Towards 2030 issues relating to personal tradable emissions are discussed with a view to moving towards a more stringent ‘Contraction and Convergence’ global environmental future in the UK with those that need to travel buying credits from those that have spare. Building Blocks for Sustainable Transport Adriaan Perrels, Veli Himanen, Martin Lee-Gosselin
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Sustainable-Transport-Adriaan-Perrels/dp/0080447090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=boo ks&qid=1305637930&sr=1-1#_
Having reviewed the trends in the use of natural resources and accompanying undesirable environ-mental impacts in the first section of Chapter 2, the last section of that chapter considers possible future implications by presenting three brief scenarios: (1) business as usual (leading to a tripling of global annual resource extraction by 2050); (2) moderate ‘Contraction and Convergence’ (requiring industrialized countries to reduce their per capita resource consumption by half the rate for the year 2000); and (3) tough ‘Contraction and Convergence’ (aimed at keeping global resource extraction at its current levels). None of these scenarios will lead to actual global reductions in resource use, but all indicate that substantial reductions in the resource requirements of economic activities will be necessary if the growing world population can expect to live under conditions of sustainable resource management. The key message of the tough scenario is that despite population growth to roughly 9 billion people, the pressure on the environment would remain roughly the same as it is now. The emissions correspond approximately to the lowest range of scenario B1 of the IPCC SRES, but are still 20% above the roughly 5.5 GtC/yr advocated by the Global Commons Institute for contraction and convergence in emissions (GCI, 2003). UNEP - DECOUPLING NATURAL RESOURCE USE AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS FROM ECONOMIC GROWTH Dr. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Dr. Ashok Khosla, Co-Chairs, International Resource Panel (IRP) http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/decoupling/files/pdf/Decoupling_Report_English.pdf
One of the most prominent for emissions allocations are the Global Commons Institute’s ‘Contraction and Convergence’ approach (Meyer 2001) Breaking the Climate Change Impasse with China Kelly Sims Gallagher Assoc Prof Energy & Environmental Policy Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/Gallagher_Final_5.pdf
Such aims must be reached through an equitable global climate regime that continues the efforts of the Kyoto Protocol under the umbrella of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). At the heart of this regime could be a cap-and-trade philosophy, which stems from the concept of climate justice and has been termed ‘Contraction and Convergence’. The idea is to put a cap on total global emissions and continually reduce the global cap over the years (until 2050, for example) until the cap level is reduced to a targeted sustainable threshold. This means that global greenhouse gas emissions – from industrial production and consumption to land, sea and air traffic – would decrease substantially over the long term (contraction). Emission allocation would start from the status quo and gradually reach an equal per-capita basis (convergence). In practical terms, this means that the per-capita emissions of industrialized countries, which are comparatively much higher at present, will be decreased significantly, while most developing countries may initially increase their per-capita emissions. SHARE THE SAME DREAM & IT WON‘T BE A DREAM FOR LONG. Frithjof Finkbeiner, International Coordinator, Global Marshall Plan Initiative, Chairman, Global Marshall Plan, Foundation, Member Club of Rome. James B. Quilligan, Coordinator, Global Marshall Plan, Initiative-USA, Director, Centre for Global Negotiations/Brand 21 Forum http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/GMPBrochure_.pdf