Abstract
This foreword explains why the success of COP21 is dependent upon its capacity to operate the paradigm shift announced in Cancun. It comes back to the recent history of the Conference of the Parties and shows the reasons for the emergence of the notion of ‘equitable rights to sustainable development (EASD)’ which enlarged the concept of equity beyond ‘burden sharing’. It shows why this paradigm shift is a categorical imperative to break the self-defeating process of negotiations since the first COP of Berlin in 1995. It then demonstrate how the contributions to this special issue a) help understanding the deadlocks of a ‘sharing the pie’ logic in the climate affair and why it is inappropriate and diversionary to assess climate justice through ‘fairness’ of emissions allocations as the sole criteria b) show how to enforce the EADS principle in the current adverse context of a world economy weakened in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
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Notes
http://cancun.unfccc.int/cancun-agreements/significance-of-the-key-agreements-reached-at-cancun/#c45 (Visited August 7, 2013).
The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) is a subsidiary body established by decision 1/CP.17 in December 2011. http://unfccc.int/bodies/body/6645.php (Visited August 15, 2013).
The document containing the decisions of the COP 18 at Doha is referred to as ‘The Doha Gateway’ http://unfccc.int/key_steps/doha_climate_gateway/items/7389.php (Visited August 7, 2013).
For a synthesis, see Aldy and Stavins (2007).
The proposed variants range from a grandfathering allocation at the beginning of the process converging towards the equal per capita end point (Shukla 1998; Jacoby et al. 1999; Rose et al. 1998; Den Elzen et al. 2005) to an historical emissions principle like in the Brazilian proposal in 1997 (http://unfccc.int/resource/1997/agbm/misc01a03.pdf). An application of this formula would have generated an amount of transfers politically non-acceptable for the North and which would result in windfall profits not necessarily beneficial for the South.
What matters are not the figures but the qualitative insight. Figures are based indeed on a logarithmic utility of income which allows for very simple calculation. The key insight is that one a dollar for levied on a household earning a USD 2 per day/cap penalize it far more that the same dollar levied on a household USD 100 per day/cap.
Abbreviations
- ADP:
-
Ad hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action
- CBDR:
-
Common but differentiated responsibilities
- COP:
-
Conference of the Parties
- EASD:
-
Equitable access to sustainable development
- EU:
-
European Union
- GHG:
-
Greenhouse gases
- INDCs:
-
Intended nationally determined contributions
- LDCs:
-
Least developed countries
- AOSIS:
-
Alliance of Small Island States
- OECD:
-
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- RD&D:
-
Research, Development and Demonstration
- UNFCCC:
-
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
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Hourcade, JC., Shukla, PR. Cancun’s paradigm shift and COP 21: to go beyond rhetoric. Int Environ Agreements 15, 343–351 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-015-9305-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-015-9305-6