What
is Equity?
Equity
Within Nations
Equity
Between Nations
International
Economic System
Global
Warming and Equity
Impacts
Responsibility
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Responsibility for reducing greenhouse gases belongs to those who contributed most to them and those most capable of taking them.
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Actions
to Prevent Global Warming
The US EPA estimates that carbon emissions will need to be cut by 50 to 80 per cent to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at current levels&emdash;and by more if we want to reduce these concentrations. Some people argue that before measures can be taken to reduce greenhouse emissions it is necessary to know what contribution each nation is making to global warming. The rationale behind this is that it is necessary to know where the biggest sources are, so as to ensure they are reduced&emdash;which helps to ensure that those who are responsible for causing the problem take a proportionate responsibility in solving it.
Allen Hammond and his colleagues at the Washington DC-based World Resources Institute (WRI) put together a 'greenhouse index' which showed that the five countries that contributed most to greenhouse emissions in 1988 were the USA, the USSR, China, Brazil and India. It also showed that low-income countries contributed about 46 per cent of the world total&emdash;more than had previously been estimated. (Hammond, Rodenburg & Mooman 1991) This index was meant to be used as the basis for international agreements.
The WRI data has been used and quoted widely overseas; for example, by the OECD in their State of the Environment report (reported in McCully 1991, p. 157) and in Australia by the ESD working group chairs (1992a, pp. 22&endash;4). But it has also been severely criticised from various quarters. The debate surrounding this index demonstrates how assigning responsibility is a controversial and highly political activity and, given the uncertainties surrounding the greenhouse effect, cannot be done in any purely objective way.
Susan Subak (Stockholm Environment Institute), Kirk Smith (Environment and Policy Institute in Hawaii), and others argue that the index makes several assumptions that give it a bias against low-income nations. First, the index is only based on emissions from a single year. Therefore, it ignores past contributions that have mainly been made by industrialised nations and will continue to have a warming effect well into the future. This means that nations that are currently clearing areas of forest are disadvantaged in terms of the index compared with those who have cleared their forests in the past.
Second, the index does not take account of the fact that some greenhouse gases last longer in the atmosphere. This means that countries that produce shorter lived gases such as methane (usually the low-income countries) seem to be contributing more to long-term global warming than they actually are (Subak 1991, p. 2; Smith, K. 1991, p. 42).
Third-world activists have condemned the greenhouse index as 'based on patently unfair mathematical jugglery, where politics are masquerading in the name of science' (McCully 1991, p. 157). Anil Agarwal, director of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, argues that the WRI's figures are designed to shift blame for global warming to the developing world. He argues that the emissions of carbon dioxide from deforestation and methane from rice fields and livestock have been exaggerated compared with that from burning fossil fuels (McCully 1991, p. 160).
Agarwal also points out that the index makes no distinction between emissions that arise from survival activities and those from luxuries. He and Sunita Narain argue that:
"it is patently immoral to equate the emissions of carbon dioxide from American, European, or for that matter, New Delhi automobiles with the survival emissions of methane from the minuscule paddy fields or few heads of cattle owned by a poor West Bengal or Thai farmer." (McCully 1991, p. 164)
About half of human-generated greenhouse emissions are naturally absorbed by the oceans and the forests, which are referred to as 'natural sinks'. Agarwal claims that if, the Earth can absorb a certain amount of greenhouse gases, each person in the world should be able to contribute his or her share of what can be absorbed, with everyone getting an equal share. According to this reasoning, India, which has 16.6 per cent of the world's population, would be entitled to 16.6 per cent of the greenhouse emissions that the earth could absorb. Since India does not produce anywhere near this proportion of the greenhouse gases currently emitted by the world's nations, 'Indians effectively subsidize the high emissions of other countries by not using up their full allowance of sinks (McCully 1991, p. 160).
"Looked at this way, Americans emit more than six times their permitted quota, whereas most Indians and Chinese are in credit. Instead of featuring in the top five of the global polluters, the world's two largest nations disappear off the chart altogether, to be replaced in the 'filthy five' by Canada and Germany." (Pearce, F. 1992c)
Even the simple matter of considering emissions per person rather than per nation shows a very different picture of responsibility (see table 19.1). In this new ranking, Australia has moved up from number twenty on the original table put together by Hammond and his colleagues (1991) to number two.
It is for these reasons that many poorer countries are calling for reductions to greenhouse emissions to be made on the basis of per capita emissions, rather than total emissions from each country. India, China, Vanuatu (on behalf of a number of island states) and Senegal are some of the nations that have argued for a ceiling on per capita emissions. In this way, the responsibility for reducing greenhouse emissions would remain with those most responsible and those most capable of bearing the costs of reductions: the affluent industrialised nations. Other nations might decide to reduce their emissions 'provided the full incremental costs involved are met by provision of new and additional financial resources from developed countries (Raghavan 1991a, p. 5).
The need to focus on per capita emissions rather than percentage reductions from current levels is central to equity issues. Nations have traditionally achieved industrialisation in a way that is very energy intensive, and have generated high levels of greenhouse gases in the process. The levels of affluence that they now maintain are also energy intensive and generate high levels of greenhouse gases. It is difficult to see how third-world nations can develop and achieve equivalent standards of living for their populations without substantially increasing their greenhouse emissions. The thought of every Chinese family having a refrigerator and a car, for example, scares many environmentalists; it is one of the reasons why they believe population levels need to be stabilised throughout the world. As Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute says:
"It is a simple fact of atmospheric science that the planet will never be able to support a population of 8 billion people generating carbon emissions at the rate, say, of Western Europe today."(1990, p. 20)
But as Maria-Elena Hurtado (director of the World Development Movement) says, 'People in the South wonder whether the North's version of planetary salvation requires having 4 billion people perpetually poor in the South.' (quoted in Pearce, F. 1991, p. 13). Yet if economic development in the low-income countries requires people in the affluent countries to forgo some of their comforts, it might never be achieved while those affluent countries hold power in the world.
It has been suggested that a per capita emissions ceiling be set below the current level of emissions in the high-income countries and above the level of emissions in the low-income countries. This would enable poorer nations to continue to develop while the affluent countries, which are best able to afford the costs of greenhouse reductions and have the technology to do so, make the reductions. It might also be possible with such a system for poorer countries to sell their greenhouse emissions quotas to richer countries that could not meet their limits&emdash;thus transferring wealth to those who need it. The problems with such a scheme are described in chapter 11. Not everyone agrees that affluent countries should be given the choice of paying for not reducing their greenhouse emissions.
Flavin has put forward a similar scheme that he believes would be equitable. He suggests emissions targets that are based on current average worldwide carbon emission levels per person. This would enable countries such as India, China and Nigeria to increase their emissions, while other nations such as Australia and the USA would have to decrease theirs by about 3 per cent per year. (See table)
Nevertheless, such agreements are a long way from being accepted. The Climate Convention agreed to at the Earth Summit in June 1992 avoided all reference to actual limits, even though earlier drafts had included 'a specific commitment by developed countries to stabilise carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by the end of the decade, and thereafter to make reductions' (Pearce, F. 1992b) A European agreement to do this through the use of special taxes has been obstructed by industry lobbies, who argued that such measures would hurt industrial growth (Mackenzie 1992, p. 5).
Source: Sharon Beder, The Nature of Sustainable Development, 2nd edition, Scribe, Newham, Vic.,1996.