In other words, further economic growth in high-income countries is harmful, dangerous, and unjust.” Continued economic growth in high-income countries is at odds with the twin goal of averting catastrophic climate breakdown and upholding fairness principles that protect development prospects in lower-income countries. For growth to be legitimately considered ‘green’, it must be consistent with the climate targets and fairness principles of the Paris Agreement - but high-income countries have not achieved anything close to this, and are highly unlikely to achieve it in the future. Calling such highly insufficient emission reductions ‘green growth’ is misleading, it is essentially greenwashing. “It is a recipe for climate breakdown and further climate injustice. “There is nothing green about economic growth in high-income countries”, says lead author of the study, Jefim Vogel, from the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, UK. To investigate this claim, the new study compared carbon emission reductions in these countries with the reductions required under the Paris Agreement. Politicians and media have been celebrating recent decoupling achievements of high-income countries as “green growth” – claiming this could reconcile economic growth with climate targets.
The emission reductions in the 11 high-income countries that have “decoupled” CO2 emissions from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fall far short of the reductions that are necessary to limit global warming to 1.5☌ or even just to “well below 2☌” and comply with international fairness principles, as required by the Paris Agreement, according to a paper published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal. The authors argue that the pursuit of economic growth in high-income countries is at odds with internationally agreed climate targets, and call for transformative “post-growth” climate policy centred around sufficiency, fairness, and wellbeing.If current trends continue, even the 11 high-income countries that have "decoupled" carbon emissions from GDP growth would on average take over 200 years to get their emissions close to zero, and would emit more than 27-times their fair share of the “global carbon budget” that must not be exceeded if we are to avert catastrophic global warming beyond 1.5 C.New study challenges political claims that some high-income countries have achieved “green growth”– revealing that under current growth-oriented strategies, emission reductions in these nations fall drastically short of meeting the climate goals and fairness requirements of the Paris Agreement.
0 kommentar(er)
