Common ground for effort sharing? Preferred principles for distributing climate mitigation efforts

Abstract

This paper fills a gap in the current academic and policy literature concerning how\nparties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change find\ncommon ground when distributing commitments and responsibilities to curb climate\nchange. Preferred principles for sharing the effort to mitigate greenhouse gas\nemissions are compared among 170 delegates and more than 300 observers attending\nthe UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. Respondents were\nasked to indicate their degree of support for eight effort-sharing principles for\nmitigation action. The survey results are analysed according to geographical region\nand party coalition affiliation. The results indicate that voluntary contribution,\nindicated as willingness to contribute, was the least preferred principle among both\nnegotiators and observers. This could be seen as ironic, given that voluntary\ncontribution is the guiding principle of the Copenhagen Accord. Across regions and\nparty coalitions, agreement was strongest for basing a country’s mitigation level on\nits capacity to pay in terms of GDP per capita and on its historic greenhouse gas\nemissions since 1990.