Economics of climate change: risk and responsibility by world region

The impacts of predicted climate change will not be distributed evenly around the world. As post-Kyoto negotiations unfold, relating the geographical distribution of projected impacts to responsibility for emissions among world regions is essential for achieving an equitable path forward. This article surveys the current knowledge of regional climate consequences, and delves into the regional predictions of economic assessment models to date, examining how the uncertainties, assumptions and ethical dimensions influence the portrayal of risk at this scale. The few studies that quantitatively compared regional risk and responsibility are reviewed, and the analytical framework from one such study is applied to the 2006 Stern Review's projections to give the first regional comparison to take purchasing power and welfare considerations into account. Synthesizing burden and blame in this way is informative for policy makers; the world's most vulnerable communities - in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Latin America, and small island states accounted for less than 33% of global greenhouse gas emissions over the period 1961-2000, but may experience more than 75% of the ensuing climate damages this century. This analysis reinforces the call for industrialized nations to lead mitigation efforts, and to do so decisively and swiftly.