Climate justice and a fair allocation of national greenhouse gas emissions

Rajamani et al. have presented estimates for a fair and equitable allocation of the remaining global greenhouse gas emissions that are compatible with meeting the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement. In this paper, we find that their approach yields a high emission allowance per capita to currently high-emitting countries such as Australia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and China. In fact, Rajamani et al. propose that these countries should get two to three times more allowances (emission space on a per capita basis) than for instance India and Ghana and they refer to this as a ‘fair’ allocation despite the fact that the latter countries have significantly lower per capita emissions, per capita income, and historical emissions. Furthermore, the allocation to several Western European countries, e.g. the UK and Sweden, is strongly negative. Hence, their approach tends to reward countries with high emissions and discriminate against countries with low emissions per capita despite the fact that Rajamani et al. argue that grandfathering cannot be seen as a fair principle for allocating emissions allowances. Our findings are not only of academic interest, but they carry important implications for the debates about climate litigation since several organizations have sued states based on essentially the same method as that used by Rajamani et al.