Fairness considerations in global mitigation investments – a tool to explore ‘fair’ regional contributions to near-term regional mitigation investment needs

Despite overwhelming evidence that the world needs to make rapid and substantial investments in climate mitigation in this decade to meet the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement, political and financial barriers continue to hinder mitigation efforts. Global mitigation investment pathways modeled in the sixth assessment report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reach global climate goals in a cost-effective manner. These are agnostic about who should finance these and how to fairly allocate costs and benefits of mitigation efforts.

In this article, ‘Fairness considerations in global mitigation investments‘ by Shonali Pachauri, Setu Pelz, Christoph Bertram, Silvie Kreibiehl, Narasimha D. Rao, Youba Sokona and Keywan Riahi, the authors apply equity considerations to global cost-effective mitigation investment needs and derive “fair-share” regional contributions, which describe the direction and magnitude of interregional financial flows that align with each consideration. They find that flows from North America and Europe to other regions would have to increase substantially relative to present levels to meet the Paris Agreement goals under most equity considerations.

In the context of this study, the authors developed a tool, the Fair Mitigation Finance Explorer, which enables users to systematically explore ‘fair’ regional contributions to near-term regional mitigation investment needs (2020-2030) derived from global cost-effective mitigation pathways assessed by Working Group III within the IPCC AR6.