Senior fellow Arvind Subramanian interviewed about his book, Greenprint: A New Approach to Cooperation on Climate Change, by ClimateWire.
From the article (paywall):
As a new round of U.N. climate negotiations starts in Bonn, Germany, today, two veteran economists argue that it's time to overhaul the entrenched rich-vs.-poor dynamics of the talks.
In their new book, "Greenprint: A New Approach to Cooperation on Climate Change," economists Aaditya Mattoo and Arvind Subramanian say it is in the best interest of China, India and other emerging powers to stop fighting over who polluted in the past and become the leading carbon cutters of the future. Developing countries, they argue, should stop looking for financial compensation that will never come and instead join a "technology revolution."
That could be a hard case to make at the United Nations, where positions have hardened over the decades and where outside activists insist rich countries must act first, do the most and recompense poorer nations for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. "The gap between current pollution reduction pledges of rich countries and what science and historical responsibility requires is large -- for the Bonn talks to be called a success we will have to see those targets go up," Meena Raman with the Third World Network said in a statement issued over the weekend.
But Mattoo, the World Bank's research manager specializing in trade policy, and Subramanian, a senior fellow at both the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development, who together have tackled subjects from trade talks to immigration, have a flair for turning old ways of thinking upside down. Both spoke recently with ClimateWire about what they call the outdated approach to global climate change negotiations and the backlash from some developing countries to their ideas.
ClimateWire: You call for a "role reversal" between developed and developing countries in the U.N. climate change negotiations. Explain what you mean by that.
Subramanian: If you just step back and look at how these international negotiations have come forward, the whole Kyoto process began in the early 1990s, and it was a unipolar, Atlantic-centric world. So you had the Kyoto Protocol with differentiated commitments, and that was based on this narrative problem where the poor blame the rich for climate change.
Then you had the rich world pressurizing the poor world to take on obligations, and in turn promising financial compensation. So we called that "cash for cuts." We still labor under the impression that the North can compensate the South for action, but that world is gone. We left that world 10 years ago. The cash-for-cuts approach has to be altered, and the role reversal will take the form of everyone contributing, but contributing according to their current economic situation and prospects.
Mattoo: We keep looking to the industrialized countries to take the lead when it's so evident that developing countries have the biggest stake in climate change mitigation. This old model of international cooperation based on the idea that all countries can make cuts but developing countries will need to be compensated. But it's so patently absurd now to expect that the debt-addled industrialized countries are going to make huge transfers of wealth to countries like India and China. You have to abandon that model.
'Who has the biggest stake?
CW: Isn't asking developing and emerging countries to take on the bulk of the burden unfair when countries like the U.S. have yet to set climate policies?
Subramanian: When this book came out, without wanting to name names, the Indians got back to us and said: "You're crazy. What you're proposing is unfair. Look, why should we contribute, because the U.S. is not going to do anything in any case, so asking us to contribute is pointless." My response is, look, it may be unfair, but looking forward, who has the most to lose? Looking backward does not help you.
CW: So what do you do with the notion of "historical responsibility"? Industrialized countries are, after all, responsible for most of the current buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Subramanian: I think historical responsibility is important, but it cannot now be the exclusive determinant of what happens. The West caused the problem, and today even if the West acted on its own, it couldn't solve it. The way we give expression to historical responsibility is to say, "Yes, the West needs to act first because the developing countries are carbon poor. But they will act in different ways." I do think we need new ways of thinking.
Mattoo: If you look ahead, you have the stark fact that developing country emissions have already outpaced developed country emissions on an annual basis, and will soon outpace them on a cumulative basis. Why don't we ask, "Who has the biggest stake?" If you ask not who did what, but who has the biggest stake in mitigation, there's a huge asymmetry. But if developing countries can move away from this backward-looking thing and focus on who needs to act.
Can China's emerging green technology move the U.S.?
CW: Nations have pledged to deliver a new agreement by 2015 that will bind all emitters to take unilateral action on climate change by 2020. So, is the world already headed in the direction you're describing?
Subramanian: Yes, but it's moving very slowly.
Mattoo: To some extent, yes, there is already a shift in the narrative. I think the Chinas and Indias of the world are realizing they do need to be more proactive. I think this idea of financial compensation has receded from the public discourse. The one thing that needs to happen a little more is a shift away from the idea of who will cut by how much, which is essentially subject to the brutal arithmetic that is this zero-sum game. It simply doesn't add up. Instead of focusing on emissions, emissions, emissions, you have to focus on technology. Haggling over the emissions isn't going to get us there. The question we should be asking is, how do we all contribute in a way that leads to a technological revolution?
CW: So if, as you write, countries should view emissions cuts not as a payback for "historical sins" but as investments in the future, what does the technology revolution look like for countries like China and India? And how can some of the moves you propose in the book -- like allowing a limited border tax against exports or reforming trade rules to allow more green subsidies -- change the emissions trajectory here in the U.S.?
Subramanian: If India could just eliminate its fossil fuel subsidies, that would be a huge contribution it could make to climate change. China is pricing carbon. We think green subsidies should be allowed and current rules get in the way of that. If there's anything that can change the dynamics in the U.S., it has to be this threat that on green technology, China is taking over. Countries that can create green technology should be able to do so, then put pressure on the U.S.
How do you fix a 'broken' approach?
Mattoo: Everybody recognizes our diagnosis of why the current approach is broken. What they find less compelling is the specific ingredients of the "greenprint." The reaction from developing countries is, "Why should we be asked to do so much?" And there's pessimism about the U.S.
I think that's the big question: What would it take for the U.S. to act? We propose that emerging countries commit that for every $1 increase in the carbon price by industrialized countries, they will increase [the price of carbon] by X dollars in 15 years. You could legally bind that, and it would assure innovators that they have a big potential market in developing countries.
Subramanian: We don't even start the technology revolution until we get a price on carbon. Without that, it's a nonstarter.
CW: If that happens, do we even need a new climate change treaty?
Subramanian: At the moment, the bottom-up approach seems very attractive, because the international negotiations has collapsed. But at some point, without an international agreement, the cooperation won't add up.
Mattoo: Somehow this idea that the unilateral approach will work and be adequate, that's a misplaced idea. It's a cooperative issue. Everybody's willingness to act depends on whether others are willing to act also. That iron logic has to be respected. That is why we feel the South needs to take the lead and deprive the United States of this excuse that "Our actions aren't going to be enough."
Reproduced with permission. Copyright 2013, E&E Publishing, LLC. www.ClimateWire.net