Fair Shares – Lessons from Practice, Thoughts on Strategy. An Equity and Fair Shares Discussion Paper for Climate Action Network International

The fair shares idea is no longer novel. But as the crisis deepens, its profile is changing. Humanity is facing a civilizational emergency – a “polycrisis” with both climate and injustice at its core – and we need big ideas that can help guide us out of it.

This briefing is focused on one such idea: fair shares. Its purpose is to contribute to CAN discussion and strategizing, with the immediate goal of supporting analysis of and campaigns for equitable national mitigation contributions, including – very explicitly – greatly increased international mitigation finance. To this end, as one concrete manifestation of the fair shares idea, we also briefly discuss the ethical principles that underlie the Climate Equity Reference Framework, and its nuts and bolts, and how CAN member groups and nodes around the world have applied it in their work.

The fair shares idea, of course, has implications beyond mitigation, and in this report, we do discuss other climate equity challenges. But, importantly, these other challenges – which include adaptation and loss & damage – resist the kind of straightforward quantitative analysis appropriate to mitigation, for they involve even more complex and sprawling national and international efforts.

At any rate, the equity challenge has great relevance in virtually all dimensions of our global climate response, which also means that it cannot be set aside while we concentrate on “implementation.” This is the case for the simple reason that – despite all the benefits and promises of the climate transition – any adequately rapid global decarbonization process, if not carefully managed, could be extremely disruptive and in many cases painful.

A rapid global climate transition can, in principle, be achieved – we have (all) the money and (most of) the technology we need – but it’s hard to see how this will be possible if it is not done fairly. In other words, if we intend to succeed, then not only benefits and promises but also unavoidable pain and disruption must be shared amongst the people of this world in a way that is widely accepted as being fair enough. We can not follow, yet again, the all too often repeated pattern in which most of the benefits are captured by those who are already wealthy and powerful, while most of the pain and suffering is born by those already marginalized and oppressed.

This report is a bit long. It has to be, because while the fair shares idea is familiar in a vague way, crucial aspects of the global climate justice challenge are often misunderstood. Thus, this summary will begin by spotlighting a few of the key arguments this report will develop, before going on to very briefly summarize its chapters and lay out a few key recommendations.