China pushes for legally binding emissions limit at Paris climate change summit
Xie Zhenhua, mainland’s climate change representative, warns that divisions exist ahead of talks over the burdens developing and developed nations will face for carbon emission cuts
China wants to see a legally binding treaty limiting global warming agreed at UN talks in Paris this month, but says any deal must take into account the different circumstances of participating nations.
Xie Zhenhua, the mainland’s special representative for climate change, said on Thursday that major disagreements had existed between nations at the preparatory meeting held before the summit featuring world leaders from November 30 to 8December 11.
The summit aims to reach an agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and will try to negotiate a deal to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
“The main disagreement lies in how to interpret the term ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’,” Xie, China’s former top climate negotiator, said.
“Currently no country openly opposes the principle … but we hope it can be put into practice in concrete terms, such as a reduction in emissions.”
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The principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, set out in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, has long been the major cause of division and impasse at global climate talks.
Developing nations insist that richer countries, which have already completed their own polluting industrial revolution, must shoulder the greater burden for the carbon emission cuts.
But developed nations argue that developing countries, such as China and India, are now major polluters and damaging the global environment with their economic expansion.
Xie’s call for a “legally-binding treaty” suggests China differs with the United States on how countries should enforce the deal, as John Kerry, the US secretary of state, warned against the option last week.
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In an interview with the Financial Times, Kerry said the agreement was “definitively not going to be a treaty”.
“When people use the phrase, they could mean different things, and that’s the caveat,” said Li Shuo, a senior climate analyst at Greenpeace East Asia, adding the difference could be a sticking point for the negotiations.
Meanwhile, China yesterday issued its first national standards for accounting and reporting greenhouse gas emissions in 10 key industries, including power generation, steel, chemical engineering and cement.
The rules will take effect from June next year.
Yang Minghan, a deputy director at the country’s standardisation administration, said all carbon emissions from industrial plants, even from dining halls and shower rooms, would be accounted for. Emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur hexafluoride and nitrous oxide would also be calculated.
The standards will lay the ground for a national carbon trade market, expected by 2017.
