Today, it is widely understood that without a Science Review there would be no real possibility of achieving the ambition required by science. An Equity Review is imminently needed to muster sufficient political will for that needed ambition.
Such a review must be based upon the equity principles that are embodied in the Convention, most notably the principles of ambition, responsibility, capacity and developmental need.
The challenge now is to develop a set of indicators that properly express these principles, and to build them into an Equity Reference Framework. Such a Framework could help Parties to negotiate a set of pledges that are robust and fair enough to yield the breakthrough that we need in Paris.
This is not about a “formula”. Rather, an Equity Reference Framework would be a tool that the Parties – perhaps with a bit of assistance from their friends in civil society – can use to review and improve each other’s proposals in the later part of the political negotiations.
Procedurally, the key is that, when developing their pledges at the national level, Parties would be fully aware of the fact that these pledges will be evaluated against the science as well as the Convention’s equity principles.
Of course, after this evaluation, Parties will want to scale up their pledges, until they finally have a set that fairly distributes the effort of holding warming to a manageable 1.5°C.
Thus, we are calling for a process that allows a COP decision to launch the Equity Review at Warsaw. This decision should include the following:
Parties and Observers should be called upon to make submissions to the ADP co-chairs with their views on relevant equity principles and indicators. These submissions should be made by May 27, 2013.
The co-chairs should organize a Roundtable on equity principles and the Equity Review during the June Bonn session.
A decision text should be drafted during the autumn session.
A decision to launch the Equity Review should be made at COP19 in Warsaw.