Equitable Access to Sustainable Development: Based on the comparative study of carbon emission rights allocation schemes

An equitable burden-sharing framework is essential for the successful collective efforts to cope with climate change. Various carbon emission rights allocation schemes have been proposed in the international community. This paper focuses on the comparison among different schemes with the Equitable Access to Sustainable Development (EASD) model. The EASD model consists of four modules: a global target module, an allocation module, a carbon equity module and an abatement costs module. EASD integrates 20 key allocation schemes. For a selected scheme, country-specific allowance trajectories are provided in accordance with the global emission pathway. Then the carbon equity after allocation is measured by carbon Gini coefficient defined by per capita cumulative emission from the global rather than the narrower national perspective. A reduction tradeoff relationship is also performed among country groups. With marginal abatement cost curves, regional abatement costs are further analyzed. Our studies show that EASD would be a powerful policy-tool to profoundly compare and assess emission rights allocation schemes.