Lima Climate Change Conference: Compromise Limits Achievements
Old Problems
Differences between developed and developing countries over old problems constitute the main reason why the Lima conference did not achieve the expected results. Developed countries hold that the agreement should focus on controlling carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions and so include emerging economies such as China and India in the emissions reduction system. Yet they resist any commitment to provide impoverished nations with the financial aid necessary to tackle climate change. Developing countries, for their part, oppose being incorporated into the emissions reduction system, and insist that the new agreement should guarantee substantial financial subsidies for poor nations.
The core issue is hence that of apportioning responsibilities. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) clarified the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. From the perspective of developing countries, today’s climate change is the cumulative result of the past 270 years. Developed countries, therefore, should bear the bulk of responsibility, both through committing to reducing emissions and providing developing countries with funds and technical support sufficient to help them adapt to and mitigate climate change. Developed nations, however, believe that all nations should acknowledge similar accountability. They thus shirk their responsibilities. This is the largest divergence. Moreover, in the process of globalization, developed countries have transferred industries, and consequently emissions, to developing counterparts. Developed countries, therefore, should acknowledge emissions reduction as their historical responsibility.
The so-called common but differentiated responsibilities set forth in the Convention make clear that everyone must take responsibility for protecting the ecological environment. But it also emphasizes differences in responsibility. First, nations are at various stages of development and so bear different responsibilities. Consumption, construction, and transportation are the main sources of emissions in developed countries, while productive consumption is the culprit in developing countries undergoing industrialization. Their respective emissions are hence different in both content and nature.
Countries have varying abilities to tackle climate change. Developing nations should be allowed the time and opportunity to build up their capacity. They should therefore be tasked with responsibilities different from those of developed countries.
Developed countries’ fulfillment of their commitment to large-scale emissions reduction by 2020 and to providing developing countries with financial and technical support is the premise on which to maintain mutual political trust in future climate negotiations, according to Xie Zhenhua.
Responsible Big Country
In contrast to the passive attitude towards emissions reduction and aid to the developing world that certain developed countries have shown, China, as a big developing country, has acknowledged its responsibility in this regard.
Even though, due to its developing-country status, China has not been charged with the mandatory obligation to reduce emissions, the country has nevertheless made significant contributions to the global initiative to tackle climate change. In 2013, China’s carbon emissions were 28.5 percent lower than the 2005 level, equal to a 2.5 billion ton reduction in carbon dioxide discharge. During the 20 years from 1991 to 2010, China’s cumulative energy saving accounted for 58 percent of the world total. China’s installed capacity for renewable resources, moreover, accounts for 24 percent of the world total. In addition, China owns the world’s largest nuclear power capacity currently under construction, and has the world’s largest planted forest.
Chinese and U.S. leaders released a joint declaration on climate change issues 20 days before the Lima climate change conference. It states China’s commitment to efforts towards advancing its carbon dioxide discharge peak, forecast around the year 2030, and to increasing to 20 percent the share of non-fossil fuels in its primary energy consumption. The Brookings Institution commended China’s plan to thus improve its non-fossil energy consumption as an admirable initiative, equal to building an American power generation capacity with green energy in 16 years.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also applauded the joint declaration, calling it a major impetus and heartening progress towards reaching a new climate deal in 2015.
All this shows that not only China’s government but Chinese society as a whole places a premium on tackling climate change. An article in the Financial Times on December 3 includes a MORI survey that found a high level of understanding among China’s populace of the causes of climate change.
“We’ll do more in this field,” China’s Special Representative for Climate Change Negotiations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gao Feng said.
