Recently, Bin Hu, Director of Global Climate Governance Research at the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development, Tsinghua University, served as the corresponding author of an article entitled “An International Plan for Sustainable Development”, published in Ecological Economics, a leading international journal in the field of ecological economics. The paper is available at: https://lnkd.in/ezr6-E6Y.

The article was co-authored with Adrien Fabre of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Rabah Arezki of Université Clermont Auvergne / Harvard Kennedy School, Dipak Dasgupta of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Partha Sen of the Delhi School of Economics, and Frederick van der Ploeg of the University of Oxford / University of Amsterdam.

The article proposes the concept of a “Sustainable Union”, seeking to explore a more actionable and equitable pathway for international cooperation under the framework of the Paris Agreement. It aims to promote emissions reductions through carbon pricing, expand sources of climate finance through international tax cooperation, respond to developing countries’ equity concerns through a distribution principle that combines income and population, and advance climate action from political commitments to institutional implementation through a flexible and open coalition of countries.

A coalition of willing countries or regions committing to:

✅an int'l carbon budget consistent with Paris target, with ~equal pc rights
✅3% of GDP in new taxes on the wealthiest
✅1% of GDP rebated to participating countries pro rata to population

The launch of an open coalition by the EU, Brazil and China to strengthen the integrity and effectiveness of carbon markets shows that voluntary cooperation among willing countries is no longer only a theoretical idea. It is becoming part of the emerging architecture of Paris Agreement implementation.

Our paper proposes a Sustainable Union that combines carbon pricing, international tax cooperation, revenue-sharing, and conditional cooperation mechanisms to support both decarbonization and sustainable development. The new coalition does not yet go that far, but it provides an important first step: building trust, transparency, MRV capacity, and shared carbon accounting rules. These are precisely the institutional foundations needed for more ambitious cooperation on climate finance and sustainable development.

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