China Hopes for Post-2012 Kyoto Deal Within 2 Years
Date: 30-Oct-06
Country: CHINA
Author: Emma Graham-Harrison
The first phase of the Kyoto protocol calls for emissions cuts from 35 rich nations but ends in 2012, and the countries that signed the pact have yet to decide how to control the amount of carbon dioxide they pump out beyond then.
UN climate talks in Nairobi from Nov. 6-17 will kick off negotiations, but there are worries that delegates may struggle to even set a deadline for agreeing a new framework.
The health of the carbon-trading market, worth US$22 billion in the year through September and currently channelling huge amounts of investment to China, depends on a clear roadmap for its future, investors warn.
"We hope that by 2008, or at the latest 2009, we can reach an agreement, but it is not something that the Chinese government can resolve alone," said Gao Guangsheng, director general of the office of the National Coordination Committee for Climate Change.
Beijing is winning hundreds of millions of dollars of investment through the Clean Development Mechanism which allows polluters in rich nations to buy credits for emissions cuts in poorer countries to help meet domestic reduction targets.
The country is also expected to be especially vulnerable to the impact of rising temperatures because of relatively low per capita supplies of water and arable land, giving it a strong interest in successful negotiations.
China wants targets for the next Kyoto period that are at least as tough, if not stricter, than current levels, Su Wei, Deputy Director of the Department of Treaty and Law at the Ministry of Foreign affairs, told the first Carbon Expo Asia.
These require an average 5.2 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period. Su also called for a long commitment period.
"It should not be shorter than five years...and it might be suitable for it to last 8 to 10 years," he told the conference.
NO CAPS?
China is the world's number two emitter of the gasses that cause global warming, but like India and other developing nations, its emissions are not capped under current Kyoto rules.
Beijing argues that as industrialised nations bear historical responsibility for the majority of carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere, and still have far higher per capita emissions than its population, it should be allowed to pursue economic growth without emissions limits.
"You cannot tell people who are struggling to earn enough to eat that they need to reduce their emissions," Lu Xuedu, deputy director at China's Office of Global Environmental Affairs, told a meeting on the Expo sidelines.
But this lack of targets was one of the reasons US President George W. Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying that it wrongly excluded developing nations -- and could prove a source of contention in the next stage of negotiations.