Justice in climate cooperation

Effective climate action requires the restoration of common but differentiated responsibilities, based on differences in per capita emission rates

- NITIN DESAI

Inmylastmonth’s column, [had focused on the rising threat of climate change and the serious shortfalls in the promise of commitments under the Paris Agreement of 2015. Ihad argued for an acceleration ofcommitments, particularly by developed countries. In this column, I try and elaborate on what the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30), to be held in Brazil this November, can do to secure agreement on the principles that should drive faster global cooperation and national action.

In my view, the most important principle that should be reasserted is the notion of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR). This was agreed in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was negotiated in the early 1990s and came into force after sufficient ratification in 1995. Atthat time, the differentiation of commitments was between Annex 1 countries, which were members ofthe Organisation forEconomicCooperation and Development (OECD), and the Economies in Transition (EIT) in Eastern and Central Europe and the rest of the countries, which were placed in the NonAnnex 1 category. At that time, these two were seen as developed and developing countries and the commitments of emission reduction negotiated in the Kyoto Protocol applied only to the Annex 1 countries.

‘The group of Non-AnnexI countries can no longer be fully identified with the developing states, as 20 Non-Annex!I countries are now included inthe World Bank’s list of high-income countries. However, the counterargument to CBDR has focused more on the growth of emissions in China, which rose sharply from 2.9 tCO2 per capita in 1995 to 8.4 tCO2 per capita in 2023. This has led to the virtual elimination of the common but differentiated responsibility between developed and developing countries.