RPT-ANALYSIS-China's first climate change steps too small
23 Apr 2007 11:10:37 GMT Source: Reuters
(Repeats to widen distribution) By Gerard Wynn and Emma Graham-Harrison LONDON/BEIJING, April 23 (Reuters) - Beijing has for the first time disclosed internal targets to fight global warming but these, even if officially adopted, are as unambitious as a similar U.S. goal, analysts say. They would do little to help talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and would not keep emissions below levels Europeans say are needed to avert dangerous warming. Beijing's "First National Climate Change Assessment", seen by Reuters, said China had warmed up more than most countries in the last half century and faced serious floods, droughts and falling crop production. Prepared by scientists and signed off by the top economic planning body and foreign and science ministries, the document ruled out "absolute and compulsory" caps before 2050 on China's soaring emissions of the greenhouse gases widely blamed for heating the planet. Instead the detailed briefing suggested cutting the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) created per unit of national wealth. This, if adopted, would be the country's first, much less demanding, climate change goal. "The good news is this is the first time China has had a target at all," said Timothy Herzog, policy analyst at the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental think-tank. The main proposal is to cut by 40 percent from 2000 to 2020 China's emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), a measure called carbon intensity. But over the same 20-year timescale China has a goal to quadruple GDP, so even hitting its carbon intensity goal would imply a more than doubling of emissions. That is incompatible with avoiding more dangerous climate change, the European Union's executive Commission said. "They're saying they could double emissions in 20 years, while we're saying developing countries can double emissions in 30 years -- that's quite a big difference," said Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the European Commission's Climate Change Unit. The Commission reckons that, to minimise dangerous warming, from 1990 to 2020 greenhouse gas emissions will have to fall in rich nations and no more than double in developing countries. "It's very important," Runge-Metzger told Reuters. "(Our) calculations are in line with a 2 degrees temperature increase, more than that is definitely more dangerous." UNDER WRAPS The United States -- unlike most rich countries -- has also rejected emissions caps and like China prefers a greenhouse gases intensity goal: an 18 percent cut from 2002 to 2012. But neither the Chinese nor the U.S. goal is considered ambitious because each is in line with what they have recently achieved. U.S. carbon intensity fell by 17 percent and that in China by 50 percent from 1990 to 2002 , according to the WRI. Most countries gradually cut their emissions per unit of GDP as their economies mature and efficiency improves. Beijing argues that rich nations pumped out the majority of carbon dioxide already accummulated in the atmosphere and so they should cut their own emissions rather than push for caps that constrict poor nations' growth. Its modest targets -- which might not even make it to the international negotiating table -- show a leadership aware of climate change, but wary of binding commitments. China looks set to become the world's top emitter of carbon this year or next, just as serious talks start to extend the U.N.-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012, potentially heaping pressure on Beijing to take more action. "China wouldn't want to commit to international targets they aren't confident they can meet," said one Western diplomat focused on the area, who declined to be named. Carbon intensity goals do not appear in an official national plan for tackling climate change, which was due to be unveiled on Tuesday but is now back under wraps indefinitely, sources who have seen the document say. The difference in part reflects the divide between the climate scientists who drew up the latest assessment and the politicians -- focused on immediate domestic worries like energy security and crippling air pollution -- who are behind the postponed plan. It could also be a sign that even the modest goals of the assessment are slipping out of reach as the country struggles to rein in its roaring economy. "China wants to shape the post-Kyoto future, but it is losing control of the levers over its own energy growth and it doesn't have a very good monitoring and information system in place for measuring carbon, let alone controlling it," the diplomat said.
