Climate Change Task Force Meeting, Manchester 2010

IPD's 2010 Climate Change Task Force meeting aimed to take stock of the status of a global climate change agreement after Copenhagen and to contribute to advancing the discourse on what would constitute a least unfair bargaining equilibrium, especially from the perspective of developing countries.

The principles for sharing what is left of the carbon space and the practice of how to do so are intertwined with the issues of financing and access to technology for mitigation and adaptation. The discussions at the meeting focused on determining what a fair burden sharing agreement would look like. What kinds of compromises might or should be acceptable?

There is now almost universal recognition that there will have to be a “global climate deal.” But so far, the maximum that the recalcitrant developed countries are willing to put on the table is less than the minimum that even most of the reasonable developing countries are willing to accept. We believe that part of the reason for this gap is that the issues have been framed in the wrong way, and the full implications, including for development, have not been adequately assessed. The ideas put forth at this meeting envisaged a small, but important, step in closing this gap.