Sharing Strategies

Overview

The mitigation potential in developing countries is huge (precisely because most of the infrastructure that is implied in their future emissions trajectories is not built yet) but we cannot justifiably expect them to shoulder all the effort of avoiding these emissions without assistance (financial, technological and in terms of capacity building). The fact of our past, current and continuing overuse of the carbon budget is the moral imperative to do that. This also implies finance and other assistance for adaptation and for dealing with the unavoidable Loss and Damage.

There are a number of different sharing strategies of varying degrees of "fairness". Click here to read an overview of various sharing strategies by Australian Government Climate Change Authority

Population-based Sharing

This is also referred to as Equity sharing. The share of the carbon budget that a country gets will match their share of the global population.

Canada's population is approximately 0.5% of the global population.

Emissions-based Sharing

The global carbon budget could be shared on other principles such as a country's share of global emissions (also referred to as Inertia).

Canada's share of global emissions is approximately 1.7%.

Contraction and Convergence

Contraction and Convergence (C&C) strategy consists of reducing overall emissions of greenhouse gases to a safe level (contraction), resulting from every country bringing its emissions per capita to a level which is equal for all countries (convergence). Developed countries (such as Canada) reduce their emissions at a faster rate than developing countries.

In this video, Renaud Gignac explains the C&C strategy for sharing global carbon budgets (allowable cumulative CO2 emissions) among nations in a way that both respects the need for a finite cap on total allowable emissions, and also addresses the fundamental disparities amongst nations with respect to their historical and potential future emissions. C&C is described in more detail in this IOPScience paper.

For our ideas on Canada and Contraction and Convergence click here.

Common but Differentiated Convergence

This strategy aims at equal per capita allowances in the long run. In contrast to contraction and convergence, it considers more the historical responsibility of countries. Annex I countries would have to reduce emissions similarly to contraction and convergence, but many non-Annex I countries are likely to have more time to develop until they need to reduce emissions. Non-Annex I country participation is conditional to Annex I action through the gradually declining world average threshold. No excess emission allowances (“hot air") would be granted to least developed countries.

Gross Domestic Production Sharing

This strategy is based on a country's share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Canada's share of global GDP is approximately 2.0%.

Fair Shares Methodology

Fair Shares strategy was proposed by Civil Society Review in the lead up to the Paris COP in 2015. It is based upon equity and fairness and requires significantly scaled up cooperation between developed and developing countries. For information of Canada and fair shares click here.

Green Climate Fund

Developed countries have to come up with $100 billion per year in climate finance by 2020. Or the provision in the Paris Agreement that 50% of that money has to go to adaptation.

It has been calculated that Canada’s fair share of the 2020 total is $4 billion. To this point, the federal government has committed $2.65 billion over five years, peaking at $800 million in 2020. We must also recognize that Indigenous and Arctic communities across Canada are seeing severe climate impacts today.