A different perspective for global climate policy: Combining burden sharing and climate protection

A method is presented for computing long-term greenhouse gas emission pathways for both industrial ("Annex B") countries and developing ("non-Annex B") countries. This method combines two main factors: (i) climate protection goals, in the form of targets for stabilising CO2 in the atmosphere, and (ii) the allocation of global emissions to industrial and developing countries based on a so-called "burden sharing" scheme. In this paper two CO2 stabilisation targets are investigated - stabilisation at 450 ppm in 2100 and 550 ppm in 2150. The burden sharing scheme is based on the following rules: A non-Annex B country increases its emissions according to a "baseline" no-policy scenario until its national income reaches a specified "graduation" income level. After reaching this level it freezes its per capita emissions until they are equal to the average per capita emissions in Annex B countries. After this point, the per capita emissions of the non-Annex B country are the same as the average for Annex B countries. For a variety of assumptions about the graduation income level, it was found that the two stabilisation targets can be achieved even if total emissions from non-Annex B countries increase until around 2030. However, after this point, emissions from these countries must stabilise or be sharply reduced.