What are the implications of the Paris Agreement for inequality?

Climate change is a major planetary challenge. Its consequences threaten the provision of Earth-system services and sustainable development. The impacts and the capacities to adapt vary across countries and different incomes, as do the historical and current emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and thus the responsibility for anthropogenic climate change. This has generated a complex debate about the inequities inherent in the climate challenge. This paper analyses the potential implications of the full implementation of the first round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the Paris Agreement for countries’ per capita GHG emissions and the related inequality measures of the Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve. The distribution of annual and cumulative GHG emissions per capita for selected years and periods pre- and post-Paris of two NDC scenarios are assessed to derive implications for desired increases in ambition levels. The results show that the NDCs, while not meeting the Paris targets to limit temperature increase if levels of ambition remain the same after 2030, lead towards a more equitable future in terms of GHG emissions.Key policy insights The NDCs lead to decreases in GHG emissions inequality (lower Gini coefficients) across countries compared to 1990.The rate of decrease in inequality 2016–2030 slows down compared to 1990–2015.Conditional pledges in the NDCs lead to smaller reductions in GHG emissions inequality than unconditional pledges.This highlights tension between the pursuit of decreasing GHG emissions inequality and the ambition to lower overall global GHG emissions.