Building a comprehensive burden sharing framework to inform on an equitable implementation of the Paris Agreement

Methodologies for assessing the ambition of national climate pledges are in theory guiding international negotiations processes under the UN.

To this end, pledges are compared to national emissions scenarios that represent an equitable share of the global scenarios and of the effort they require to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.

These equitable national emissions scenarios do not yet inform how they can be achieved through a combination domestic action and international cooperation though transfers of mitigation outcomes.

As discussions move beyond pledges into action, informing subnational emissions objectives and international finance in line with the Paris Agreement and its equity principle can help implement mitigation globally.Internationally, global socio-economic scenarios inform the cost-optimal geographic distribution of mitigation effort, hypothesising sufficient finance.

Equity-based scenarios provide the total effort that each actor should provide, possibly through international support.

The difference between the scenario sets represents international finance that developed countries can use to fund part of their fair share in developing countries.

Subnationally, state and city governments often aspire to deliver mitigation beyond their fair shares of the national targets and align with the Paris Agreement goal.

A multilevel quantitative ambition assessment framework can serve as a basis to discuss the respective roles and efforts of subnational governments as part of a country or of subnational alliances.This project seeks to quantify 1) subnational emissions trajectories consistent with the Paris Agreement goals and 2) the international emissions mitigation support that each country can receive or provide to fulfil its equitable emissions scenario cost-optimally.

The goal is to provide the most comprehensive and unified peer-reviewed climate ambition assessment framework to inform climate negotiations and IPCC reports.