David Fogarty, Reuters 20 Feb 09;
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asia needs to wake up to the threat of global warming and take a leading role in climate change negotiations or risk having rich nations dictate policies to curb carbon emissions, a leading policy expert said on Friday.
Simon Tay, Schwartz Fellow of the U.S.-based Asia Society, said the current U.N. climate negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol had become bogged down because of deep differences between rich and poor nations on how to fight climate change.
"My impression is that it has become a dialogue between the deaf and the dumb," he told a conference on sustainability in Singapore.
"When we look at the Kyoto regime it cannot seem to work just because it is limited to only Annex 1 developed countries," said Tay, who is also chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.
Under Kyoto's first phase, only 37 industrialized nations are committed to cutting emissions by an average of about 5 percent from 1990 levels between 2008-2012.
Nearly 200 nations will meet at the end of the year to try to seal a broader agreement to replace Kyoto and bind big developing nations and the United States to emissions curbs.
The new deal is due to be wrapped in Copenhagen by December but is at risk of failure because poorer nations won't commit to emissions curbs unless rich countries do much more to rein in carbon pollution and pay for adaptation and the transfer of clean-energy technology.
On Friday, U.N. climate panel chief R.K. Pachauri told Reuters a deal placing a strict emissions regime on rich nations was likely in Copenhagen despite pressures to dilute the climate fight in times of a global financial slowdown.
But developing nations now emit more than half of mankind's greenhouse gas pollution, the Global Carbon Project says in its latest report.
"No matter how deep the cuts are in the developed world, no matter how much they try to mitigate climate change, every good thing that is done there could easily be offset, and more, by rapid unsustainable growth in Asia," Tay said.
Asia has three of the world's top 5 emitters of greenhouse gases: Japan, India and China, with the latter widely believed to have surpassed the United States as the top carbon polluter.
Tay said Asian governments needed to better assess the threats of climate change and understand that they did not have to choose between development or tackling global warming.
"Unless Asia gets its act together and starts changing the game we will be dictated to by the developed countries once America comes on board," he said, using the image of mediaeval lords telling peasants what to do.
President Barack Obama has spoken of a "planet in peril" and says he will cut U.S. emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. He also aims to cut emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
NOT A DISTANT THREAT
Tay said regional governments needed to look beyond national interests.
"We need to encourage more and more states to see that their national interests and the global concerns aren't necessarily against each other."
People in Asia also needed to understand climate change was not a distant threat.
"For too many people the perception of climate change is the grandfather clock. It's a long time coming," he said.
"Whereas the emerging science is of the stop-watch, that changes need to be happening now."
He also said governments need to change the mindset that linked growth with burning fossil fuels, saying the region was locked in a triangle between growth, energy and carbon.
One solution was to create a global cap-and-trade scheme for carbon emissions based on per-capita pollution, Shreekant Gupta of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, told the conference.
He said the Kyoto process was flawed because it involved too many nations and should focus on a deal between the big emitting nations. A deal should also focus on transferring wealth to poorer nations by allowing them to sell excess emissions rights.
"A global deal on climate change is about income transfer. There needs to be some hard-bargaining about money," he said.
(Editing by Valerie Lee)
It’s not the ‘great validator’
Expert says don’tuse climate as excuse for protectionism
Alicia Wong, Today Online 21 Feb 09;
VIETNAM, Thailand and Indonesia have all announced definite plans, while Singapore is not ruling it out, even though building a nuclear power plant was once not an option.
But this is the kind of “false solution” that countries must avoid when they tackle the issue of climate change, according toSingapore Institute of InternationalAffairs chairman Simon Tay.
“Evolving issues” such as this are being decided without much debate on the environmentalhazard, economic costs and safety issues — instead of being discussed during climate change negotiations, said Professor Tay.
Focusing on the wrong type of projects is one concern; using climate change as an excuse — or the “great validator” — for protectionist measures during this downturn is another for the former National Environmental Agency chairman.
For example, could a country with a carbon tax regime for its manufacturers impose import tariffs on another that has none, claiming to level the playing field for companies, he wondered.
These were among the tricky climate change issues that were discussed on Friday at the inaugural National Sustainability Conference 2009 attended by 250 participants from Government, business, academia and civil society.
One thing that conference speakers agreed on: The need for immediate, urgent action rather than a gradual approach.
Associate professor Shreekant Gupta from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy called for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions “sooner not later”.
But while the global conference on climate change later this year in Copenhagen needs to deliver an agreement with “effective, not cosmetic reductions”, he does not expect all the desirable amendments to the Kyoto Protocol to be achieved.
His prediction is that a global cap-and-trade system based on per capita greenhouse gas emissions will emerge eventually, whereby countries who emit more than the cap can buy credits from those who pollute less.
But a per capita limit would affect countries with a small population producing large amounts for another country, noted Prof Tay —a fitting description for Singapore. “Asia has been a vast production base for a lot of consumption elsewhere. In that equation, who is the polluter?” he questioned.
On this, Assoc Prof Gupta felt that exports still boost national income.
Still, the likes of Singapore, could play a helpful, larger role in climate change issues, said speakers at the conference organised by the National University of Singapore.
Speakers suggested the Republic could bring together developed nations and large Asian countries to form agreements on tackling environmental challenges, as well as focus on technological innovations in this field and leverage on her sophisticated financial sector to help develop the global carbon market.
