Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 17: Socio-Economic Systems

SOE 17.2: Talk

Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 17:30–17:45, GÖR 226

Correlations between Human Development and CO2 emissions: projections and implications — •Diego Rybski, Luis Costa, and Jürgen P. Kropp — Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), P.O. Box 60 12 03, 14412 Potsdam, Germany

Although developing countries are called to participate on the efforts of reducing CO2 emissions in order to avoid dangerous climate change, the implications of CO2 reduction targets in human development standards of developing countries remain a matter of debate. We find positive and time dependent correlation between the Human Development Index (HDI) and per capita CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Based on this empirical relation, extrapolated HDI, and three population scenarios extracted from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, we estimate future cumulative CO2 emissions. If current demographic and development trends are maintained, we estimate that by 2050 around 85% of the world's population will live in countries with high HDI (above 0.8) as defined in the United Nations Human Development Report 2009. In particular, we estimate that at least 300Gt of cumulative CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2050 are necessary for the development of developing countries in the year 2000. This value represents 30% of a previously calculated CO2 budget yielding a 75% probability of limiting global warming to 2°C. Since human development has been proved to be time and country dependent, we plead for future climate negotiations to consider a differentiated CO2 emissions reduction scheme for developing countries based on the achievement of concrete development goals.