Public Lecture by Lord Nicholas Stern on “Climate Change, Economic Development and the Global Deal”
23 Mar 2009

India and other developing countries can be leaders in crafting global climate change policy, Lord Nicholas Stern advocated during a public lecture Monday night at the Atria Hotel in Bangalore.

Lord Stern, professor at the London School of Economics and author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, said he would like to see the world’s poorer countries take control of the climate change agenda. Their argument to better-off countries should be: prove that you can reduce your carbon dioxide emissions then we will reduce ours. They should also demand technology transfers and funding to adapt to a low carbon future.

In the past, Stern said, the developed countries have proposed deals to developing ones but these deals have often been turned down.

The world will have a chance to strike a deal in December when the United Nations Climate Change Conference meets in Copenhagen.

India and China generate far fewer carbon dioxide emissions per capita than the United States and Europe, which produce around twenty and twelve tons, respectively. India emits less than two tons of carbon dioxide per capita and China produces about five.

Because of their low emissions, and because the economies of the two emerging giants should be allowed to grow, emissions should rise for some time and then come down later, Stern said.

Even if poor countries can wait longer to change, drastic reforms are required to reach Stern’s goal, which is to bring average carbon dioxide levels down to two tons per capita by 2050. Compared to 1990 levels, rich countries would have to bring down emissions by eighty percent while poor ones would have to reduce theirs by fifty percent.

This reform is preferable to the alternatives, according to Stern. It would allow for what he called low carbon growth. High carbon growth is dangerous and will not work for more than a couple more decades while not growing at all is not an option, he added.

The event was sponsored by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) and HSBC along with the Environment and Good Governance Trust, the London School of Economics (LSE), and the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC).