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Missed Opportunity in Lima: Creating a Process for Examining Equity Considerations in the Formulation of INDCs

After reviewing the basis for urgency of assuring that nations reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions, this paper examines the outcome of UNFCCC COP-20 in Lima in regard to getting traction for ethics and justice in national formulation of climate change commitments. In light of what is actually known about how nations have considered ethics and justice in formulating national climate change policies, this paper critically reviews elements of a Lima decision on what information nations must include when they submit their emissions reductions commitments, now known as Intended Nationally Determined Commitments (INDCs). The paper argues that some developing countries seeking to preserve distinctions between duties of developed versus developing countries set out in the UNFCCC may have inadvertently undermined a mechanism that had some significant potential to improve the compliance of high-emitting nations on the basis of equity and justice. Relying on recent research on the extent to which nations have actually considered ethics and justice in in formulating national climate policies, the paper argues that a mechanism similar to although stronger than the mechanism in the draft Luna text until it was removed at the instance of some developing nations is urgently needed. The paper predicts that nations will continue to base their INDCs on the basis of economic self-interest rather than what distributive justice requires of them unless they forced to respond to questioning by the international community about the ethical basis for their ghg emissions reduction commitments.