Developing powers seen critical to climate pact
Source: Reuters
(Recasts with Blair comments) By Laura MacInnis DAVOS, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Emerging giants China and India, among the world's top greenhouse gas producers, could undermine efforts to secure a new global climate change accord unless granted special treatment, top international officials said. Neither country faces obligations under the current U.N. Kyoto Protocol on carbon emissions, which British Prime Minister Tony Blair said ought to be replaced with a more radical deal that "includes all the major countries of the world." He told the World Economic Forum on Saturday that any successor to Kyoto that lacks binding commitments from China and India would be ineffectual in the fight against global warming. "Without the biggest economies being part of a framework to reduce carbon dependence, we have no earthly hope of success," he told the gathering of political and business elites. China's blistering growth has made it the number two global carbon emitter, behind the United States, while India is in fourth place, according to World Resources Institute data. The sheer size of these developing economies, and their heavy consumption of carbon-emitting coal, mean they will make up an increasing share of global emissions in coming years, said Jim Leape, head of the conservation group WWF. He said the rich world had to accept most responsibility for confronting global warming, and coping with its effects, given that most of the heat-trapping carbon gases now in the atmosphere came from their cars and factories. Any new climate change treaty must respect the right of emerging economies to grow and develop, while recognising that unrestricted emissions from China and India could intensify ecological pressures that are already severe, Leape told Reuters in an interview in Davos. COMPROMISE "Ultimately, to succeed, we have to find some way for those emerging countries to meet those development needs and aspirations with a lower carbon footprint," he said. "The challenge is to fashion an agreement that includes the emerging economies in a way that is common but differentiated in terms of responsibility ... You can't have an effective solution without including emerging economies in some way." Developing country leaders insisted at Davos that while they were open to using more renewable and clean energy, and would seek to adopt emissions-saving technology when possible, they could not accept strict caps that could threaten their growth. Achim Steiner, head of the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme, said it was "a matter of fairness" that developing countries should get some slack on emissions limits under a new international treaty. "We need to accelerate the way we deal with decarbonising our economy radically, and the faster we move up on that process the quicker developing countries will be able to enter that process as well," he told Reuters in Davos. Without dual-speed carbon restrictions, he said it would be difficult to convince China and India to join a new climate treaty. This could in turn make it harder to draw in the United States, which opted out of the original Kyoto deal. Blair, in his Davos speech, said it would be "madness" for the major powers to sidestep the fight against the worst effects of climate change, which scientists believe could cause huge sea-level rises, droughts, floods, storms and disease outbreaks. "America and China, even if they had not other reason for a relationship ... would need one simply for this alone," he said.
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