China embraces a new way of thinking about climate change

When President Hu Jintao delivered his speech at the UN climate summit on Sept 22, the world was impressed by the concrete measures that China will adopt to further integrate actions on climate change into its economic and social development plan.

Among these measures, the one that many people applauded the most is China's commitment to "significantly" reduce its carbon intensity level from 2005 to 2020, which categorically sets China on a course toward a low carbon economy.

While as significant as it is, this is not something shockingly new to the people who follow China's climate policy, since China's State Council had already announced plans to integrate carbon intensity targets into its 12th five-year social and economic development plan.

In my mind, two other "small" references are much more impressive, and yet they were somehow overlooked by the international community.

One is the announcement regarding the development of renewable energy and nuclear energy to increase the non-fossil fuel portion of the energy "consumption" portfolio to 15 percent by 2020.

The key is the word consumption. It was not long ago that the domestic renewable energy development target was still 15 percent of energy "production". Currently, approximately 50 percent of China's oil consumption depends on imports, and the International Energy Agency projects that proportion will increase to 82 percent by 2030.

Setting up the target on consumption rather than production implies a higher degree of responsibility to the world in terms of China's carbon emissions, as well as a greater level of confidence that China will be able to meet that expectation.

Aside from this difference in arithmetic, "consumption" implies a far-reaching effect on China. Even with the great amount of energy devoted to the production of goods for export, China's per capita energy use is still small by comparison to Europe, the United States and Japan.

Consumers with access to sizeable disposable income levels generally seek high-energy, high-resource lifestyles. The additional burden on the planet is not generally within the power of the individual to fully address, except through lifestyle choices and a conservation philosophy.

In fact, with the constant influence of the media and other communications outlets, there is a strong compulsion toward consumption.

Saving versus spending

Chinese consumers, with their exceptional behavior toward saving rather than spending, and their relatively small share of the national GDP, perhaps stand a better chance than people elsewhere to avoid the endless cycle of over-consumption that plagues Western society. But this is by no means a certainty over the longer term.

The great challenge is to build enabling mechanisms that help consumers to create and enjoy sustainable lifestyles with a relatively low material consumption but high satisfaction levels. This is a challenge that has failed in most Western countries over the past few decades, and continues to fail at the present time. The greatest challenge lies ahead, with climate change as a driver.

It is certainly too much to expect of China or many other developing countries that they should be the leaders, when industrialized countries are still consuming such a large portion of the earth's environmental resources.

But the reality is that both should converge toward intermediate levels of consumption, largely decoupling from harmful emissions and wasteful production techniques.

The second reference comes from China's pledge to provide adaptation support to small countries, least-developing countries, in-land countries and African countries.

Financial and technology support from developed countries to developing countries has always been a key negotiating topic between the seemingly two different groups of countries in climate negotiations. All negotiating parties struggle from its definition to practical implementation.

The Chinese government has made its stance on the financial support issue very clear. All developed countries should contribute at least 0.7 percent of their GDP (in addition to existing ODA efforts) to developing countries to help them combat climate change. China made a pledge to support other developing countries with or without the global deal.

This new pledge is significant because it manifests China's sincerity in solving the global problem, and it demonstrates China's recognition of its new role in the world.

With China soon to achieve a No 2 rank as a global economic power, the Chinese government is sincere about solving the global problem because it no longer put its own financial interests ahead of others and is willing to help others even it still needs help itself.

The Chinese government also demonstrates its flexibility as it is staying away from the old rhetoric that declares: "China is a developing country and will always be a developing country."

In my mind, President Hu's speech marks a big shift of China's position on climate change, and the richness of its pledge is unprecedented and dwarfs those many other empty voices that we have heard before.

The great shift has been the depth of dialogue on the issue of climate change in this year's lead-up to the Copenhagen climate change meeting in December.

There is now a reasonably well-entrenched view that climate change, along with poverty elimination, are defining problems for our common future and security during this century. Unless they are addressed well and soon, the costs will be perhaps unbearably high.

Unfortunately, getting a solid agreement about the best approach, with high levels of immediate action, is proving to be extremely difficult in the lead-up to Copenhagen.

This problem has implications for green growth, for development of international markets for new technologies, and, very importantly, for domestic consumption patterns in both industrialized and rapidly developing countries.

The Copenhagen climate change meeting is of historic significance to be sure - a beacon that will send its beam far into the future. But whatever the outcome, it is the start of a new way of thinking about our planet, and particularly about developing the low carbon economies needed for the future.

China now is seriously considering the meaning of "ecological civilization", which is not a term in common use throughout the world, but it should be.

The author is head of the Beijing office of the US -based Environmental Defense Fund. The views expressed here are his own.

(China Daily 11/16/2009 page2)