CHINA: China Insists That Its Steps on Climate Be Voluntary

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.

View Article on The New York Times

New Japan PM offers Obama help on Afghanistan

New Japan PM offers Obama help on Afghanistan
By Shingo Ito (AFP) – Sep 23, 2009

NEW YORK — Japan's new left-leaning Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Wednesday told President Barack Obama he would look for ways to support Afghanistan, holding out an olive branch in their first meeting.

Obama also sought to start his relationship with Hatoyama on the right footing, calling the half-century US alliance with Japan a "cornerstone" of US diplomacy and saying he will visit in November.

Hatoyama in the past has criticized "US-led globalism" and called for "more equal" ties between the United States and Japan, with some left-leaning members of his coalition pushing for a cut in the 47,000-strong US troop presence.

Hatoyama has said he plans to end an Indian Ocean naval refueling mission that supports the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan, one of Obama's key priorities.

While in opposition, his party briefly forced a halt to the naval mission through parliamentary maneuvers, arguing that Japan -- officially pacifist since World War II -- should not abet "American wars."

But Hatoyama told reporters after the summit that the relationship between Washington and Tokyo would be a "key pillar" of his foreign policy.

Japan "will seriously consider what we can do for the sake of Afghanistan as well as Japan and the United States" as a possible alternative to the refueling mission, Hatoyama said.

"Japan wants to make a positive contribution in the field of our specialty ... such as agricultural support or job training, which the Afghan people would be pleased to see," Hatoyama said.

Obama stopped short of responding to Hatoyama's proposal, only saying he was "grateful" for his thoughts, according to a Japanese government official.

Obama sought common ground with Hatoyama by drawing implicit comparisons between their change-fueled election races, congratulating him for running an "extraordinary campaign" and leading a "dramatic change" in Japan.

The US leader said he had "very good preliminary discussions about the critical importance of the US-Japanese alliance" in his talks with Hatoyama.

Obama agreed to visit Japan in November, Japanese officials said, possibly as part of an expected Asian tour including stops in China and at Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Singapore.

The relationship has been the "cornerstone" of security and the economic prosperity of both countries "for almost 50 years," Obama said after the meeting at New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel, near the United Nations where world leaders were meeting.

The two leaders also agreed to work together in climate change talks. "We need to resolve the issue politically," said Hatoyama, who has dramatically stepped up Japan's commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Hatoyama -- whose Democratic Party of Japan ended more than half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule in a sweeping election win last month -- is taking his first steps on the world stage.

During the meeting, the two leaders agreed to stand firm against North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programs, the Japanese government official said.

"We have to take stern action, including implementation of UN Security Council resolutions," Hatoyama told reporters.

Hatoyama's DPJ has vowed to maintain the country's hardline stance against North Korea, which is reviled by many Japanese due to its abductions of Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.

However, Hatoyama has reached out to Asia and some lawmakers in his party have sought more emphasis on starting dialogue with the North.

"I plan to strengthen relations of trust and promote cooperation with Asian countries," Hatoyama told Obama, according to the Japanese official, adding that Obama welcomed the remarks.

During his meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday, Hatoyama proposed a plan to create a future EU-style East Asian community, which may be bound under a single currency.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved

Al Gore praises China, Japan climate leadership

Al Gore praises China, Japan climate leadership
(AFP) – Sep 22, 2009

UNITED NATIONS — Former US vice president and environmental activist Al Gore on Tuesday hailed China and Japan for providing global leadership in tackling climate change.

Speaking at a special UN summit on climate change, the Nobel laureate praised statements made by both Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

"I think that China has provided impressive leadership," Gore told reporters.

Predicting that China would take further action if global negotiations on a new treaty succeed, Gore said: "I think the glass is very much half full with China.

"It's not widely known in the rest of the world but China in each of the last two years has planted two and half times more trees than the entire rest of the world put together," he said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao said that the world's largest developing economy was ready to slow down emissions by a "notable margin." But he said emissions would be measured in terms of China's growth and did not provide a figure.

The United States has led rich nations in demanding that China and other developing nations commit to action in a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, whose requirements on rich states to cut emissions expire in 2012.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, making his first international appearance since his center-left government took charge, confirmed to the summit that the world's second largest economy would ramp up its commitments.

He pledged that Japan would cut emissions by 25 percent by 2020 compared with the 1990 level, a goal far more ambitious than the previous government's eight percent.

Gore described Hatoyama's speech as "terrific" and said he was "encouraged by his pledge to step up assistance for developing nations.

"Japan, along with the European Union, has provided tremendous political leadership over the past decade in keeping the world on track toward progress involving the climate crisis," he said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Japan's next PM vows tough greenhouse gas cuts

Japan's next PM vows tough greenhouse gas cuts
(AFP) – Sep 6, 2009

TOKYO — Japan's next prime minister Yukio Hatoyama delighted environmental activists but worried business leaders on Monday by vowing to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

"We welcome new prime minister Hatoyama's courage," said World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Japan office chief Takamasa Higuchi in a statement, praising Hatoyama who is set to take office on September 16.

The new target is far more ambitious than the eight-percent reduction advocated by the outgoing conservative government of Prime Minister Taro Aso, which lost parliamentary elections on August 30.

"It is hard to believe," Nippon Oil Corp. chairman Fumiaki Watari said of Hatoyama's plan.

"I want to ascertain his intention," he told reporters while visiting Beijing with a delegation of Japanese business leaders, the Jiji Press news agency reported.

"It is nothing but preposterous," Kobe Steel advisor Koushi Mizukoshi said, according to the news agency. "It will undoubtedly run counter to national interests. It will become impossible to conduct manufacturing activities at home."

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told Kyodo News that the new target "will be an encouragement for other countries to show a greater level of ambition."

The WWF's Higuchi said Japan until now "lacked an ambitious attitude because it was largely influenced by an industrial sector that is backward-looking in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Greenpeace also called the new target "a major step forward."

"This is the first sign of climate leadership we have seen out of any developed country for quite some time -- the type of leadership we need to see from President (Barack) Obama," said Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace International.

Kaiser also said the target still fell short of a 40 percent cut by 2020 required from industrialised countries as a group and warned that it needed to be a domestic target, rather than achieved through international offsets.

Outgoing premier Aso's business-friendly government was criticised for bowing to pressure from Japanese manufacturers who have pushed for a new reduction target of no more than six percent.

The head of the WWF Global Climate Initiative, Kim Carstensen, said Japan's new higher goal "will be a big force in moving one step forward the stalled talks between developed and developing countries."

Hatoyama, who heads the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan, said Tokyo would ask other major greenhouse gas emitters to also set tough targets on emissions blamed for raising global temperatures.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, will formally present its goal at international talks in Copenhagen in December aimed at agreeing a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

On the Net:
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: http://unfccc.int/2860.php

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Tensions brewing between Japan Inc. and new govt

Tensions brewing between Japan Inc. and new govt

Sep-3-09 1:00pm

From: afp.com

Fresh from a landslide election win, Japan's next government faces signs of an emerging rift with big business, which fears some of its policies could hinder a recovery in the recession-hit economy.

Premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama has vowed to put the interests of people before those of corporate Japan. In a recent essay he criticised "unrestrained market fundamentalism and financial capitalism that are void of morals."

His Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has irked major manufacturers with a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020.

The ambitious target compares with an eight-percent cut promised by the pro-business Liberal Democratic Party, which was swept from power in a landmark election Sunday after governing Japan almost continuously since 1955.

The head of the top business lobby, Nippon Keidanren, has called on the DPJ to review its emission reduction target, telling Japanese media on Thursday that it may be unrealistic and "a burden to the people."

The lobby's head Fujio Mitarai -- chairman of high-tech giant Canon Inc. -- urged the DPJ to consider the "effects on jobs" of the sweeping plan.

Japanese companies have long argued that tighter emission rules would hurt their ability to compete with global rivals, and the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association has also spoken out against the plan.

"We are concerned about its feasibility given its impact on economic activities, effect on employment and significant burden on the Japanese people," said Honda Motor chairman Satoshi Aoki, who heads the association.

The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan has described the target as "very tough" and asked the party to be more realistic.

Another bone of contention is the DPJ's proposal to curb the use of temporary workers, who have borne the brunt of jobs cuts by companies struggling to cope with the worst recession in decades.

The party's allies in the labour unions have accused Japanese companies of being too quick to fire contract workers, who played a key role keeping Japan's plants and factories running before the economic crisis erupted.

After decades of cosy ties between the LDP and big business, Hatoyama's DPJ has pledged to shift the focus to households with measures including cash allowances for families, an increased minimum wage, and petrol tax cuts.

Rather than raising taxes, the opposition proposes funding its measures by cutting wasteful government spending.

The DPJ has decided to freeze the unspent portion of the extra budget drawn up by the LDP for this fiscal year and divert the money to its own welfare programmes, the Yomiuri newspaper reported in its evening edition.

Analysts believe the DPJ's proposed measures, worth a combined 16.8 trillion yen (177 billion yen) a year from 2012, could boost consumer spending -- for long a weak link in the economy.

But some are worried that the party is abandoning free-market reforms they see as vital in order to tackle the massive public debt and boost productivity to cope with an ageing and shrinking population.

"The DPJ has failed to point to any clear policies related to job creation, industrial promotion, population problems, deregulation, policy finance methods and fiscal consolidation," said Barclays Capital economist Kyohei Morita.

"This makes it difficult to see how the Japanese economy will develop over the long term."

Experts say, however, that corporate Japan could benefit from assistance from the incoming government in areas such as electric cars and energy-efficient appliances.

The DPJ plan is likely to require individual firms to cut emission, but could also create new opportunities for companies with environmental technologies, said Yoko Monoe, an analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research.

The Road to Copenhagen

The Road to Copenhagen

Gavan McCormack

In September, after its warmest August on record, Australia’s East coast was shrouded in thick red dust. Visibility was reduced to metres, forcing cancelation of flights and driving people indoors as some five million tonnes of soil blew in from the country’s vast interior where the drought is in its ninth year. Early in the same month, Koreans were told that in future snow was likely to disappear in their country save for a few mountain peaks, and that their climate would become sub-tropical. Elsewhere, the Arctic sea-ice crumbles, opening navigation and exploration routes into the polar regions, glaciers retreat, half the world’s tropical and temperate forests, wetlands, and coral have gone or are threatened; storms, floods, and other natural disasters ripple around the world. Scientists warn of approaching global catastrophe.

Australia facing record temperatures

The UN Environment Program’s latest study tells us that, even if the international community enacts every climate policy so far proposed global temperatures will still rise significantly through this century. Whatever we do now we “cannot reduce the already committed GHGs [global greenhouse gases] warming of 2.4 degrees Celsius.” The world’s preeminent climatologists, according to the report in the April issue of the scientific journal, Nature, estimate that even with a moderate warming (20C) we stand “a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations.” That is our future, and the outlook is steadily worsening.

At Copenhagen we have to reach global consensus to launch a campaign – amounting in intensity to wartime mobilization – to try to arrest, or at least slow, the degeneration of the world as we know it into the catastrophe of climate chaos. The December conference becomes the most important event in the history of humanity, our last chance.

Global NGOs, including Greenpeace and WWF, estimate that we need at Copenhagen a commitment to a global carbon cut of 40 per cent cut by 2020 and 80 per cent (95 per cent for the industrial countries) by mid-century. Another way of putting it is to say that the Kyoto targets – only reached in a few places – now have to be multiplied by two to three times in the short term and up to ten times in the medium term.

At present, despite the commitments many countries have made since Kyoto in 1997 to reduce them, they are rising steadily. Globally, greenhouse emissions rose by 38 per cent between 1992 and 2007, increasing from a rate of 1.1 per cent annually in the 1990s to 3.5 per cent in 2000-2007. The specialist literature is punctuated increasingly by bleak words: threshold, tipping-point, irreversibility. We are destabilizing the climatic conditions under which over the last several millennia humanity developed agriculture, villages, cities, civilizations.

World fossil fuel emissions, 1990-2007

Human activity, pumping carbon into the atmosphere at steadily increasing rates ever since the industrial revolution has raised the pre-industrial concentration of carbon in the atmosphere (280 ppm) to 387 ppm, and that level continues to rise by around 3.1 ppm per year. On a “business as usual” projection of our current trajectory, we are headed towards an end of century carbon concentration figure of around 950 ppm and a temperature rise of 4.60C.

To hold temperature increase to around 2 degrees, the world’s scientists meeting in Bali in 2007 insisted that we must at all costs keep levels of atmospheric carbon concentration below 450 ppm. The EU and Australia have now adopted that goal. However, many scientists think that the real tipping point is more likely to be 400 ppm – in any case now unavoidable and imminent - and highly influential ones, including Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, think that, as a matter of urgency, we should reduce it to 350. Even if all cuts pledged by countries around the world as of this moment were realized, the temperature rise will still be in the order of 3.5 degrees, ie. almost twice the previous “worst case” scenarios.

For Australia, where a reformist and climate-conscious government took office in 2008, the subsequent commitment to 450 ppm has grim implications. It takes for granted continuing and worsening ravages of drought, fire, extreme summer heat up to 45 degrees in Southern Australia in 2008), and – since it is a big country – floods. Already drought in the country’s grain basket, the Murray-Darling River basin, has drastically reduced the output of irrigated crops and forced complete suspension of rice agriculture in the past two seasons. Most shocking of all, with a 450 ppm carbon concentration in the atmosphere, the Great Barrier Reef – one of the wonders of the world - will not survive.

In Japan too, a reforming, climate conscious government took office in September 2009 and immediately announced a commitment to a 25 per cent reduction on its 1990 emissions by 2020. Even under the previous LDP governments, Japan has sometimes been seen as a model of clean and efficient energy, but the fact is that it not only failed to meet its 6 per cent Kyoto reduction target but its emissions grew by 11 per cent to 2007. That was better, to be sure, than the US (+20 per cent), but it pales before the accomplishment of countries such as Germany which cut its emissions by 21 per cent.

Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio’s 25 per cent “reduction on 1990 levels” is a bold promise, and it stands in relief compared to the paltry US gestures thus far. However, Hatoyama has yet to persuade industry or to develop a blueprint of how to accomplish it, his pledge is conditional on a Copenhagen agreement in which “all major economies participate,” and because of the failure of the post-Kyoto decade his 25 per cent of 1990 levels actually means he has to cut current levels by 36 per cent. And, if he accomplishes all that, in terms of what is needed it represents no more than a first step.

As for South Korea, its greenhouse gas emissions have been growing at the highest rate among OECD counties (increasing by 90 per cent between 1990 and 2005), and its thus far announced short-term (to 2020) goal is to hold them to an increase of not more than 8 per cent above its 2005 levels. Should it take that stance to Copenhagen, Korea is unlikely to fare well. Facing global catastrophe, any industrial country that talks of increasing its carbon emissions can expect to be told to go back and re-consider its global responsibilities.

South Korea’s carbon emissions

Short of some technological breakthrough (of which at present there is no sign), the political and moral imperative is that we shift from non-renewable, carbon-intensive to renewable, carbon-neutral economic activity, cut back on production, consumption, and waste in the “conventional” carbon sector, husband existing resources and find more equitable and less wasteful ways of distributing them, eliminating the unnecessary and inefficient. Yet, as I wrote in this column in 2008 (“The Chimera of Growth,” March 2008), humanity’s shared, quasi-religious faith, shared by Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and atheists alike, is that human society must be organized so as to maximize production, consumption, and waste. GDP scale and growth is currently the major indicator of the “success” of countries.

December’s Copenhagen meeting calls therefore for a Copernican shift so that henceforth countries will be evaluated not for their GDP but for their success a global citizens in cutting back greenhouse gas emissions. The growth fetish has to be set aside lest our decline into climate chaos, punctuated by water wars, oil wars, food wars, and epidemics, becomes irreversible. The Kyoto, Bali, and other major conferences on climate change were no more than feeble nudges in the direction humanity has to go. Copenhagen must go much further.

This is the text of a column written for Kyunghyang Shinmoon and published on October 13, 2009.

Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor at Australian National University in Canberra, a coordinator at Japan Focus, and author of Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe and Client State: Japan in the American Embrace.

Recommended citation: Gavan McCormack, "The Road to Copenhagen," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 42-3-09, October 19, 2009.