| 英文摘要: | To overcome the current impasse in global climate negotiations we propose a compromise for sharing the remaining carbon budget, based on four elements. First, limiting initial action to the Major Economies Forum members would streamline negotiations greatly. Second, using consumption-based carbon accounting would overcome important fairness concerns of key developing countries. Similarly, applying equity principles of responsibility and capability to apportion the burden of emissions reductions within the group can address concerns of both the global north and south. And fourth, promptly bringing this compromise back to the United Nations negotiations for wider adoption will be critical. Based on an indicative carbon budget of 420 gigatonnes carbon dioxide over the period 2012–2050, our analysis shows that ambitious but feasible emissions reductions will be needed, with sharp differences by world economic groups. The compromise offers effectiveness, feasibility and fairness.
The international community is struggling to find a strategy for breaking the enduring gridlock on climate change. In terms of international cooperation to adequately address the climate crisis, the most urgent and complicated coordination problem is the development of an inclusive, concerted framework for promptly abating greenhouse gas emissions1. Such a framework must meet three criteria: effectiveness, feasibility and fairness. As negotiations move towards the 2015 deadline to settle a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, pressure is building to have an agreement that covers all countries, including India and China, in commitments for emissions reductions2, 3. These countries and others in a newly organized negotiating group, the 'Like Minded Developing Countries', have put equity at the top of the agenda and argued that wealthier countries should take on deeper cuts corresponding to their historical responsibility for greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere4, 5, 6. To break this now nearly two-decade-old impasse, it is almost certainly necessary to reduce considerably the number of actors required to move simultaneously, and it is most logical to form a group consisting only of the world's largest emitters, rich and poor. A new approach is needed to share the burden and the benefits of steep emissions reductions, engaging the main developing countries without imposing a disproportionate burden on any particular country. For this to be politically feasible, China and the United States must be onboard, and agreed principles of equity must be at its root7. With leadership from the 'G2', other emitters are likely to follow5, 8, 9. As the relevant literature on regime building10, 11 shows, including on climate change12, 13, the structural power exerted by China and the United States within a deal such as the one proposed by this Perspective, and their high level of social capital embedded in interstate networks, could induce laggards to join collective action for international emissions reductions. That is, when China and the United States join the 28 countries of the European Union, the 48 Least Developed Countries (LDC), the 44 members of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) and other groups moving towards ambitious binding commitments to reduce their emissions, emerging global norms and fear of isolation may bring along some key remaining resisting countries. Given the failure of other approaches, such an effort is certainly worth the attempt.
We stress two points at the start. First, the climate crisis requires the most effective possible emissions abatement effort in order to stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a safe level, as agreed by Article 2 of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Key observers have argued that it is in fact morally superior to look for a course of action that is likely to be politically feasible rather than a perfect one without chance of enactment14, 15. Second, given the strong relationship between cumulative emissions and global warming16, 17, the more emissions reductions are delayed, the less any climate targets become achievable: therefore the faster collective action is agreed, the more effective it will be, and the less severe emissions reductions will need to be16. In brief, to address climate change meaningfully, humanity must undertake a complicated and costly collective effort: steeply and quickly reducing global emissions. Hence the urgency of a compromise capable of stimulating key players to swiftly overcome their inertia in order to break the current gridlock and promote effective emissions abatements. This article develops a compromise to international emissions reductions, based on four core elements for sharing the remaining carbon budget: (1) limiting initial action to the Major Economies Forum (MEF) members, 13 economies responsible for more than 80% of fossil fuel emissions; (2) using consumption-based carbon accounting; (3) applying equity principles of responsibility and capability to apportion the burden of emissions reductions; (4) bringing this deal back to the UN negotiations for wider adoption. None of these elements is itself new, but this particular combination is. The originality of the proposed approach lies in the nature of its explicit compromise that, in fact, is intended to nudge parties with conflicting objectives to give up part of their narrow short-term interests for the achievement of climate stabilization. To this end, we argue that states — which are the primary unitary actors in international regimes — pursue coordinated efforts for reducing emissions mainly based on interests aimed at material objectives18, 19. In particular, we are sympathetic to a neorealist perspective in international climate politics9, 20. Such a resurgent approach, known as neoclassical realism, besides stressing the importance of structural power, material factors, and in particular of relative gains, takes account systematically of the multiplicity of constituents and levels of international cooperation21, and allows room for moral concerns, whose role is pivotal for the political feasibility of our proposed compromise. According to the neorealist perspective adopted, relative gains matter in regard to emissions reductions especially for the most powerful countries, China and the United States22, 23. Together these two represent the 'great powers' that currently dominate international climate politics9, 24. As shown later, in terms of burden of emissions reductions, our morally grounded compromise somewhat favours China but without exceedingly penalizing the United States. It is most demanding only for the European Union, the third key actor; but the European Union would seem willing to take on relatively greater efforts towards emission reductions in exchange for recuperating a pragmatic and strategic role in global climate policy25. Thus our compromise includes considerations of the multifaceted factors that shape international cooperation on emissions reductions, and takes account of the socioeconomic facts that determine its political feasibility in MEF member countries, consistent with the provisions of the neorealist approach. For these reasons, we argue, the very nature and articulation of our compromise could help to advance collective action to limit emissions. The four elements of our proposed compromise are outlined below.
Twenty years of painful negotiations among the 195 parties to the UNFCCC show that a deal for abating emissions will probably need to be struck initially in a setting with a limited number of actors24, 26. Consistent with this, with the objective of assisting cooperation among major economies on climate change and energy issues, the MEF was established in March 2009. Scholars with knowledge beyond climate negotiations point out that nearly every important international negotiation has required a 'great powers' leadership group such as this to succeed9, 24. The MEF includes 16 countries and the European Union. Four MEF members — France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom — are excluded from our calculations to avoid double counting, since they belong to the European Union. The 13 MEF members considered here are all of the largest emitters in the world, and their 1990–2010 cumulative consumption-based emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion amount to 81.3% of global cumulative emissions (Table 1).
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