Responsibility Sharing in International Greenhouse Gas Emissions

• Main Authors: Hau-Chiuan Yang, 楊皓荃
• Other Authors: Shih-Mo Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/02692983432322797931

碩士 === 中原大學 === 國際經營與貿易研究所 === 102 === This study makes use of the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) developed by the European Union to compute the share of responsibility of carbon dioxide emissions for 41 countries based on five responsibility-sharing principles, over the period of 1995-2009. Our results show that developed countries will benefit most under the principle proposed by Zhou et al. (2010), while newly-developed countries will favor the sharing principle by Marques et al. (2012), which accounts the shared responsibility based on the income being received from trade. For Taiwan, the most favorable one will be that based on consumption of goods and services. Conversely, it will be responsible for more emissions under the income-based principle. This implies that Taiwan not only needs to improve its energy efficiency effectively to reduce the emissions from production, but also needs to adjust its area mix of exports to avoid the added responsibility from exporting. Basically, a commonly accepted responsibility-sharing principle is the key to the success of global climate agreements. This study finds that the income-based principle proposed by Marques et al. (2012) is relatively fair and efficient as compared to other principles. Under the principle, developed countries will have the incentive to move their production to places having less environmental impacts. Newly-developed countries will also have the motive to reduce their products’ carbon intensity, while countries pursuing clean production technologies will have more opportunities in choosing trading partners. In addition, we also demonstrate that the modified income-based principle that assigns weights based on historical emissions and population might be a desirable direction in allocating the reduction targets among economies, which might encourage the participation of newly developed countries in global climate agreements.