Shaun Tandon Yahoo News 16 Mar 09;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – China appealed Monday to exclude its giant export sector in the next treaty on climate change, saying rich countries buying its products should bear responsibility for emissions in manufacturing.
"It is a very important item to make a fair agreement," senior Chinese climate official Li Gao said during a visit to Washington.
Climate envoys from China, Japan and the European Union were holding talks with US President Barack Obama's administration as the clock ticks to a December conference in Copenhagen meant to draft a post-Kyoto Protocol deal.
But hopes were fading of reaching a comprehensive treaty, with the United States still working out the scope of its new commitment to fighting global warming under Obama.
Developed nations demand that growing developing countries such as China and India take action under the new treaty. They had no obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, leading Obama's predecessor George W. Bush to reject it.
Some statistics say China has now surpassed the United States as the top emitter of carbon emissions blamed for global warming. But Li said that up to 20 percent of China's emissions were from producing exports.
"We are at the low end of the production line for the global economy," Li told a forum.
"We produce products and these products are consumed by other countries, especially the developed countries. This share of emissions should be taken by the consumers but not the producers," he said.
Li said Beijing was not trying to avoid action on climate change, noting that Obama in his address to Congress last month said China "has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient."
Li's remarks met immediate skepticism, with other negotiators saying it would be a logistical nightmare to find a way to regulate carbon emissions at exports' destination.
Top EU climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger noted that the European Union, the Kyoto Protocol's champion, includes major exporters but said they counted emissions as produced on their territory.
Asking importers to handle emissions "would mean that we would also like them to have jurisdiction and legislative powers in order to control and limit those and I'm not sure whether my Chinese colleague would agree on that particular point," Runge-Metzger said.
China's chief climate official, Xie Zhenhua, was also in Washington where he met with US global warming pointman Todd Stern on how to work together on climate change.
"The meetings went extremely well this morning, but there?s a lot of work to do," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.
Japan's chief negotiator Shinsuke Sugiyama said that Asia's largest economy -- which is struggling to meet its own obligations under the Kyoto treaty reached in its ancient capital -- was watching Washington and Beijing.
"Japan will not repeat Kyoto in the sense that at Kyoto we were not able to involve the biggest emitters in the world by now -- and that means the United States of America and China," Sugiyama said.
Li hit back that Japan, not China, was among countries with "historical responsibility" for global warming -- which UN scientists say threatens entire species if left unchecked.
"If I were Japanese, I would be very proud of the Kyoto Protocol. It seems the ambassador is not," Li said.
Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change which organized the forum, said that negotiators should be ready to aim for setting only a framework in Copenhagen.
"We can still make very substantial progress toward a final agreement and perhaps the best way to do that is aiming for a strong interim agreement in Copenhagen," she said.
Runge-Metzger said the EU believed the world now had the political will for an agreement in Copenhagen but conceded: "It doesn't have to be a deal that goes into each and every technical detail."
China Wants Importers To Cover Some Emission Costs
Richard Cowan, PlanetArk 17 Mar 09;
WASHINGTON - Countries that buy Chinese goods should be held responsible for the carbon dioxide emitted by the factories that make them in any global plan to reduce greenhouse gases, a Chinese official said on Monday.
"About 15 percent to 25 percent of China's emissions come from the products which we make for the world, which should not be taken by us," said Gao Li, director of China's Department of Climate Change.
Speaking at a forum sponsored by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Gao added that "this share of emission should be taken by the consumers, not the producers" and called the demand a "very important item to make (for a) fair agreement."
Gao gave no further details of his proposal, which could nevertheless be controversial as countries like the United States already fear that controlling domestic emissions will lead to sharply higher energy prices and possible job losses.
China, like the United States, did not join the 17-year-old Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing global emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants linked to climate change problems.
With an economy that has been booming on its export of manufactured goods, China's greenhouse gas emissions also have been growing and are now thought to be around par with those in the United States, which has been the leading emitting nation.
China is the top source of imports into the United States, followed by Canada and Mexico.
DECEMBER DEADLINE?
Backers of a new international deal to control climate-warming emissions hope a pact is embraced in Copenhagen in December, although they acknowledge that timetable might be ambitious.
In the meantime, international interest in curbing climate change is growing, led by President Barack Obama's pledge to put the United States on a path to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, with an additional 80 percent reduction by 2050.
Legislation to create a cap-and-trade system to limit businesses' emissions could begin moving through the US Congress in coming months. But enactment of such a bill might not be possible before the Copenhagen meeting. If not, environmentalists worry it could discourage other countries from signing onto a deal there.
But even without a comprehensive agreement, Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said negotiators could try to achieve a "strong interim agreement" that would set forth a framework, possibly including a range of targets for countries to reduce emissions.
Shinsuke Sugiyama, director general for global issues at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the Pew forum that his government views 2009 as a "make or break" year in achieving progress on a new global deal.
But noting that the Kyoto Protocol has only covered about 30 percent of global emissions because key economies did not sign on, Sugiyama warned: "My government is very much determined not to repeat what Kyodo does give us...in the sense that we were not able to involve United States of America...and other countries like China."
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
