Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

Equity in climate–economy scenarios: the importance of subnational income distribution

Focus on Global Environmental Scenarios

Paul Baer1

Show affiliations


Part of Focus on Global Environmental Scenarios

It is widely accepted that climate change raises equity considerations, and this has been addressed in various explicit and implicit ways in scenario-based climate and climate-policy research. In this paper I look in particular at the IPCC's well-known 'Special Report on Emissions Scenarios', in which equity is primarily quantified as the distribution of income between countries, and highlight the need for more explicit treatment of equity both within and across national borders. I apply an existing method for modeling subnational income distributions and show that this affects the results of welfare calculations of the type used in economic analyses of climate policy. Additionally, I suggest ways in which this kind of equity analysis could be applied to questions that address broader considerations of climate policy and development, such as burden sharing in the allocation of obligations, and conclude with remarks that frame the scenario development process in the context of what I call 'the contested storyline of the present'.


PACS

93.85.-q Instruments and techniques for geophysical research: Exploration geophysics

92.60.Ry Climatology

89.60.-k Environmental studies

Subjects

Instrumentation and measurement

Environmental and Earth science

Dates

Issue 1 (January-March 2009)

Received 26 June 2008, accepted for publication 28 January 2009

Published 19 February 2009



View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.