Equitable access to sustainable development: operationalizing key criteria

Abstract

Equitable access to sustainable development (EASD) is crucial for the future of the climate regime as it applies to adaptation, mitigation, and the means of implementation. An approach to allocating effort and deriving carbon budgets is presented here based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) principles of responsibility, capability, and sustainable development. A transparent model to operationalize EASD is applied by applying quantitative proxies for these criteria, and results for selected countries and groups are presented. A robust result is that the mitigation burden calculated by the model is significantly greater for developed than developing countries. For individual countries the results vary depending on the parameters chosen. A middle value of the mitigation burden for South Africa of 15 GtCO₂e over the first half of the 21st century is reported, with the greatest effort required when a starting year of 1970 is chosen and historical land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) emissions are excluded when accounting for responsibility. In a regime applicable to all, it is clear that although all countries must do more, some must do more than others.

Policy relevance

Equitable access to sustainable development is crucial to the climate negotiations. Quantified allocations are presented for South Africa and other countries, based on the UNFCCC principles of responsibility, capability, and sustainable development. It is shown that the mitigation burden given these principles must be significantly greater for developed than developing countries. The results are relevant to, inter alia, the upcoming 2013–2015 review and the negotiations under the Durban Platform.

Keywords:

• burden sharing
• equity
• mitigation
• sustainable development
• UNFCCC

Notes

The model is available and downloadable at http://www.erc.uct.ac.za/Research/EASD/ERC%20model%20for%20BASIC%20paper.xlsm. The model allows users to see results in graphed and tabular formats, and to adjust input parameters to test the sensitivity of the results for themselves. Users are requested to acknowledge the source, and if doing further analysis, make clear which part is their own analysis and how they have varied the parameters chosen in this article.