What are Climate Reparations?
Broadly speaking, climate reparations represent two strands of support that the rich Western world needs to provide the poorer, third world areas to help them deal with climate change.
What are these two strands of support and why does the Western World need to provide them?
Global warming which causes Climate Change has been proven to be man-made. This is the result of fossil fuels in transport, agriculture, industry, and construction increasing the levels of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.
The Western world was industrialised a lot earlier and to a much greater extent than the Developing world. As a result, it has been responsible for most carbon emissions, while becoming wealthy on the back of the advances that have caused them.
The arguments in support of climate reparations state that:
A). The richer countries should decarbonise much faster than the poorer countries so that the poorer ones can industrialise to improve their standards of living first.
The Developing world has a right to decarbonise at a slower pace as their emissions have historically been so low. Additionally, the resources that the West has used to improve their standards of living have been obtained from Developing countries unfairly. Support to help with increased standards of living in the Developing world has been provided by the West.
B). Many of the severe consequences of Climate Change will be primarily felt by the Developing countries that are least equipped to deal with them.
To mitigate these consequences on a large scale, reparations should be paid from the West.
Where did these demands for Climate Reparations surface and what has been the reaction of the West?
The principal forum for discussing Climate Change has been the COP process set up by the UN in 1988 with the formation of the International Panel on Climate Change. The first COP (Conference of the Parties) was held in 1995.
The early meetings of the COP focused on the need to accept that Climate Change was man-made and to take steps to avoid further dangerous human interference in the climate system.
At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, it was accepted that there should be:
Mitigation steps taken by all nations.
Different targets for bigger historical polluters
Developed countries should help the undeveloped ones.
This was followed by the Kyoto Agreement of 1995 which set binding targets for developed countries, but not developing ones. This was agreed by most nations, but not the USA who wanted binding targets for all nations. In these two COP’s we can already see the principles appearing that support the Climate Reparations arguments.
At the 2009 Copenhagen COP15 it was agreed to set up a $100 billion-dollar Green Climate Fund by 2020 to help support vulnerable countries deal with the effects of Climate Change. By the time of COP26 in 2021 there was nowhere near enough progress being made in securing the $100 billion for the Green Climate Fund and this has now been delayed to 2023.
The anger of developing countries at COP26 was very evident as many are now starting to suffer greatly from the effects of Climate Change. Besides a lack of financial aid to deal with their climate problems, these countries also see the West failing to meet their decarbonisation targets and, in some cases, ramp up their exploration for coal, gas and oil.
A new study determining the adequate amount of compensation to be paid to historically low polluting countries could be in the region of $6 trillion annually, adding up to over $170 trillion by 2050. The highest ranking over-emitting countries are currently the UK, US, Germany, Japan, and Russia. In this study, the approach taken was one related to carbon creditation and population size. It would mean the polluting countries buying the rightful share of the world’s carbon budget from the least polluting and populous countries such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and rather unbelievably, China.
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Sources:
The Law Society: Reflecting on COP 26: What were the key outcomes?
A brief history of climate change - BBC News
Rich Countries with high greenhouse gas emissions could pay $170tn in climate reparations, Nina Lakhani, The Guardian