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Cascading biases against poorer countries

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

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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 countries4.

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.

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References

  1. Robiou du Pont, Y. et al. Nat. Clim. Change 7, 38–43 (2017).

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  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).

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  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).

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

Correspondence to Sivan Kartha.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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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

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