Classifying the UN Membership

One just has to attend international meetings with lots at stake such as the Ministerial meetings of the WTO or negotiations regarding the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as took place last week to see the absurdity in the manner that the countries are conventionally classified. This absurdity is most evident in intuitive classifications such as developing countries and developed countries. Taken a step further, one finds very quickly that countries with very different development and welfare circumstances are classified together.

Michael Levi, writing in the Slate Magazine here addresses this issue of the problem with classification of country’s during the climate negotiations held recently in Poland. The very rough ways of classifying countries through a single metric such as the nominal GDP per capita or an income threshold results in classifying Singapore, China and Togo together. Given the concessions that are required, it is easy to see why countries such as India, China and Brazil are insisting on a classification that is patently absurd but whose results ensure that they would have to make fewer reductions to carbon emissions.

Throwing away useless mantras such as developing country solidarity and all the rest, I am clear that an algorithm considering the industrial base, population size, per capita incomes adjusted for purchasing power parity, infrastructure base and levels of poverty would yield an imperfect but better classification system. Such an algorithm is not too difficult to draw and would probably lead to a more useful result than is suggested by the very arbitrary classification that the larger countries such as India, Brazil and China are gaming so clearly. In all, it shows that the United Nations or the WTO ought to invest in developing a new mechanism for classifying its broad and diverse member base. A competition would yield a more efficient outcome so that the negotiations may then concentrate on the matter at hand as opposed to the politics of classification.