Working Papers in Economics
No 491:
Common ground for effort sharing? Preferred principles for distributing climate mitigation efforts
Mattias Hjerpe, Åsa Löfgren, Björn-Ola Linnér, Magnus Hennlock, Thomas Sterner and Sverker C. Jagers
Abstract: This paper fills a gap in the current academic and policy
literature concerning how parties to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change find common ground when distributing
commitments and responsibilities to curb climate change. Preferred
principles for sharing the effort to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are
compared among 170 delegates and more than 300 observers attending the UN
Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. Respondents were asked
to indicate their degree of support for eight effort-sharing principles for
mitigation action. The survey results are analysed according to
geographical region and party coalition affiliation. The results indicate
that voluntary contribution, indicated as willingness to contribute, was
the least preferred principle among both negotiators and observers. This
could be seen as ironic, given that voluntary contribution is the guiding
principle of the Copenhagen Accord. Across regions and party coalitions,
agreement was strongest for basing a country’s mitigation level on its
capacity to pay in terms of GDP per capita and on its historic greenhouse
gas emissions since 1990.
Keywords: burden sharing; equity; climate change mitigation; Copenhagen; negotiating capacity/process; post-2012 negotiations; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: Q54; R50; (follow links to similar papers)
33 pages, February 25, 2011
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