Ambition and Equity: Evaluating the Global North’s Contribution to the Paris Agreement
On June 1st, a top fear among environmentalists the world over came to fruition when President Trump announced his intention to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement. Although the move was basically inevitable, given Trump’s Executive Order in March to “review” (read: rescind) the Clean Power Plan (CPP) and campaign promises to revitalize an unsalvageable coal industry, the decision triggered a massive backlash from across the US. The mayor of Pittsburgh asserted, that no, the citizens of the Mid-Atlantic city did not elect Trump to represent their interests. 289 mayors in total announced their intent to uphold their municipalities’ commitment to the climate pact. On a larger scale, the governors of California, Washington, and New York launched the “US Climate Alliance” to fulfill the goals of the Agreement without the coordination or backing of the federal government.
With the Clean Power Plan (CPP) held up in the courts and Trump’s dismissal of the Agreement now revealed, other countries also expressed their disappointment and anger at the prospect of a US exit. The governments of France, Germany, and Italy issued a joint statement which debunked Trump’s suggestion that the US could renegotiate the terms of the pact. The EU and China nearly released a formal statement on future mitigation efforts before a trade dispute ended the proposal. New French President Macron proceeded to troll Trump hard while also encouraging climate scientists, researchers, and others to come to France in pursuit of a less hostile work environment.
Certainly, Trump’s decision is a serious PR blow, although with the CPP’s status uncertain and the Paris Agreement lacking any binding legislation, it is probably better for the US to remain out so it can be fully criticized. However, the domestic and international mayors, governors, and state leaders of governments in the Global North who have been quick to lambast should not be exempt from criticism either. While many politicians and environmentalists hold up the pact as a shining example of international climate diplomacy, the reality is that the terms of the Agreement are rife with flaws when considered through the perspective of vulnerable, poorer countries in the Global South, or disadvantaged communities within the wealthier countries of the Global North. Take for example, the fact that Nicaragua is one of only two countries that has not signed the Agreement. Yet, this is not because they antagonize climate protection, but because the treaty actually does not go far enough in reducing GHG emissions, particularly relevant as it is the fourth most at-risk country to climate change.
On this note, the US exit should be seen as an opportunity for the countries that have historically and presently emitted the most GHGs to strengthen their ambition and enact more robust and just mitigation strategies. As it currently stands, the Global North is not doing nearly enough to counteract its disproportionate contribution to fossil fuel-powered climate change.
Historic, Present, and Per-Capita Emissions: The North’s Contribution
To grasp why the wealthy countries of the Global North must reevaluate their emissions reduction strategies under the Paris Agreement (known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs, in UN parlance), one must understand the present climate crisis is almost exclusively of their doing. These countries, like the UK, US, Germany, and others, were the first to undergo the rapid technological evolution of the Industrial Revolution. Consequently, they were also the first to release vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere through the combustion of fossil fuels.
The Climate Action Tracker from the World Resources Institute is an especially handy tool for showcasing the longstanding contribution of Northern countries to climate change. In 1850, the UK was the world’s largest emitter, generating over 60% of the planet’s fossil-fuel based GHG emissions. The US, France, Germany, and Belgium rounded out the remainder of the top five emitters in 1850, together making up 94% of all fossil fuel-based CO2 released worldwide that year.
Over the next century and a half, GHG emissions continued to rise in these countries and others — mostly in North America and Europe — that had extensively incorporated fossil fuel use into daily production processes and consumption patterns. CO2 emissions really escalated in the United States, which overtook the UK as the world’s largest fossil fuel-based CO2 emitter in 1888, and held onto this title for over a century. From 1900 to 2010, fossil-based CO2 emissions from the seven wealthy countries making up the informal G7 bloc vastly exceeded those from the entire regions of Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean combined by 1,567 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) in 1900 and 6,443 MtCO2 in 2010.
To be sure, emissions from the most rapidly-industrializing countries in the South have surged in recent years. The obvious example is China, who overtook the US has the world’s largest emitter in 2005, responsible for 28% of global fossil-fuel based emissions in 2016. India slots into third place behind the US, generating over 6% of the world’s total fossil emissions. Deforestation is another cause of rising GHG emissions in the South, stemming from large-scale agriculture, mining, logging, and urban development. Statistics from Global Forest Watch show that Brazil is the largest emitter of CO2 from tropical deforestation, averaging 803 MtCO2 per year from 2001–2015. Indonesia follows in second place, having released an average of 505 MtCO2 per year from deforestation over the same period.
Yet, there are two methods that underline how the North still bears the overwhelming burden in reducing GHGs, despite the uptick in fossil-based and deforestation-based (biotic) emissions in the South. The first method is by comparing the global share of fossil and biotic emissions. According to Le Quéré et al. (2016), fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes made up 91% of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions from 2006–2015, while emissions from land use change (including deforestation) made up the other 9%. Furthermore, the authors also spotlight how land use change emissions have actually remained constant over the past 55 years, while fossil emissions have risen considerably over the same stretch.
Even more tellingly, as Ciais et al. (2013) document as part of the Fifth Assessment Report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), countries in the Mid-Northern latitudes (corresponding mostly with states in the Global North) were responsible for the majority of large-scale deforestation and land use change prior to the 1980s. Only from that point on did emissions in the South take over as a larger contributor in this sector. Large-scale deforestation in the South often takes place for export as well, part and parcel of the growth in global commodity markets driven by the demands of wealthy international consumers.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, large-scale agriculture contributes to 40% of deforestation in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, while subsistence-based agriculture stands at 33%. In Latin America specifically, commercial agriculture for soybean, beef, and oil palm drives an even larger 70% of deforestation. Brazil, for example, was the world’s third largest exporter of agricultural products in 2014, and is now tied with India as the world’s largest exporter of beaf and veal. Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that deforestation in the South American state reached its highest level since 2008 this past year.
The second method of underscoring the responsibility of the North to mitigate climate change is by assessing each sphere’s per capita-based GHG emissions. According to data compiled by the International Energy Agency (IEA), member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a collection of 35 high to middle income countries mostly located in the North, averaged a per-capita emissions rate (from fossil fuel sources) of 9.36 tonnes of CO2 per person (tCO2/capita) in 2014. OECD countries with even higher rates were the US (16.22 tCO2/capita), Australia (15.81 tCO2/capita), and Canada (15.61 tCO2/capita)
On the other hand. China, the world’s largest emitter, had a smaller per-capita emissions rate of 6.66 tCO2/capita (p. 49). Even more revealing, non-OECD countries in Asia and Africa had minuscule per-capita emissions rates of 1.58 and 0.96 tCO2/capita respectively (p. 49). Although CO2 emissions may be increasing across many regions, clearly the wealthy, industrialized countries in the North have disproportionately contributed more to climate change than those in the South, and continue to do so today.
Global Carbon Budget: Implications for Climate Equity
Given that the North has historically emitted and continues to emit much larger quantities of fossil-based GHG emissions, what does this mean for climate change mitigation efforts internationally? To understand this fully, an explanation of what is known as the “carbon budget” is warranted.
As Climate Nexus explains, the carbon budget represents the amount of CO2 that humans can release into the atmosphere while still keeping global temperature rise at a maximum of 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Although the 2°C target has widely been adopted — like in the Paris Agreement — as a symbolic marker for when the effects of climate change will become unstoppable, never mind how even a 2°C rise will trigger catastrophic climate events.
From 1750 to 2016, the global concentration of CO2 increased from 278 parts per million (ppm) to 400 ppm, hitting that level at the South Pole for the first time in 3–4 million years. During that era, sea levels were 65 feet higher than today and the planet was so warm that trees grew near the North pole. Simultaneously, global averages temperatures in 2016 hit a record of 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels, the hottest the planet has been in 115,000 years, and continuing the alarming trend of global temperatures warming by 0.18°C each decade over the past 45 years. Alarmingly, the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded its first-ever 410 ppm reading this May.
Unsurprisingly, since populations in the North have emitted 80% of historical CO2 emissions, they have used up the bulk of the world’s available carbon budget to stay below 2°C. And according to a study by Carbon Brief, at the current rate of global emissions, the window for confidently staying below the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious 1.5°C target is down to a meager four years. Depressingly, this would occur just as the climate pact is set to kick in.
There are several conclusions to draw from these figures. One is that countries cannot wait until 2020 to start reducing their emissions. Every GHG emission makes a difference in driving catastrophic and irreversible climate change, and luxury-based, emissions-intensive activities must stop as soon as possible to stave off the worst environmental effects. Second, countries must address their obligations to mitigating climate change in line with their historic and present contribution to the problem. Unfortunately, upon further analysis, the initial INDC pledges to the Paris Agreement have largely not done that.
Inadequate Ambition: Mitigation and the Global North
This brings us to the current state of international climate policy. Before Trump signaled his intent to take the US out of the Paris Agreement, Climate Action Tracker estimated that the full implementation of all INDCs to the Agreement would limit warning to an average of 2.8°C above pre-industrial levels in 2100, compared to an average business-as-usual scenario of 3.6°C. Similarly, Carbon Brief analyzed the results of nine studies to conclude that full implementation of the Agreement, along with some supplementary pledges made at last year’s Conference of the Parties meeting in Marrakesh, would prevent about 1.1°C of warming by 2100.
With the US out, the same Carbon Brief analysis finds that global temperates can be expected to increase by 0.2 to 0.3°C, which would essentially make it impossible for the world to hit either the 1.5°C or 2.0°C temperature goals. Although the Paris Agreement does require that nations “ratchet” up their ambition every five years to assess mitigation progress, the US has been the largest contributor to GHG emissions over the past 200 years, so the Trump administration’s assault on the environment and common sense rightfully deserves pushback and criticism at every turn.
But additionally, so too do the paltry commitments by governments of other countries in the North, many of whom were quick to reprimand Trump for his decision earlier this month. One that comes to mind immediately is from Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, who was disappointed that Trump decided to withdraw. This also comes after Trudeau had campaigned on a seemingly environmentally progressive platform in 2015, in opposition to the tar sands-exploiting administration of previous PM Stephen Harper.
Yet, Trudeau’s domestic and international climate policies tell a different story. Climate Action Tracker has rated the Canadian INDC (submitted shortly after Trudeau’s election victory) as “inadequate”, arguing that under current policies, Canada will miss its goal to reduce GHG emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. With Trudeau’s continued support or silence on the expansion or construction of oil pipelines, including the incredibly controversial Keystone XL, it is unlikely that deep decarbonization of the Canadian economy will occur. And with one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions rates, Canada should definitely ramp up its ambition to make up for its disproportionate contribution to climate change. To be fair, last year Trudeau unveiled the Pan Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, including nationwide carbon pricing, so that may have an impact in strengthening its climate pledge if fully implemented.
Tellingly, the majority of the countries that the Climate Action Tracker has rated as “inadequate” are on average middle-income and wealthy countries that utilize fossil fuel-intensive production and consumption practices for luxury purposes, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Russia’s target of reducing emissions by 25–30% below 1990 levels by 2030 is especially ridiculous, since emissions in the country absolutely plummeted following the dissolution of the USSR. In fact, since Russia is already well-below their 1990 level emissions, they would require no additional steps to live up to their INDC. All of these countries are in the top third of per-capita emitters globally as well.
China, for its part, was given a “medium” ranking for its INDC by the Climate Action tracker, but even its INDC still is not compatible with the 1.5°C or 2.0°C goals, and furthermore does not cover non-CO2 GHGs, raising the possibility that it could raise its emissions of these gases until 2030. The EU bloc is also ranked as medium, for as the world’s third largest combined emitter among all 28 member states, its INDC of reducing GHGs by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 also does not align with the 1.5°C and 2°C goals.
Certainly, this piece is not to let the US off the hook for its absent environmental conscience, nor is it to say that the Paris Agreement is utterly useless. Rather, the world’s top emitters should take this US exit as an opportunity to ramp up their commitment in enacting domestic policies that will swiftly and equitably drive deep cuts in GHGs and enable a just transition for workers. When nations of the Global South will be those most adversely impacted by the effects climate change, it is only fair that the North takes responsibility for the problem that it caused in the first place.