In becoming rich, developed nations have more or less bankrupted the atmosphere.
Now, as our report Truly Inconvenient argues, it is time for rich countries to repay their debt – both to the environment and the world’s poorest countries. Report author Andrew Pendleton explains.
Popular wisdom has it that China’s coal-powered economic growth and huge population makes it a major climate change culprit. In truth it isn’t nearly as guilty as those countries who have already industrialised.
Rich nations have earned their wealth on the back of polluting for free
If the atmosphere were a bank account and carbon emissions a measure of indebtedness, then Europe and north America would be severely overdrawn.
This is the reality of climate change – rich nations have earned their wealth on the back of polluting for free. But pollution has a cost and the day of reckoning is on us.
'Countries will be asked to meet different requirements based upon their historical share or contribution to the problem, and their relative ability to carry the burden of change. This precedent is well established in international law, and there is no other way to do it.' Al Gore, former US vice-president
The poor are hit hardest
China is a problem, nevertheless. Currently annual emissions per person in China are one-third of those in Britain. But if they were to pull level – some 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person – then we could pretty much kiss goodbye to ‘avoiding dangerous climate change’.
The challenge for our political leaders is to work out not only how to reduce emissions in rich countries, where they remain high and rising. They must also to reverse the same trend in poorer nations.
As emissions are cut, the process of poverty eradication should not be undermined
Environmental harm is in no one’s long term interests. But this is not the primary reason why Christian Aid is campaigning so hard on the issue of climate change.
We think poor people are already losing out as the impact of increasingly volatile weather falls hardest on those least able to cope.
But we are also keen to see that as emissions are cut, the process of poverty eradication is not undermined.
Urgent action
This is why Christian Aid is calling for an ‘emergency programme’ to deal with the climate crisis. The negotiations to determine the precise nature of such a strategy need to be completed no later than 2009, in time for the major climate summit in Copenhagen.
We think this emergency programme should have three ingredients:
- Agreement on the need for global emissions cuts well in excess of the EU’s suggestion of 50% by 2050.
- A firm, legally-binding commitment by rich countries to reduce by at least 80% in the same time period
- An international debt repayment mechanism so that rich countries can compensate poorer nations for more or less bankrupting the atmosphere.
Our response
Christian Aid has teamed up with EcoEquity, a US-based climate change thinktank, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Germany to produce Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs), a framework to measure each country's historic responsibility for climate change.
The GDRs framework, and Christian Aid's in-depth study, Truly Inconvenient, are intended to inform debate in Bali.
As a proposal, GDRs takes Al Gore and the UN’s framework convention on climate change at their word and calculates countries’ responsibility for climate change and capability to deal with it.
On both counts, wealthy, industrialised nations are the ones that must take a lead in tackling climate change - not just at home, where their rhetoric must rapidly be turned in reality, but also overseas in poorer nations, where they must help finance a new, clean path to development.