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Future of climate talks again challenged - Experts

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-02-05 16:01

BEIJING: Chinese experts said the future of climate talks was again challenged by the inadequate targets submitted by developed countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for cutting their emissions of greenhouse gases.

Chen Ying, a researcher at the Research Center for Sustainable Development under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the targets were "far from enough," which reaffirmed difficulties facing future talks.

"But it was not surprising as the targets were mostly close to those promised during negotiations in Copenhagen," Chen told Xinhua Thursday.

The UNFCCC Secretariat announced Monday it had received the submissions of national pledges to cut and limit greenhouse gases by 2020 from 55 countries, which together account for 78 percent of global emissions from energy use.

The submissions were required by the Copenhagen Accord reached at the climate conference in December, which asked both developed and developing countries to indicate their support and targets for emissions cut before Jan 31.

Among the 35 industrialized countries that had submitted pledges, the United States promised to cut its emissions by 17 percent by 2020 on the 2005 base. The European Union, as a whole, promised to lower its emissions by 20 to 30 percent over the 1990 level.

China said it would endeavor to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 compared with 2005.

Ding Zhongli, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the key to addressing divergences in climate talks is to ensure fair distribution of "emission rights."

Ding said the right to emit greenhouse gases equals the right to develop as emissions mainly come from consumption of energy and production of cement.

"Developed countries have accumulated large amounts of emissions on their way to today's development level," he said. "But many developing nations have not yet finished construction of basic infrastructure."

Therefore, Ding believed the most scientific allocation of emissions quota should be based on a country's per capita emissions throughout history.

He said China's per capita greenhouse gases emissions from 1900 to 2005 was only a third of the world's average, 10 percent that of developed countries and five percent that of the US.

"In more than a century from 1900 to 2005, the per capita emissions for developed countries were 7.54 times those of developing countries," Ding said.

As required by some international proposals, industrialized countries should gradually reduce their emissions levels from the current base and developing economies should only slow down their emissions.

Ding said despite the differentiated treatment, developed countries still had an advantage in terms of absolute amount of emissions due to their higher current bases.

If a target is set to limit the atmospheric density of carbon dioxide to, say, 450 parts per million (ppm) as proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world is left with only 800 billion tons of carbon dioxide to emit by 2050 and based on the IPCC's distribution method, the per capita emissions for developed countries from 2006 to 2050 would be 2.3 times those of developing nations, he said.