Report Title: Global Carbon inequality, power allocation, and the Paris agreement

Reported by: Professor Klaus Hubacek (University of Groningen, Netherlands)

Beijing time: May 24th, 2023 (Wednesday) at 15:00 PM

Zoom: 886 6981 7551

Password: 662366

Report Summary:

Extreme inequality is a major challenge. Global wealth is concentrated amongst a few, while hundreds of millions still live in extreme poverty, and half of the global population lives on less than US$3.50 in purchasing power parity (PPP) per day. To tackle these persistent problems, the first of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to end poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030. In the same year as the SDGs were established, the global community adopted the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) and proposed to keep global temperature increase below 2°C or 1.5°C. This leaves humanity with a limited carbon budget to emit and, thus, requires significant reductions of yearly carbon emissions. The two agreements, SDGs and PCA, do not describe in any way how these goals can be achieved simultaneously (without one jeopardizing the other) or how the burden of responsibility may be shared. Is it possible to lift millions of people out of poverty without a substantial increase of carbon emissions? This is especially pertinent given that developed countries are responsible for most fossil fuel-related CO2 emissions, and the fact that less than a fifth of the global population shares ‘First World’ living standards. To answer these questions, we want first to look behind the scenes and quantify the connections between consumption and carbon emissions across the world. We will discuss how Covid-19 inadvertently contributed to achieve the PSG, whether it really did so, the effects of the EU’s Green Deal and the current energy price increase on global income distribution, and if there is any space for carbon taxation given the cost-of-living crisis and already large income disparities.

Reported by:Klaus Hubacek is a Professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is chair of Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society (IREES) and chair of the board of Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG). Klaus is currently also a visiting professor in geographical sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously he worked or held visiting positions at the University of Leeds, UK, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Normal University, China, the University of Cambridge, UK, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. His research focus is on conceptualizing and modeling the interactions between human and environmental systems. Klaus has been recently involved in building an integrated climate assessment model funded by Horizon 2020 and on forecasting carbon emissions funded by NASA. Klaus has published over 200 research articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics such as climate change adaptation and mitigation, participatory modeling, management of ecosystems services, land use change and governance. He is recognized as a highly cited researcher with multiple papers in the top 1% by citations. Klaus conducted studies for a number of national agencies in Austria, the Czech Republic, China, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the U.S., and international institutions such as the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank (IADB).Klaus was a lead author of the most recent 6th assessment report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) leading chapters on Behavior and Consumption-based Emissions.

(Undertaken by: Energy and Environmental Policy Research Center, Research and Academic Center)