China Sustainable Development Strategy Report 2009

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China Sustainable Development Strategy Report 2009---- China’s Approach towards a Low Carbon Future

Executive Summary

∗

CAS Sustainable Development Strategy Study Group

Climate change has become the most significant environment and developmentchallenge to human society in the 21

st

century. Responding to climate change is the coretask to achieve global sustainable development, both for today and for a rather longperiod of time from today. International negotiations on prevention of global warmingand related actions not only concern human living environment, but also directly impactthe modernization process of developing countries. Although the process of globalclimate protection depends on the consensus of our scientific awareness, political wills,economic interests, society’s level of acceptance, as well as measures adopted, a lowcarbon development path is, undoubtedly, the critical choice of future humandevelopment.

The science basis of climate change and its extended political and economicimplications

Global warming of the climate system has become an unequivocal fact. Accordingto a large amount of monitoring data, global average land surface temperature has risen0.74

℃

over the last century (1906~2005). And the rate of rising has been sped up. Inthe meantime, global average sea level has been constantly rising too. Global warminghas posed serious challenge to China's climate, environment and development. In theglobal context of climate change, China's climate and environment is changing too. Forinstance, in the last century, the land surface average temperature has witnessed obviousincrease; though the precipitation has not changed too much, its interdecadal variationsand regional disparity have been big. In the last 50 years, there have also been majorchanges in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather and climate events (China’sNational Assessment Report on Climate Change, 2007).

∗

The

summary

was

written

by

Prof.

WANG

Yi,

Team

Leader

and

Chief

Scientist

of

the

CAS

Sustainable

Development

Strategy

Study

Group

and

Deputy

Director

‐

General

of

Institute

of

Policy

and

Management

of

the

Chinese

Academy

of

Sciences

(CAS).

The

report

has

been

published

by

the

Science

Press

in

March

2009.

For

further

information,

please

send

email

at

“wangyi@casipm.ac.cn”

or

visit

“www.china

‐

sds.org”

2

The IPCC integrated assessment shows (IPCC, 2007a) that since 1750, humanactivities have been a major cause of global warming, while in the last 50 years, most of the global warming is the consequence of human activities with a probability of morethan 90%, in particular from the greenhouse gases emissions due to the human use of fossil fuels. It is forecast that before the end of the 21

st

century, global warming willcontinue, and how much the temperature will rise depends on what actions humans willtake. According the Third Working Group Report of the IPCC 4

th

Assessment (IPCC,2007c), human actions to mitigate climate change are feasible, both economically andtechnologically. Actions to deploy key mitigation technologies in various sectors, adoptpolicy and administrative interference and shift the development pathway could allcontribute greatly to mitigation of climate change. Thus, the IPCC assessment report hasbecome the most important scientific foundation for global climate political decisions.Over the last two decades, though climate change science has been progressing,climate research somehow remains a complicated integrated scientific field. Firstly, dueto its broad coverage of subject areas and inadequacy of research, climate change seemshard to fully master. As a result, there remain many uncertainties in basic scientificresearch, including the basic theory of the occurrence and development of climate change,future climate change forecast and impact, regional response of climate change, as wellas possibility of carbon capture and storage (CCS) (refer to Chapter 1 for details). Andsecondly, along with the inclusion of social sciences and various other social groups,climate change has gone far beyond the boundary of basic science, instead, evolved into adevelopment and political issue. And it is getting more “politicized”. To certain extent,scientists from different countries, in the name of protecting global climate, have all beenseeking useful proofs and indicators that would potentially benefit their own nationalinterest. This seems natural and hard to blame.Actually, along with the international negotiation on climate change started in the1990s, disagreements and arguments have never stopped and are expected to continue fora long time. Due to the fact that the key to prevention of climate warming is to reduceCO

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emissions, or in other words to control the consumption of fossil fuels, as well as toincrease natural carbon sink or adopt CCS technology, the nature of participating ininternational negotiations by the two opposite camps -- industrialized countries versusdeveloping countries -- is to fight for the fair allocation of emissions and the rights of reasonable development. The fight for both political and economic interests has beenrather fierce. In the current international climate regime, the UNFCCC, adopted in 1992,clearly stated “common but differentiated responsibility”; it also pointed out that “thelargest share of historical and current global emissions of GHGs has originated indeveloped countries”. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol stipulates that the Annex I countries,major developed countries, take the lead to achieve the set emissions reduction targets forthe first compliance period (2008~2012). Up till now, all the above-mentioned

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mechanisms in response to climate change have basically reflected the actualresponsibility and obligation of various key parties.Different from any other international negotiations, global climate politics to dealwith climate change appears more complicated and complex. The balance of diversenational interests and global consensus becomes the key element to decide whether thenegotiation will be effective. No single authority would be able to totally dominate thenegotiation process. To stabilize the GHG emissions requires multi-party cooperation. Asa result, lack of the participation of large-emission countries will greatly weaken theimpact of any agreement, while superpower control and military forces become helplessin front of the global climate politics. In the meanwhile, one major feature of globalclimate politics is the importance of the opposite forces. In many cases, anti-climatealliances could play a key role in global environmental negotiations and negatively affectthe processes. Exactly because of those factors, various camps formed around globalclimate negotiation are characterized with obvious geo-regional and economiccharacteristics. This is also where the serious disagreements exit that reflects the concernsof different nations and regions in response to climate change.The universal voice reflected from some latest studies, including the IPCC 4

th

Assessment Reports, says that human society shall immediately adopt actions to lowerthe degree of temperature rise to the lowest possible level (e.g. 2

℃

). All those reportsdemonstrate the prominent desire of all interested parties on the basis of new and lateststudies and the constantly changing political and economic context, and they togetherdominate the mainstream discourse (IPCC, 2007d; Stern, 2006, 2008; Blair, 2008;McKinsey & Company, 2007, 2009). Let’s use the Stern Review as an example,published in 2006 and 2008. The Stern report emphasizes that “climate change is aserious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response”; it says that “the benefitsof strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting”. Even thoughthe Report recognizes the difficulties, it tried its best to convince global society to acceptthe 2

℃

target to control the rise of global average temperature. And this has been usedas the foundation for a series of follow-up policy and mechanism design. The Reportrepresents not only UK’s views but also those of EU.At present, the post-Kyoto international negotiation has entered a crucial period of time. The Bali Roadmap adopted at the 2007 COP 13 has decided to integrate into thenegotiation agenda for post-Kyoto -- mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer andfinancing mechanism. It also expects that the measureable, reportable and verifiableactions adopted by developing countries be linked up with the technology transfer andfinancial support from developed countries, which shall also be measureable, reportableand verifiable. This signals a big step forward. Whether this will be achieved, of course,remains to be seen in the final negotiation. Impacted by global financial crisis and various

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