Rankings for Carbon Emissions and Economic Growth Decoupling
75
value added (as % of GDP) decreased 35%, but also in Indonesia where that sector
increased its contribution to GDP in 11%. Most countries in Latin America (68% of
them) weakly decouple emissions from GDP, but not all them have evolved in the
same way in terms of their economic structure. As is shown on Fig. 2, in Mexico and
Ecuador the share of industry in national value added has increased from 1990 to
2012, while the opposite is true for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay.
Countries According to Their Decoupling Ranking
Once a decoupling indicator is calculated for each nation, a rank can be assigned
according to the two orderings defined above. Table 5 shows each country with its
corresponding indicator and hierarchy according to both rankings (from the best to
the worst decoupling scenario), for the 1990–2012 period.
5
Table 5 shows that since there are only three nations (Tajikistan, Georgia and
Ukraine) that changed their order because they correspond to cases of recessive
decoupling, the correlation among orderings is high (0.94). Hence, even if conceptually, the two orderings are quite different, for these specific data, they rank countries
in a similar way.
The Case of Argentina
Argentina has had a significant participation in climate summits over time, and a
considerable number of Argentine scientists have been part of the Convention’s
technical body (the IPCC). There is expertise in the country regarding the preparation
of inventories and climate studies (see, for example, Barros and Camilioni 2017).
Several climate change impacts have been assessed and have to do with the retreat of
the glaciers of the Andean mountains, the increase in the frequency of the extreme
precipitations (and therefore, of the floods) in the East and Central regions, water
stress due to the increase in temperature in the North and West, the increase in sea
level affecting the maritime coast and the coast of the Río de la Plata, etc. A possible
water crisis is also expected in several provinces of Cuyo and Comahue (MAyDS
2017).
Argentina has been presenting inventories of its greenhouse gases over the years.
It has three national communications sent to the UNFCCC (1997 and its revision
in 1999, 2008 and 2015) and two biannual emissions reports (2015 and 2017). The
5 Note that there are some countries for which the calculated decoupling indicator is higher than
for the rest. This is particularly the case for Congo Dem. Rep., Kyrgyz Republic or Zimbabwe. As
noted by Tarabusi and Guarini (2018), this is a characteristic of the decouplingindicator we use: it
is not bounded by 1. More precisely, the elasticity is high for these countries as the three ones that
belong to our sample and have decoupling indicators above 10 in absolute value. Their particularity
is that they have a very low GDP rate of growth for the period studied.
75
value added (as % of GDP) decreased 35%, but also in Indonesia where that sector
increased its contribution to GDP in 11%. Most countries in Latin America (68% of
them) weakly decouple emissions from GDP, but not all them have evolved in the
same way in terms of their economic structure. As is shown on Fig. 2, in Mexico and
Ecuador the share of industry in national value added has increased from 1990 to
2012, while the opposite is true for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay.
Countries According to Their Decoupling Ranking
Once a decoupling indicator is calculated for each nation, a rank can be assigned
according to the two orderings defined above. Table 5 shows each country with its
corresponding indicator and hierarchy according to both rankings (from the best to
the worst decoupling scenario), for the 1990–2012 period.
5
Table 5 shows that since there are only three nations (Tajikistan, Georgia and
Ukraine) that changed their order because they correspond to cases of recessive
decoupling, the correlation among orderings is high (0.94). Hence, even if conceptually, the two orderings are quite different, for these specific data, they rank countries
in a similar way.
The Case of Argentina
Argentina has had a significant participation in climate summits over time, and a
considerable number of Argentine scientists have been part of the Convention’s
technical body (the IPCC). There is expertise in the country regarding the preparation
of inventories and climate studies (see, for example, Barros and Camilioni 2017).
Several climate change impacts have been assessed and have to do with the retreat of
the glaciers of the Andean mountains, the increase in the frequency of the extreme
precipitations (and therefore, of the floods) in the East and Central regions, water
stress due to the increase in temperature in the North and West, the increase in sea
level affecting the maritime coast and the coast of the Río de la Plata, etc. A possible
water crisis is also expected in several provinces of Cuyo and Comahue (MAyDS
2017).
Argentina has been presenting inventories of its greenhouse gases over the years.
It has three national communications sent to the UNFCCC (1997 and its revision
in 1999, 2008 and 2015) and two biannual emissions reports (2015 and 2017). The
5 Note that there are some countries for which the calculated decoupling indicator is higher than
for the rest. This is particularly the case for Congo Dem. Rep., Kyrgyz Republic or Zimbabwe. As
noted by Tarabusi and Guarini (2018), this is a characteristic of the decouplingindicator we use: it
is not bounded by 1. More precisely, the elasticity is high for these countries as the three ones that
belong to our sample and have decoupling indicators above 10 in absolute value. Their particularity
is that they have a very low GDP rate of growth for the period studied.