Global North owes $170 trillion to offset CO2 emissions | environment

To ensure climate goals are met, the industrialized nations of the Global North must pay US$170 trillion (about R$836 trillion) in compensation for carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. The estimate is part of a study published Monday. – Viera (5) in the Scientific Journal nature sustainability.

The research, which lays out a compensation scheme that could work for 168 countries, estimates that the money the North owes low-emission countries amounts to nearly $6 trillion annually (29.4 trillion R$), or about 7% of global annual GDP.

The study was conducted by Andrew Fanning, a visiting fellow at the Institute for Sustainability Research at the University of Leeds in England, and Jason Hickel of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.

The “fair share” for each country

To put a number on the losses incurred by low-carbon countries, the researchers first obtained remaining global carbon budgets estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A carbon budget is the amount that could be released into the atmosphere to meet a given climate target – such as keeping global warming at 1.5°C, as set out in the Paris Agreement. Since 1960, this carbon budget has been equivalent to 1.8 trillion tons of carbon dioxide.

Given the population size of 168 countries, the researchers calculated a “fair share” for these countries in the budget that keeps global warming under 1.5°C. For example, the UK used 2.5 times its “fair appropriation,” and the US used more than four times its “fair appropriation.” India, on the other hand, uses just under a quarter; Brazil, less than half.

The scientists then compared each country’s “fair allocation” to the amount of carbon dioxide the nation has historically emitted since 1960, along with an ambitious scenario where it decarbonizes from current levels to “net zero” by 2050.

89% of the religion is from the Nordic countries.

According to the study, the total value of excess emissions that need to be offset in the world is US$192 trillion, with the Global North responsible for 89% of this. The rest of the debt is high-emitting countries in the “global south”, especially oil producers in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The money that has to be paid by the most polluting countries will be shared in favor of the low carbon emitters. To find out which countries might be entitled to compensation and how much, as well as which countries should be obligated to pay climate debt, the scientists developed an interactive website (access here).

According to platform data, the UK could pay US$7.7 trillion for excessive CO2 emissions in the period up to 2050 – which equates to an annual payment of nearly US$3.5 thousand per person each year. The United States could either pay $80 trillion over that period or make an annual per capita payment of more than $7,200.

India has always been a low carbon emitter and could be eligible for US$57 trillion offset, or roughly US$1,200 per capita, annually until 2050. 901 per capita (4.4 thousand R$).

“It is a matter of climate justice that if we require countries to rapidly decarbonise their economies, even if they bear no responsibility for the excess emissions that destabilize the climate, they must be compensated for this unfair burden,” Fanning argues.

Heckel adds that the study focuses solely on compensation due for atmospheric allocation, which should be considered along with other broader issues. We must also pay attention to the large class inequalities within countries. Responsibility for excess emissions lies largely with the wealthy classes who have very high consumption and who exercise disproportionate power over production and national policy,” says the researcher.