And the Smog Descends…

Posted on 07. Oct, 2010 by astark in U.S.A.

At the beginning of this week, someone remarked to me that the slow descent of smoggy pollution over Tianjin is a good metaphor for what’s happening inside the UNFCCC negotiations now. Maybe the haze seeping into the building is muddling negotiators’ thinking?

What is clear is that tensions are rising here at the UNFCCC talks. It’s hard to comment on exactly what’s happening, especially since all outside observers have been blocked from all of the LCA-track negotiation drafting groups (that is, the small working groups that work on drafting specific portions of the text that is not related to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol). But last night, the drafting groups took a break to regroup and discuss what progress has been made so far in a plenary session, called a stock-taking. There the head of the US delegation Jonathan Pershing made a rather passionate intervention (read “speech” in UN-speak), arguing that certain parties (let me guess: China) are blocking all progress in the drafting groups by spending the entire time arguing about the agenda or the group’s mandate instead of actual points of contention, and of wanting to renegotiate the Copenhagen Accord, an agreement that was essentially thrashed out between President Obama and Premier Wen last year when it looked like the talks would fail. Pershing even went so far as to say that because of the slow rate of progress, there is an increasing risk that the talks in Cancun may fail, a potentially damaging comment in light of the pundit penchant for declaring the UNFCCC negotiations dead at every turn.

All of the excitement (relatively speaking) caused several media sources to publish excited articles about US-China tensions, such as this one in The Guardian.

I spoke to a delegate afterwards, who explained that much of the tension between the US and China comes not just from issues of finance, which I posted about earlier, but also mitigation. Things can get a little confusing here, but let me take a shot at explaining: the US wants countries to make emissions reductions agreements under the negotiating text that’s being discussed in the Long-term Cooperative Action discussions, which are parallel to the discussions to renew the Kyoto Protocol, while China wants these discussions to be confined to the Kyoto Protocol successor discussions.

At issue is the transparency of these commitments, since under the current Kyoto rules countries only report very infrequently on the progress that they’re making on emissions reductions while under a different scheme they would probably have to report back more frequently and in greater detail. Another vital issue is that under the Kyoto Protocol, only Annex I countries (the most highly developed) are legally bound to meet emissions cuts and report back on them, while all others (including rapidly developing countries like China and India, which together emit more than 27% of the world’s total carbon emissions. And while China has shown a deep commitment to reducing emissions for unit of economic output, their emissions have still been growing rapidly overall. So, any agreement on mitigation would have to include China and the BASIC countries in order to be truly effective. China wants to punt the issue of mitigation and transparency onto the next COP (conference of the parties) to South Africa in 2011. The US says that in that case, there’s no deal to be made at all.

From the Chinese perspective, China is already moving forward with aggressive emissions reductions programs. The United States is historically the highest emitter of greenhouse gases, and should therefore hold a great deal of responsibility for cutting emissions now. Furthermore, the US is a highly developed country and has had the opportunity to emit freely as it industrialized, while China is still developing and has low development measurements by many standards, especially in more rural areas. Chinese politicians argue that the US is using China as a scapegoat for its own inaction at the UNFCCC talks. Chinese environmental NGOs have a similar perspective: in an open letter addressed to he US delegation, they “call upon the United States to stop drawing attention away from its own inadequate domestic efforts by trying to divert attention to China. The United States must match and exceed China’s efforts to address climate change, instead of continuing to use China as an excuse for inaction.”

The level of disagreement here is discouraging, even more so in a time that so many people around the world see the UNFCCC negotiations as dead or dieing. But I think it’s also a hopeful sign that parties are so vigorously airing their concerns and areas of difference, because in order to reach a compromise on the issues these differences will have to be understood, debated and ultimately overcome. Hopefully by forcefully representing there sides of the story, both China and the United States will come to see broader areas of agreement or have a better understanding of where making concessions could further negotiations. The last time that the two sides sat down at the top level and had a thorough thrashing out on climate change, they were able to reach agreement in the form of the Copenhagen Accord, which while not perfect by many measures was definitely a sign of progress and that there are broad areas where the United States and China can agree. Maybe the same kind of discussions could find agreement between the two parties once again.

Tags: China, climate change, Tianjin, UNFCCC, United States