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A Human Development Framework for CO(2) Reductions

Although developing countries are called to participate in CO(2) emission reduction efforts to avoid dangerous climate change, the implications of proposed reduction schemes in human development standards of developing countries remain a matter of debate. We show the existence of a positive and time...

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Autores principales: Costa, Luís, Rybski, Diego, Kropp, Jürgen P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3244443/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22216227
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029262
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author Costa, Luís
Rybski, Diego
Kropp, Jürgen P.
author_facet Costa, Luís
Rybski, Diego
Kropp, Jürgen P.
author_sort Costa, Luís
collection PubMed
description Although developing countries are called to participate in CO(2) emission reduction efforts to avoid dangerous climate change, the implications of proposed reduction schemes in human development standards of developing countries remain a matter of debate. We show the existence of a positive and time-dependent correlation between the Human Development Index (HDI) and per capita CO(2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Employing this empirical relation, extrapolating the HDI, and using three population scenarios, the cumulative CO(2) emissions necessary for developing countries to achieve particular HDI thresholds are assessed following a Development As Usual approach (DAU). If current demographic and development trends are maintained, we estimate that by 2050 around 85% of the world’s population will live in countries with high HDI (above 0.8). In particular, 300 Gt of cumulative CO(2) emissions between 2000 and 2050 are estimated to be necessary for the development of 104 developing countries in the year 2000. This value represents between 20 % to 30 % of previously calculated CO(2) budgets limiting global warming to 2°C. These constraints and results are incorporated into a CO(2) reduction framework involving four domains of climate action for individual countries. The framework reserves a fair emission path for developing countries to proceed with their development by indexing country-dependent reduction rates proportional to the HDI in order to preserve the 2°C target after a particular development threshold is reached. For example, in each time step of five years, countries with an HDI of 0.85 would need to reduce their per capita emissions by approx. 17% and countries with an HDI of 0.9 by 33 %. Under this approach, global cumulative emissions by 2050 are estimated to range from 850 up to 1100 Gt of CO(2). These values are within the uncertainty range of emissions to limit global temperatures to 2°C.
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spelling pubmed-32444432012-01-03 A Human Development Framework for CO(2) Reductions Costa, Luís Rybski, Diego Kropp, Jürgen P. PLoS One Research Article Although developing countries are called to participate in CO(2) emission reduction efforts to avoid dangerous climate change, the implications of proposed reduction schemes in human development standards of developing countries remain a matter of debate. We show the existence of a positive and time-dependent correlation between the Human Development Index (HDI) and per capita CO(2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Employing this empirical relation, extrapolating the HDI, and using three population scenarios, the cumulative CO(2) emissions necessary for developing countries to achieve particular HDI thresholds are assessed following a Development As Usual approach (DAU). If current demographic and development trends are maintained, we estimate that by 2050 around 85% of the world’s population will live in countries with high HDI (above 0.8). In particular, 300 Gt of cumulative CO(2) emissions between 2000 and 2050 are estimated to be necessary for the development of 104 developing countries in the year 2000. This value represents between 20 % to 30 % of previously calculated CO(2) budgets limiting global warming to 2°C. These constraints and results are incorporated into a CO(2) reduction framework involving four domains of climate action for individual countries. The framework reserves a fair emission path for developing countries to proceed with their development by indexing country-dependent reduction rates proportional to the HDI in order to preserve the 2°C target after a particular development threshold is reached. For example, in each time step of five years, countries with an HDI of 0.85 would need to reduce their per capita emissions by approx. 17% and countries with an HDI of 0.9 by 33 %. Under this approach, global cumulative emissions by 2050 are estimated to range from 850 up to 1100 Gt of CO(2). These values are within the uncertainty range of emissions to limit global temperatures to 2°C. Public Library of Science 2011-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC3244443/ /pubmed/22216227 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029262 Text en Costa et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Costa, Luís
Rybski, Diego
Kropp, Jürgen P.
A Human Development Framework for CO(2) Reductions
title A Human Development Framework for CO(2) Reductions
title_full A Human Development Framework for CO(2) Reductions
title_fullStr A Human Development Framework for CO(2) Reductions
title_full_unstemmed A Human Development Framework for CO(2) Reductions
title_short A Human Development Framework for CO(2) Reductions
title_sort human development framework for co(2) reductions
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3244443/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22216227
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029262
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