Copenhagen climate change conference 2009 – 90 DAYS TO GO

90 days before Copenhagen and the COP15 Summit on global warming, the dialogue with China is intensifying as two major studies were released last week by Chinese scholars, in order to get the rest of the world aware of its actual condition and expectations:

1° Zou Ji, from Renmin University, has just made public his project, “cool China”, regarding the costs of controlling the country’s future greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. According to his team, the massive clean-up would cost 284 billion USD a year between 2030 and 2050 and 508 billion per year thereafter. This would amount to 7.5% of China’s GDP in 2030, assuming 62 “key” carbon footprint reduction technologies are employed. Essentially, concludes mr. Zou Ji, this means that China will be able to handle the cutback of the emissions’ rise, but for effective reduction of its carbon footprint, foreign help (both financial and technological) will be indispensable.

2° Fan Gang, Su Ming and Cao Jing, state economists, have looked at air pollution from 1950 to 2005 and have constructed an elaborate table of countries with respective polluting rights. As could be expected, the United States ranks first, followed by the 27 European member states, while China has not received much constraint and India, none. Considering that China’s pollution lies mainly in its exports (although this analysis is becoming by the day less and less relevant), these experts come to the conclusion that rich nations should choose between scaling down consumption habits or paying for the pollution generated from goods purchased abroad. Such a theory alarms some foreign observers such as Professor Wing Thye Woo (UCLA) who reminds that “the important issue is to reduce CO2 emissions, not to determine who bears ultimate moral responsibility for it". However, this extreme thesis may prove valuable in predicting what can be done at Copenhagen, says expert M.A. Levi: to “reinforce developed countries’ emissions cuts and link developing countries’ actions … to objectives in other areas – such as economic growth, security, and air quality – that leaders of those countries already care about.” Any attempt from any side to force the other to accept measures it is not ready for, is a recipe for failure.

3° China, as the main air and water global polluter which will generate 63% of the global rise in GHG emissions over the next 11 years (India, 10%), has to expect some pressure at Copenhagen, to adhere to the solidarity logic of compulsory objectives, as a share of the common burden. Yet, an approach exists that could allow China to satisfy the world without spending a penny: China could render “binding” under the UNFCCC its national plan to bring renewable to 15% of its energy mix and to improve its energy efficiency by 4% a year, all by 2020. This “conjuring trick” is not suggested by the media but by country partners, in the wake of ongoing, discrete negotiations. Beijing is seriously considering the idea, although on the condition that the United States and other developed countries show their capacity to make a firm offer by December, regarding financial and technology transfers to China and to the developing world as a whole, in order to make possible the historical task of turning, short and medium term, the world economy into a low carbon one.

Eric MEYER

China Trade Winds Editor

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