Fair burden-sharing for climate change mitigation: an axiomatic approach

Abstract
A significant challenge in climate change negotiations is establishing a burden-sharing method that all or most governments find fair. Two key fairness principles are emphasized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in allocating mitigation efforts: the Polluter- Pays principle (“common but differentiated responsibilities”), suggesting that the countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions should contribute more, and the Ability-to-Pay principle (“respective capabilities”), suggesting that economically advantaged countries should contribute more. This paper proposes a new burden-sharing method that integrates the Polluter-Pays and Ability-to-Pay principles without resorting to weighted indicators. We provide an algorithmic procedure to implement the method in polynomial time and conduct an axiomatic study to em- phasize the significance of our approach. Finally, we apply our method using worldwide data.