Contraction and Convergence: the proportionate response to climate change

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The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was agreed in 1992 with the objective to halt the rising concentration of greenhouse gas (GHG) in the atmosphere. In 2007, efforts to this end remain insufficient and the danger of ‘runaway’ rates of global climate change taking hold is increasing. The science-based, global climate policy framework of Contraction and Convergence (C&C) offers an equitable solution to cutting carbon emissions in the hope that global collective efforts to reduce emissions can be successful. Three elements are at the core of the C&C campaign: the constitutional concept of Contraction and Convergence (C&C); the techniques and processes developed to focus the debate on rates of C&C that are relevant; the sustained effort to present C&C as the basis of the proportionate response to climate change.

THE BASIS OF C&C

Technically, the C&C model is a coherent and mathematically-stable framework. It holds the science- policy content together as a unity; science-based on the contraction side of the argument and rights-based or ‘constitutional’ on the ‘political’ side of the argument. C&C is in effect a bill of rights; it simply plots a full term event for achieving equal per capita emissions rights globally (Convergence) but governed by the overall emissions limit over time that stabilises the atmosphere concentration of GHG at a ‘safe’ value (Contraction).
The UNFCCC makes C&C generically true, but C&C specifically embraces a calculus built on this truth that strategically focuses the negotiations at the Climate Convention on two necessarily finite, global assumptions:

A trajectory to a safe and stable atmospheric GHG concentration limit, allowing for a range of calculations of the global emissions contraction limit to carbon consumption consistent with that.
The calculation of equal rights to the global total of emissions permits to the global total of people consuming within that limit, again allowing for different rates of convergence and even a population base-year to be considered. This is in preference to the irresolvable complexity of assuming any inequality of rights.

With this calculus, C&C captures the goal focus of the UNFCCC process in a structure of reconciliation. It is a universal first order numeraire. From this it becomes possible to go beyond the merely aspirational character of the current debate around the UNFCCC, to communicating the rationale and constitutional calculus of C&C.

THE LONG TERM PAST

Figure 1 shows data from ice cores for half a million years before industrialisation. Throughout this period, with natural sinks for CO2, such as the oceans and the forests in balance with the natural sources, the level of atmospheric CO2 concentration varied between 180 and 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) averaging at 230 ppmv.

Since 1800 with the onset of industrialisation and fossil fuel burning, human emissions have caused the concentration of CO2 to increase by over 40 per cent to 380 ppmv. The rise in ppmv CO2 is higher and faster than anywhere in the historical record. This rise is because CO2 emissions from human sources, particularly CO2 from fossil fuel burning, are going to the atmosphere and accumulating. Furthermore, for the past 200 years, on average 50 per cent of any year’s human emissions has remained in the atmosphere while the remaining 50 per cent has returned to the natural sinks.

A slowly increasing fraction of these emissions in the atmosphere remain there, accelerating the rise in concentrations even more. Column one in Figure 2 demonstrates that the average retention over the past decade has increased from 50 per cent to 60 per cent. This recognises that the capacity of the natural sinks for CO2 capture is now gradually declining. If this continues unchecked as the graphics suggest, the rise in the concentration of atmosphere GHG will accelerate towards the level at which dangerous rates of rise translate to a climate change crisis that becomes unavoidable. To be UNFCCC-compliant, we need to enact C&C now to prevent the chaos that is otherwise inevitable.

THE SHORT TERM PAST AND FULL TERM FUTURE LIMITS

The UNFCCC objective is to avoid dangerous rates of climate change by stabilising concentrations and we are all both circumstantially and legally bound by this. Compliance is governed by the need for a finite answer to the questions: ‘what is a safe GHG concentration value for the atmosphere?’ and ‘what is the scale of the full term emissions contraction event required to achieve it’?

Without answers, traditional evaluation of the economics of abatement and the social consequences is not possible.

Because of weakening sinks, analysis now shows that to stabilise GHG concentration in the atmosphere below the level that prevents dangerous rates of climate change taking hold, requires a rate of overall emissions control that is faster than was previously assessed. Instead of 100 years, we now realise that to reduce human CO2 emissions and other GHGs in the atmosphere to zero globally, we have only the next 50 years [IPCC AR4 and Hadley Centre, 2007].

As activities under the Kyoto Protocol show, unless we are visibly organising globally by a shared commitment not to exceed that safe concentration number, the probability increases that our collective efforts to avoid dangerous rates of climate change will be too little too late.

Already under Kyoto, the slight gain of CO2 emissions avoided has been more than negated by more carbon accumulating in the atmosphere at an accelerating rate as the result of changes in the climate system as a whole. Consequently, a global arrangement for emissions control in future that is sufficient in the light of this is sine qua non for success. As the original authors of the UNFCCC understood at the outset, embracing this primary question of the sufficient, and indeed the proportionate response, is fundamental to the whole global engagement.

UNF

Figure 2: Charting the UNFCCC Objective & Principles, the Development Benefits of Growth versus the growth of Climate Change Related Damage Costs. (http://www.gci.org.uk/images/Proportionate_Response.pdf)

Columns one and two address the objective and principles of the UNFCCC. Columns three and four compare the development benefit of growth with the growth of climate damage and costs. The left hand side of each graph shows:

Expanding fossil fuel emissions of CO2, measured in billions of tonnes of carbon between 1800 – 2000.
Rising concentration of atmospheric CO2 as parts per million by volume (ppmv) between 1800 – 2000.
The key questions for integration are in four columns:
Column 1: Contraction and Concentration: what is a safe level of concentrations and, in the light of sink failure, how rapid must contraction be to avoid GHG concentration going too high in future?
Column 2: Contraction and Convergence: what is the internationally equitable agreement necessary to ensure this level is not exceeded?
Column 3: Contraction and conversion: what is the rate at which we must convert the economy away from fossil fuel dependency?
Column 4: Damage costs and insecurity: what is the environmental and economic damages trend associated with this analysis?
Each Row has a different level of Risk projected across the four columns:
C1 (bottom row) Acceptable risk: global GHG emissions contraction complete by 2050 so concentrations end up around 400/450 ppmv with damages potentially still under control.
C2 (middle row) Dangerous risk: global GHG emissions contraction complete by 2100 so concentrations keep going up through 550/750 ppmv with the illusion of progress maintained, while damages are going out of control.
C3 (top row) Impossible risk: global GHG emissions contraction complete by 2200 so concentrations keep going up through 550/950 ppmv while the illusion of progress is being destroyed, damages costs are destroying the benefits of growth very quickly and all efforts at mitigating emissions become futile.

In each graph, different futures are projected on the right-hand side as scenarios or rates of change that are linked to the objective of the UNFCCC where three levels of risk for stabilising the rising concentration of CO2 are understood in the light of the rising fraction of emissions that stays airborne.

DAMAGES

We are still locked into causing global climate change much faster than we are mitigating it. Treating climate change as a global emergency is now long overdue and responding proportionately is vital. Unless the risk analysis is focused by this understanding, our best efforts will be in vain.

According to the reinsurers, the weather-related damages trend is growing at twice the rate of the global economy, see Figure 2, column four. To prevent this damage trend from running out of control, emissions need to contract to zero globally by 2050 if it is to be fast enough to stabilise atmosphere GHG concentrations at a level that prevents change accelerating uncontrollably. This is corroborated by the latest coupled climate modelling results from the UK Government’s Hadley Centre, published in the IPCC Fourth Assessment. While the notion of global emissions control is certainly heroic, the only vector of the problem over which we can still posit direct control, is our GHG emissions and thereby the level to which GHG concentrations will rise in the future.

With this integrated approach we can more clearly visualise the challenge within a finite calculus of collective responsibility, and so keep focused on the imperative of solving the problem faster than we are creating it. Communicating and implementing this remains the primary challenge.

A FRAMEWORK-BASED MARKET

With the C&C operational framework, we can compare how much must be achieved globally to avoid dangerous climate change, with the widening margins of error in which we are becoming trapped.
There are more complicated ‘alternatives to’ and ‘derivatives from’ C&C. While defending the evolutionary nature of the politics, these have also attempted to be non-chaotic. They include for example the Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to interpose a partial and random market-based framework in support of the Convention. But such an evolutionary response to its objective and principles is guesswork by definition, and there is no evidence supporting claims that merely incremental activity at the margins will collectively generate a sufficient response fast enough to be effective. Until recently, the unguided inertia of evolutionary process under the Kyoto Protocol has been projected as ne plus ultra.

The fact is that this is a lottery where everybody loses. This approach has obscured the global objective of safe and stable concentrations and the obviously urgent need for a trajectory to this objective by design.

C&C starts with an integral response to the Convention’s objective and allowing a full term framework-based market to result, where:

Equity as collateral is the 100 per cent entirety of the emissions contraction event necessary for concentration stability.
The social equity as the equal per person claim on the same 100 per cent throughout that event but softened by convergence.
The commercial equity is the shares pre-distributed this way sum to the same 100 per cent and are tradable so as to accelerate the positive sum game for the emissions-free economy that must emerge if we are to prosper in the future.

In a nutshell, this integration puts rational principle ahead of stochastic practice in order that the former guides the latter. In practice this arrangement is flexible and will create a lucrative framework-based market for the zero emissions industries within a future structure that corrects and compensates for the asymmetric consumption patterns of the past while saving us all from dangerous rates of climate change.
In this context C&C overcomes the stand-off where a one sided agreement is not an agreement and where half an argument is not, nor will ever become, a whole solution. It recognises that separate development is not sustainable development.

In September 2007, the German Government recognised this when mediating between supporters and opponents of the Kyoto Protocol with C&C as the basis of the post-Kyoto agreement. Their urgent call for a whole and proportionate solution should be supported vigorously.

Author

ubrey Meyer is the Director of the Global Commons Institute [GCI] responsible for the formulation of Contraction and Convergence [C&C] framework. For his work he has won several prestigious awards including the Andrew Lees Memorial Award, 1998, the Schumacher Award in 2000, the Findhorn Fellowship in 2004, a City of London Lifetime’s Achievement award in 2005 and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2007. In a recent edition of the New Statesman, he was listed as one of the 10 people in the world most likely to affect climate change.

Organisation

The Global Commons Institute [GCI] is an independent body based in the UK, concerned with the protection of the global commons. GCI was founded after the UN’s Second World Climate Conference in 1990 and since then has contributed to the work of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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