{"title":"Reconciling the right to develop with leaving fossil fuels underground in the Global South","authors":"Augusto Heras , Crelis F. Rammelt , Joyeeta Gupta","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104207","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To address climate change, supply-side action and policy are urgently needed for leaving fossil fuels underground. Low- and Middle-Income Countries hold a pivotal role in such a transition due to their significant fossil fuel reserves and their Right to Development. Against this background, this paper asks: <em>What rationales, based on fossil fuel data and the Right to Development, could underpin Global South countries' engagement in or withdrawal from fossil fuel supply?</em> To unpack their development dilemmas and unravel a set of different arguments for different countries, this paper first develops an inventory of Low- and Middle-Income Countries, drawing from data on reserves, production, and infrastructure, to quantitatively assess their material involvement in fossil fuels and to identify potential cases for impactful and just mitigation action. We also estimate potential carbon emissions from burning all reserves in the included Least Developed Countries. These hypothetical per capita emissions are 10.94 % of those emitted by the richest 0.1 % in 2019. Based on this assessment, we then propose a typology of different Right to Development rationales around fossil fuels. We call for more granular analyses of the Global South in supply-side climate policy, to allow for their autonomous development trajectories. This includes a managed and just phase-out of fossil fuels aligned with the 1.5 ºC target, ensuring that the burden of stranded assets and resources falls on those most capable of bearing it.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"172 ","pages":"Article 104207"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Environmental Science & Policy","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901125002230","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
To address climate change, supply-side action and policy are urgently needed for leaving fossil fuels underground. Low- and Middle-Income Countries hold a pivotal role in such a transition due to their significant fossil fuel reserves and their Right to Development. Against this background, this paper asks: What rationales, based on fossil fuel data and the Right to Development, could underpin Global South countries' engagement in or withdrawal from fossil fuel supply? To unpack their development dilemmas and unravel a set of different arguments for different countries, this paper first develops an inventory of Low- and Middle-Income Countries, drawing from data on reserves, production, and infrastructure, to quantitatively assess their material involvement in fossil fuels and to identify potential cases for impactful and just mitigation action. We also estimate potential carbon emissions from burning all reserves in the included Least Developed Countries. These hypothetical per capita emissions are 10.94 % of those emitted by the richest 0.1 % in 2019. Based on this assessment, we then propose a typology of different Right to Development rationales around fossil fuels. We call for more granular analyses of the Global South in supply-side climate policy, to allow for their autonomous development trajectories. This includes a managed and just phase-out of fossil fuels aligned with the 1.5 ºC target, ensuring that the burden of stranded assets and resources falls on those most capable of bearing it.
期刊介绍:
Environmental Science & Policy promotes communication among government, business and industry, academia, and non-governmental organisations who are instrumental in the solution of environmental problems. It also seeks to advance interdisciplinary research of policy relevance on environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity, environmental pollution and wastes, renewable and non-renewable natural resources, sustainability, and the interactions among these issues. The journal emphasises the linkages between these environmental issues and social and economic issues such as production, transport, consumption, growth, demographic changes, well-being, and health. However, the subject coverage will not be restricted to these issues and the introduction of new dimensions will be encouraged.