January 30, 2010
By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD
BEIJING — As a Monday deadline approaches for countries to submit to the United Nations their plans for fighting climate change, China is banding together with other major developing nations to stress that only the wealthier countries need to make internationally binding commitments.
So while China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, might put down in writing its targets for slowing the growth of emissions, it will make clear that those efforts are voluntary steps it plans to take domestically that should not imply a binding international commitment.
The distinction reflects China’s strong desire to cast climate change policy as a sovereignty issue in the aftermath of rancorous negotiations last month at the environmental summit meeting in Copenhagen. It says developed nations, which emitted carbon dioxide without restriction over many decades of industrialization, cannot force developing countries to submit to international policies or regulations.
China demands that climate change negotiations should not set emissions targets for developing countries, said Pan Jiahua, an economics professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who advises the Chinese negotiating team. “I don’t think China will change its position.”
This position could draw further criticisms from Western politicians who already blame China for weakening the final accord at Copenhagen. In the United States Congress, the chances that lawmakers will pass climate legislation this year are slim, in part because some lawmakers say China and India, where carbon emissions are rising the fastest, are giving much higher priority to maintaining economic growth than to fighting climate change.
But even as China sticks to tough diplomatic language, environmental advocates say it is forging ahead with its own plans to become more carbon-efficient.
This week, China unveiled a new agency, the National Energy Commission, headed by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, to coordinate energy policy. In December, China, now considered a leader in developing renewable energy technology, put more pressure on companies connected to the electric grid to hook up to renewable energy sources like wind- and solar-power generators.
The United Nations set the deadline of Monday — Sunday Beijing time — for countries to approve the Copenhagen Accord and append their own goals for cutting carbon emissions or slowing emissions growth by 2020. American officials have said that they will inscribe a provisional pledge announced by President Obama last November that the United States will cut carbon emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, pending action by Congress. Other nations have demanded that the United States make bolder cuts.
China, India, Brazil and South Africa said in New Delhi this week that they would present the United Nations with their “voluntary” plans on climate change. Voluntary is the operative word; the countries want to stress that only developed nations should have binding responsibilities to fight climate change.
“A very big deal is the extent to which you’re doing this voluntarily,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “You’ve got to make clear this isn’t an international obligation, and that you’re doing this because you’re a good guy.”
To make the divide even clearer, the four countries called for an “early flow” of an annual $10 billion promised at Copenhagen to help developing nations combat climate change. Wealthy nations should begin handing over the money, first to small island nations and African countries, as “proof of their commitment,” the four major developing nations said in a statement.
China appears to be emphasizing rich nations’ obligations on that now partly because Chinese officials felt ambushed at Copenhagen, especially over Western demands that China submit to an international system for monitoring and verifying emissions cuts.
China is also worried about losing the support of smaller developing nations because some of them rejected China’s positions at Copenhagen. This month when Yang Jiechi, the Chinese foreign minister, visited Africa, he made China-Africa cooperation on climate change a priority in talks.
“I think that the Chinese definitely feel quite beaten up in Copenhagen,” said Yang Ailun, the climate and energy campaign manager at Greenpeace China, “and what’s quite worrying is that there was a sense among the Chinese officials that, ‘Well, maybe we should just come to focus on our own domestic energy and domestic issues.’ ”
The government’s lead negotiator, Su Wei, said at a Chinese academic forum in December that the United States and European countries had played “tricks” in Copenhagen to heap pressure on China, according to a government-run Web site.
At the climate talks, frustration by the Chinese burst into the open when Xie Zhenhua, the top Chinese climate official, yelled and wagged his finger at Mr. Obama, say conference attendees. Mr. Wen, the prime minister, told the interpreter to ignore Mr. Xie’s remarks — a sign of the discord that attendees said plagued the Chinese ranks.
Chinese officials were ill prepared to offer any concessions. They had gone to Copenhagen thinking that other nations would be satisfied with the announcement that China planned to cut carbon emissions per unit of economic growth, so-called carbon intensity, by 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
China and India have long rejected pledging to cut absolute emissions. Instead, they promise they can slow the growth of emissions while sustaining booming economies. Cutting carbon intensity will not reduce China’s emissions; some analysts predict emissions could grow by up to 90 percent from 2005 to 2020.
Chinese officials insist the carbon intensity cut will require ambitious measures. Some American officials and analysts have called China’s carbon intensity targets disappointing.
Michael A. Levi, a climate change expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said China’s carbon intensity goal did not deviate greatly from what he called “business as usual,” reductions likely to occur under policies already put in place by 2009. The effort is important, he said, but “does not indicate any new decision to fundamentally change course in the future.”
Some environmentalists have praised China’s goal and say China will have to make great efforts to achieve it. Barbara Finamore, who heads the China program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, based in Washington, said the fact that China put in place relatively progressive policies before Copenhagen did not mean those policies should be considered “business as usual.”
Earlier in December in Beijing, President Hu Jintao trumpeted China’s opposition to stringent international monitoring, calling it a “vital interest” on which China would not compromise, said an editor at a Communist Party newspaper.
John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington.
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