Suggestion for the Funding of Adaptation to Climate Change and Disaster Management Schemes

What is it about?

This paper develops further a proposal to split continued climate negotiations into two separate blocks. The first block deals with historical emissions of greenhouse gases, including a mutual debt cancellation: the accumulated carbon debts of developed countries up to a cut-off year would be swapped for conventional monetary debts of developing countries. The second block deals with future emissions and how to finance adaption to climate change. Following the “polluter pays” principle, the funds should be collected in proportion to the responsibility for climate change and redistributed in proportion to the needs for adaption and management of climate-related risks. A system based on separate blocks ensures large flexibility. For example, the system of fund collection after the cut-off point could be taken from Oliver Tickell’s “Kyoto2”proposal, which puts forward a system for levying climate funds via fossil-fuel production permits. Peter Illig again provides a reminder of the important concepts of direct access, intended to establish a clearly defined and transparent system for delivering financial resources as close to the targeted impact as possible, and also highlighting the distinction between compensation and development aid. Finally, some incentives to join the proposed scheme are suggested.

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Photo by Chris Gallagher on Unsplash

Photo by Chris Gallagher on Unsplash

Why is it important?

It argues that developing countries are justifiably complaining that the main reason for climate-warming so far has been the historical greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries. In continues by showing how settling this carbon debt takes away the excuse for developing countries not to participate in a climate treaty.

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