Cascading biases against poorer countries (original) (raw)

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 348–349 (2018) Cite this article

Subjects

To the Editor — A recent article by Robiou du Pont et al.1 suggests that wealthier countries (for example, the members of the EU) have made more ‘equitable’ contributions to the Paris goals than poorer countries (such as India and China), with most other developing countries somewhere in between. These results are counter-intuitive, given that developed countries have the majority of the responsibility for the atmospheric build-up of GHGs2 and the majority of the financial wherewithal to help solve the climate problem3, yet their Paris pledges amount to fewer tons of mitigated emissions than developing countries[4](/articles/s41558-018-0152-7#ref-CR4 "Holz, C., Athanasiou, T. & Kartha, S. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIBJXF

             (Harvard Dataverse, 2017).").

The objective of Robiou du Pont and colleagues (to examine multiple equity approaches) is laudable, however, the methodology reflects a selection of approaches that are biased in favour of wealthier, higher-emitting countries in three ways.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

$32.99 / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 12 print issues and online access

$259.00 per year

only $21.58 per issue

Buy this article

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Additional access options:

References

  1. Robiou du Pont, Y. et al. Nat. Clim. Change 7, 38–43 (2017).
    Article Google Scholar
  2. IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).
  3. World Development Indicators (World Bank, 2017).
  4. Holz, C., Athanasiou, T. & Kartha, S. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIBJXF (Harvard Dataverse, 2017).
  5. Sadath, A. & Acharya, R. Energy Policy 102, 540–550 (2017).
    Article Google Scholar
  6. Höhne, N., den Elzen, M. G. J. & Escalante, D.Clim. Policy 14, 122–147 (2014).
    Article Google Scholar
  7. IPCC Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
  8. Klinsky, S. et al. Glob. Environ. Change 44, 170–173 (2017).
    Article Google Scholar

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stockholm Environment Institute, Somerville, MA, USA
    Sivan Kartha
  2. Climate Equity Reference Project, Berkeley, CA, USA
    Tom Athanasiou
  3. University of Warwick, Warwick, UK
    Simon Caney
  4. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
    Elizabeth Cripps
  5. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
    Kate Dooley & Peter Singer
  6. Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India
    Navroz K. Dubash
  7. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
    Teng Fei
  8. Education University of Hong Kong, Ting Kok, Hong Kong
    Paul G. Harris
  9. Carleton University, Ottowa, Ontario, Canada
    Ceecee Holz
  10. CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway
    Bård Lahn
  11. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
    Darrel Moellendorf
  12. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
    Benito Müller
  13. Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
    J. Timmons Roberts
  14. Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
    Ambuj Sagar
  15. Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
    Henry Shue
  16. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
    Peter Singer
  17. University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
    Harald Winkler

Authors

  1. Sivan Kartha
  2. Tom Athanasiou
  3. Simon Caney
  4. Elizabeth Cripps
  5. Kate Dooley
  6. Navroz K. Dubash
  7. Teng Fei
  8. Paul G. Harris
  9. Ceecee Holz
  10. Bård Lahn
  11. Darrel Moellendorf
  12. Benito Müller
  13. J. Timmons Roberts
  14. Ambuj Sagar
  15. Henry Shue
  16. Peter Singer
  17. Harald Winkler

Corresponding author

Correspondence toSivan Kartha.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Kartha, S., Athanasiou, T., Caney, S. et al. Cascading biases against poorer countries.Nat. Clim. Chang. 8, 348–349 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0152-7

Download citation

This article is cited by

Associated content