Poverty eradication in a carbon constrained world

Abstract

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change aims to keep warming below 2 °C while recognizing developing countries' right to eradicate extreme poverty. Poverty eradication is also the first of the Sustainable Development Goals. This paper investigates potential consequences for climate targets of achieving poverty eradication. We find that eradicating extreme poverty, i.e., moving people to an income above $1.9 purchasing power parity (PPP) a day, does not jeopardize the climate target even in the absence of climate policies and with current technologies. On the other hand, bringing everybody to a still modest expenditure level of at least $2.97 PPP would have long-term consequences on achieving emission targets. Compared to the reference mitigation pathway, eradicating extreme poverty increases the effort by 2.8% whereas bringing everybody to at least $2.97 PPP would increase the required mitigation rate by 27%. Given that the top 10% global income earners are responsible for 36% of the current carbon footprint of households; the discourse should address income distribution and the carbon intensity of lifestyles.

Fig. 1

Global income and carbon distribution in 2010 for household final demand plus associated government expenditure and capital formation. a Global population share and global carbon contribution per expenditure category. Colors represent different expenditure categories and their respective shares of the global population and global carbon emissions. b Per Capita carbon footprint per expenditure category in tons of CO₂-e. Dotted line separates the direct and indirect emissions for each consumer groups (lower part is the direct emissions and upper part is the indirect or upstream emissions in the supply chain)

Fig. 2

Predicted increases in global temperature of different scenarios dealing with extreme poverty. Move extreme poor <1.90$ PPP per day above extreme poverty level. The green line shows the warming determined by ending extreme poverty over the baseline (yellow line). 50% (dark shading) and 66% (light shading) confidence ranges are obtained in MAGICC by running the model 600 times each time using a slightly altered set of climatic parameters that are based on historical observations. See “Methods” for more details

Fig. 3

Predicted increases in global temperature of different scenarios moving poorest to the global middle class. Move global poor (<2.97$PPP per day) to next higher income category 2.97–8.44$ PPP per day. The green line shows the warming determined by moving the less-than-2.97$/day-income category (i.e., the lowest half of the global population) to the group 2.97–8.44$ PPP/day over the baseline (yellow line). 50% (dark shading) and 66% (light shading) confidence ranges are obtained in MAGICC by running the model 600 times each time using a slightly altered set of climatic parameters that are based on historical observations

Fig. 4

Historic cumulative global CO₂ emissions from 1870 through 2015 and predicted paths. Gray dots before 2015 shows historical cumulative CO₂ emissions since 1870 in Gigatons (Gt). Solid lines after 2015 shows predicted paths for each scenario and required annual reduction in carbon intensity in percent to stay below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels with 66% chance. Dotted lines after 2015 show predicted carbon emission paths if no mitigation measures are taken