US should provide a cumulative compensation of $80 trillion, the European Union and the United Kingdom owe $46 trillion & remaining countries of the Global North $46 trillion
West Bengal countryside inundated by flooding in 2021. Photo: iStock_ The Global North owes India $57 trillion in compensation through 2050 for climate-related damages, according to estimates from a new study.
The country, which has not historically contributed to climate change, has only consumed less than a quarter of its fair share of the remaining global 1.5-degree carbon budget, the study published in Nature Sustainability highlighted.
The remaining carbon budget is the remaining carbon dioxide emissions that can still be emitted while limiting anthropogenic global warming to 1.5°C.
As India has sacrificed 75 per cent of its fair share to balance the excess emissions of over-emitting countries, the country is entitled to receive compensation for roughly 75 per cent of its fair share that would be appropriated by over-emitting countries, Andrew Fanning, Visiting Research Fellow in the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, told Down To Earth.
The study comes as stakeholders hold talks at the ongoing Bonn Climate Change Conference, which will feed discussions at the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in December 2023 in the United Arab Emirates.
“I hope that our study is received as an input to ongoing climate negotiations in Bonn or COP28, especially around the recently announced Loss and Damage Fund (which was agreed upon at COP27),” Fanning added.
The atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are estimated to be 415 parts per million and global temperatures have risen 1.1°C over preindustrial levels.
But not all countries have contributed to this rise. Countries are entitled to fair and equitable use of the 1.5°C carbon budget, the researchers wrote in their study.
Graphic by Andrew Fanning. Source: Compensation for atmospheric appropriation, Nature Sustainability (2023)
The researchers calculated the fair share of the total carbon budget of 168 countries based on the population size.
Next, the team compared each country’s fair share with their historical emissions from 1960. They also included a scenario where countries carry on with their business-as-usual approach or decarbonise to reach Net Zero by 2050.
Their analysis showed that all Global North countries breached their 1.5°C fair share. Together, they are responsible for 91 per cent of the cumulative overshoot between 1960 and 2019. The United Kingdom, for instance, has used 2.5 times its fair share while the US has used more than four times its fair share.
Countries that overshoot their fair share owe $192 trillion dollars in compensation to undershooting countries in a scenario where the world achieves Net Zero between 2020 and 2050. The average yearly compensation is estimated to be $6.2 trillion per year.
Overall, the US should provide a cumulative compensation of $80 trillion, the European Union and the United Kingdom owe $46 trillion, followed by the remaining countries of the Global North, whose cumulative compensation was estimated to be $44 trillion in 2050.
These nations owe two-thirds of the total financial compensation, the findings showed.
On the other hand, India ($57 trillion) and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa ($45 trillion) should receive half of the total financial compensation. China is owed $15 trillion.
“Our study focuses only on compensation that is owed for atmospheric appropriation, and this should be considered additional to broader questions about the costs of transition, adaptation and damages,” Jason Hickel, from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and co-author of the study, said in a statement.
The study, Fanning said, provides a proportional compensation scheme, which could help low-emitting countries decarbonise their economies and sacrifice parts of their fair shares to keep global temperatures below 1.5°C.
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