An assessment of the compatibility between climate change mitigation and global development

Humanity’s greatest challenge is to improve the living standards of billions of people
across the world without surpassing the planetary boundaries, and especially within the
carbon space compatible with a 2°C future. Mitigation actions are thus required to
create synergies and address climate and development goals simultaneously. It has
been recognised that technology-led mitigation measures can accomplish this task, as
long as they are also complemented with demand-side measures. Several bodies of
literature have emphasised, for example, the urgent need to reduce consumption
levels, particularly in industrialised economies. However, in the context of an ever more
globalised world, the climate benefits delivered by demand-side mitigation policies can
be offset by the existence of potential negative consequences in developing nations via
international trade. This thesis assesses the compatibility between climate change
mitigation actions taken in industrialised nations and improving development prospects
in the developing world from a demand-side approach. The study contributes to the
existing knowledge base by providing answers to four separate but related research
questions that were proposed to examine relevant aspects associated with this issue.
The results reveal that CO2 emissions have increased monotonically with income
without showing signs of having decoupled over time. The findings also show that while
curbing final demand for imports in developed countries can contribute to reduce their
consumption-based emissions and free carbon space, they can also curtail the
development opportunities available to the global South. Moreover, specific policy
instruments, like border carbon adjustments, can potentially distort trade flows and
jeopardise development in developing nations. Finally, the analysis unveils that the
available carbon space compatible with a 2°C target is insufficient to deliver significant
improvements in living standards in less developed countries given the continuity of the
status quo. The sharing of the development and carbon spaces should be done in an
equitable manner. The longer it takes developed countries to significantly cut their
emissions, the smaller is the carbon space available particularly to the poorest nations
who need it the most. The conclusions from this work evidence the necessity to
formulate alternative development pathways capable of facilitating a transition towards
an equitable, low-carbon, high-developed, and sustainable global economy.