quota. It is the poor in India, who do not have access to energy who provide us the breathing space. India, for instance, had per capita carbon emissions of 1.5 tons per year in 2005. Yet this figure hides huge disparities. The urban-industrial sector is energy-intensive and wasteful, while the rural subsistence sector is energy-poor and frugal. Currently it is estimated that only 31 percent of rural households use electricity. Connecting all of India’s villages to grid-based electricity will be expensive and difficult. It is here that the option of leapfrogging to off-grid solutions based on renewable energy technologies becomes most economically viable. If India’s entitlements were assigned on an equal per capita basis, so that the country’s richer citizens must pay the poor for excess energy use, this would provide both the resources and the incentives for current low energy users to adopt zero-emission technologies. In this way, too, a rights-based framework would stimulate powerful demand for investments in new renewable energy technologies."
Links for more information:
Aubrey Meyer: The fair choice for climate change , video on What is Contraction & Convergence
http://www.climatejustice.org.uk/about/contractionandconvergence/
Brian Davey of FEASTA discusses Cap and Share on OneClimate.net
A Flash Animation from Aubrey Meyer
FEASTA Noordwijk Proposal article by Aubrey Meyer (discusses monetary reform as well)
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