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How global emissions reduction targets
can be achieved equitably is a key issue in climate change
discussions. This paper presents an analytical framework to
encompass contributions to the literature on equity in
climate change, and highlights the consequences -- in terms
of future emissions allocations -- of different approaches
to equity. Progressive cuts relative to historic levels --
for example, 80 percent by industrial countries and 20
percent by developing countries -- in effect accord primacy
to adjustment costs and favor large current emitters such as
the United States, Canada, Australia, oil exporters, and
China. In contrast, principles of equal per capita
emissions, historic responsibility, and ability to pay favor
some large and poor developing countries such as India,
Indonesia, and the Philippines, but hurt industrial
countries as well as many other developing countries. The
principle of preserving future development opportunities has
the appeal that it does not constrain developing countries
in the future by a problem that they did not largely cause
in the past, but it shifts the burden of meeting climate
change goals entirely to industrial countries. Given the
strong conflicts of interest in defining equity in emission
allocations, it may be desirable to shift the emphasis of
international cooperation toward generating a low-carbon
technology revolution. Equity considerations would then play
a role not in allocating a shrinking emissions pie but in
informing the relative contributions of countries to
generating such a pie-enlarging revolution.
