Pedel power in China, July 2006
Well, we’ve hit the five month countdown to Copenhagen 2009 – let the climate change reports from NGO’s begin!
First up, China, where Oxfam has released a report linking climate change to poverty in the region. My Mandarin isn’t what it once was, and so alas, I could not read the full report. But the English summary went something like this: Poor people are farmers, farmers live in ecologically sensitive areas, therefore they are more likely to experience the negative impacts of a changing climate (drought, floods, etc) and will in turn, become poorer than they already are.
In 2008, developing economies represented over half the world's CO2 emissions
Alright, that’s a bit glib. In truth, while the report seems self evident (perhaps even redundant) China, while clearly an industrialized nation, was classified as developing under the Kyoto round of negotiations. This is bad news, as China is a mega carbon emitter (note the graph to the right). For China to step up to the plate and do it’s part will take more than bullying from G8 member states. As Duncan Green puts it from his excellent post on Poverty to Power;
“This kind of research could lead to a more productive debate within China. It places poverty at the centre of the domestic discussion on how to adapt, and once climate change is understood as anti-poverty, it becomes hard to present mitigation as simply a neo-imperialist plot to prevent China from developing, disguised in ‘China-as-bad-guy-emitter’ rhetoric.”
Important stuff, especially given that in 2008 developing countries emitted more than half the world’s carbon (which is perhaps fair given that they house 2/3 of the world’s population). For Copenhagen to succeed where Kyoto failed, China (and India) will have to step up.
