Counting the Carbons

Climate change is the most pressing global environmental issue today with a potentially devastating impact on human development. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has established consensus that climate change is clearly linked to human activity. Qatar is addressing the climate change phenomena through the environmental pillar of Qatar National Vision 2030. However Qatar’s carbon footprint takes into account Qatar’s energy production rather than the country’s domestic consumption. Qatar is unfairly portrayed as the highest carbon dioxide emitter in the world in terms of per capita measures. The main argument of the research is to discuss Qatar’s CO2 emissions per capita compared to other reporting measures and to examine the difference between using a consumption based CO2 emissions accounting system versus a production-based one for Qatar. This paper presents an understanding of Qatar’s per capita reporting measure and Qatar’s global image in terms of other reporting measures. In addition the paper discusses the complications of using a production-based accounting versus a consumption-based accounting system for Qatar Carbon Dioxide emissions calculations.