Carmen Bunzl - Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Chapter 2. Options for future climate change architectures 119
The South North Proposal preserves developmental equity under a stringent
mitigation target; it also specifies that mitigation costs in poor countries must be
paid by wealthy countries. Graduation thresholds could be lowered so the
environmental goals be more stringent, but the right to development over time
would be weakened. This tension – between the demands of our threatened
climate and the development of the South – is a critical issue in global climate
change negotiations.
4.3 Greenhouse Development Rights
The Greenhouse Development Rights approach, developed by EcoEquity, is
a proposal for a comprehensive climate regime in which national obligations to
pay for mitigation and adaptation are explicitly tied to a quantitative indicator
of responsibility and capacity. The mitigation side could, but need not be
implemented as a global cap-and-trade regime.
Its central principle is the right to development, rather than a right to
emissions. A ‘development threshold’ is defined – set at 150% of a global
poverty line, approximated by $16 a day, an indicative development threshold
would be $9000 a year (PPP). The GDR burden-sharing framework is based on
the same two principles that underlie the UNFCCC: capacity and responsibility.
Individuals below this level within a country are not expected to share the
burden of mitigating the climate problem.
Based on the national per capita income and Gini coefficient (a measure of
national income inequality), the income that the wealthier portion of population
has in excess of the development threshold is calculated – representing this each
country’s capacity (see Figure 2 – 1). Less than 1% of India’s population earns
more than $9000, approximately 10% of China’s population, and roughly 90%
of the US population.
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería ICAI Carmen Bunzl Boulet Junio 2008