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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 4, NUMBER 6, JUNE 1991

NEWS...
"ENVIRONMENTAL COLONIALISM" ATTACKED

Item #d91jun70

India's Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a nonprofit organization that favors viewing environmental problems in social terms, accuses the developed nations of environmental colonialism in their assessment of world contributions to global warming. In Global Warming in an Unequal World, CSE argues that each country's responsibility for global warming should be determined by its per capita, not absolute, emissions of greenhouse gases. It severely criticizes the approach taken by the recent World Resources 1990-91 report published by World Resources Institute in cooperation with the U.N. Environment Programme (Global Climate Change Digest, Reports/General Interest, Feb. 1991), which ranks China and India fourth and fifth after the USA, USSR and Brazil in terms of national emissions of greenhouse gases. CSE argues that this approach is unfair because China and India represent such a large fraction of world population. If emission allowances were allotted based on population, China and India emit less than the amount of emissions they would be allotted, whereas most developed nations far exceed their per capita allotment.

Fair treatment of developing countries has been a persistent issue in recent international discussions on global warming and ozone depletion. According to Global Environ. Change Rep. (p. 4, Mar. 15, 1991), CSE's publication received heavy media attention in India and may be influencing opinion there.