Carmen Bunzl - Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Chapter 5. Conclusions 237
change architecture. Problems may arise from data limitations, or potential
unwillingness of companies and countries to share data; sector benchmarks
may not be possible everywhere. In internationally traded sectors, such as
aluminum and steel, they could take the form of global sector agreements, that
would help reduce the risk of carbon leakage and to alleviate competitiveness
concerns.
Differentiation has to be applied also between developing countries, their
differences are more striking than their similarities – booming economies in
Asia and Latin America have little in common with many least developed
countries. This opens the door to new combinations and grades of
commitments for developing countries, taking into account the different stages
of economic development, emissions and mitigation potential.
The next two years will focus on negotiating new actions and approaches for
developing countries to bend their emission curves. However, those actions are
inevitably linked with support in the fields of technology, financing and
capacity building. It is clear that the level of ambition of developing country
mitigation will go hand-in-hand with the level of support from industrialized countries.
Developing countries’ participation in international climate agreements
emphasizes the need to address equity considerations, beyond efficiency and
effectiveness. Equity should be addressed not only across countries (or
generations) but also within countries, based for instance on the measurement of
well-being indicators.
As it has been noted before, equity within countries does also have to be
taken into account; a commitment from the rich people in poor countries is also
necessary. It is unlikely that a large proportion of the total mitigation and
adaptation costs would emerge from developed countries if the wealthy
minority in developing countries were not also paying their “fair shares”. This
concept has been considered in the Greenhouse Development Rights
framework, yielding a combined Responsibility-Capacity Indicator, estimated
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería ICAI Carmen Bunzl Boulet Junio 2008