ABSTRACT
During the negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol, the delegation from Brazil made a proposal, in May 1997, to set differentiated emission reduction targets for Annex I Parties to the United Nations Framework of Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC), according to the impact of their historic emissions on temperature rise (UNFCCC, 1997). The proposal’s central idea was that there exists a functional link between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and global temperature increase, or other indicators along the cause–effect chain, and this indicator can be calculated from historical emissions using a simple model or set of models. There are many studies on this idea (Enting, 1998; Enting and Law, 2002; den Elzen and Schaeffer, 2002; den Elzen et al., 2005; Höhne and Blok, 2005; Trudinger and Enting, 2005). All of these studies are conducted at the national or regional level, but do not analyze the per capita emissions. In order to ensure equity and sustainability, cumulative per capita emissions are analyzed here and their contribution to global climate change is calculated using the Bern Carbon Cycle Simple Climate Model (BCC_SCM).
