Centre for Policy Research cordially invites you to a discussion on “India and Equity: What Now?”. The fact that the Durban Platform neither mentions “equity”, nor “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” has led to considerable concern in many developing countries. At Durban, India put forward its demands for equity in terms of equitable access to a global carbon budget. What should it do now, particularly in light of the legal obligations debate that will be at the heart of the Durban Platform? India has also been objecting to the inclusion of international aviation under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), not least on grounds of incompatibility with CBDR. Is that valid?The talk will begin by looking at the second of these questions. The inclusion of aviation under the ETS will be used as case material to discuss how compatibility with CBDR could be assessed focussing on an approach based on Aristotle’s conception of distributive justice and the polluter pays principle. The conclusion will be used to suggest some concrete suggestions of how the current dispute might be resolved.As concerns the legal obligations debate, the second part of the talk will address an ethical and legal principle which is as important as, say, CBDR in this context, namely the formal equality principle formulated in Aristotle as “treat like cases as like”. In particular, the aim will be to demonstrate that, as concerns the problems posed by climate change, India is similar to Africa or the Least Developed Country group (much more than to the other large economies, whether ‘developed’ or ‘emerging’) and hence is, in fairness, entitled to similar treatment, particularly with regard to expectations concerning legally binding obligations.Speaker’s Biography: Dr. Müller is currently Director (Energy & Environment) at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, which he joined in February 1996, Managing Director of Oxford Climate Policy (a not-for-profit company aimed at capacity building for developing country climate change negotiators), and Director of the European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi), an international initiative for sustained capacity building in support of international climate change negotiations. Dr. Müller is a Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and a member of the Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University. He is Senior Research Associate of Queen Elizabeth House the University’s International Development Centre, and an Associate of its Smith School for Enterprise and Environment. Dr. Müller received his doctorate (D.Phil.) in Philosophy from the University of Oxford specialising in Philosophy of Language and of Science and was formerly a Research Fellow at Wolfson College and a Lecturer in Logic at the Queen’s College, Oxford. He has a Diploma in Mathematics from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. For a list of his publications see www.OxfordClimatePolicy.org ***This seminar is a part of CPR’s Climate Initiative. We look forward to welcoming you to CPR for what promises to be an interesting discussion. Please feel free to share this invitation with friends and colleagues who may be interested.
