Stage set for climate rescue

With positive momentum closing out 2014, world leaders are optimistic about the UN talks in Paris in 2015

With the international community trying to reach a deal late this year in part to hold the global average temperature increase to below 2 C relative to pre-industrial levels, climate change will once again become a buzzword in 2015 as it did after extensive United Nations talks in Copenhagen in 2009.

Many signals have shown that China will play a big role in reaching a global deal in Paris, which will host the highly anticipated talks nearly one year from now. China is expected to help developing and poor economies defend their interests and what they term their "emissions rights" for economic development.

Some observers say a final global deal will be reached in Paris as China, the United States and the European Union, major carbon emitters, already have indicated their political commitment. Some, however, still doubt the way to a Paris agreement will be smooth.

To reach such a deal, the UN already has designed a bottom-up approach. In a 43-page report on the results of the UN's annual talks wrapped up in December in Lima, Peru, the international body says the delegates of more than 190 countries reached a compromise deal that sets the stage for a global climate pact in Paris this year. The nations also agreed on the ground rules on how all countries can submit contributions to the new agreement during the first quarter of 2015.

The contributions will form the foundation for climate action during 2020-30, when the new agreement is set to come into effect.

Xie Zhenhua, China's head of delegation for the UN talks, says China is prepared to submit such detailed contributions though it is still not committed to reducing carbon emissions in absolute terms during the decade but instead would cut energy consumption and carbon emissions per unit of economic output.

Before the Lima talks, China announced that its peak year for carbon emissions would come around 2030, the first time the Chinese government has unveiled such a goal. Before that, China's stance was to try hard to improve energy intensity.

However, China's energy consumption is still extensive and wasteful. Official statistics have shown that China's energy consumption per unit of GDP is 1.8 times the world's average, 2.3 times that of the US and 3.8 times that of Japan. This places mounting pressure on the Chinese government to save energy, tackle climate change and control carbon emissions.

China, however, also is ambitious in its plans to reach the point where 20 percent of its energy would come from renewable sources by 2030. The latest official figures indicated that non-fossil fuel were to supply 11.1 percent of China's total primary energy consumption in 2014, up from 9.8 percent in 2013, says Wu Xinxiong, director of the National Energy Administration.

The share of coal may drop to 64.2 percent from 65.7 percent in 2013, In 2014, total installed hydropower capacity was expected to hit 300 million kW, installed wind power capacity to exceed 90 million kW and solar power capacity to reach 30 million kW. By 2020, non-fossil fuel would account for 15 percent of China's total primary energy consumption, the government has promised.

Before the Lima talks, the US revealed its political stance in combating climate change, though some consider its global leadership in this regard not historically promising since the UN started its first climate talks in 1992. The Paris talks this year make this the 21st such annual negotiation. In a pledge in Beijing at a joint press conference with President Xi Jinping, US President Barack Obama vowed that the US would cut its own emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025 from a 2005 base.

Before China and the US reached their bilateral deal, the European Union, traditionally a strong environment advocate, struck a deal that legally binds its member countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 base levels by 2030.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework on Climate Change, says governments arrived in Lima on a wave of positive news and optimism resulting from the climate action announcements by the European Union, China and the United States, and the scaling up of pledges for the Green Climate Fund.

"They leave Lima on a fresh wave of positivity toward Paris with a range of key decisions agreed upon and action-agendas launched, including how to better scale up and finance adaptation, alongside actions on forests and education," she says.

Pledges were made by both developed and developing countries that took the capitalization of the new Green Climate Fund past an initial $10 billion (8.2 billion euros) target. Levels of transparency and confidence-building reached new heights as several industrialized countries submitted themselves to questioning about their emissions targets under a new process called a multilateral assessment. And the Lima Ministerial Declaration on Education and Awareness-raising called on governments to put climate change into school curricula and climate awareness into national development plans.

Governments made progress on coordinating the delivery of climate financing from the various existing funds. Further pledges were made to the Green Climate Fund in Lima by the governments of Norway, Australia, Belgium, Peru, Colombia and Austria, and the pledges brought the total sum pledged close to $10.2 billion.

In a further boost to the adaptation ambitions of developing countries, Germany made a pledge of 55 million euros ($66.8 million) to the Adaptation Fund and China also announced $10 million for South-South cooperation.

In the months leading up to the UN Climate Conference in Paris, several rounds of talks have been arranged, with talks in Geneva and Berlin already scheduled in the first half of 2015.

The Paris conference is considered crucial because many think it must result in an international climate agreement in order to limit global warming to below 2 C.

There are two important goals. First is reaching an ambitious, binding agreement that applies to all countries. Second is having national contributions to that agreement that represent the investment that each country pledges to make. France will need to act as a facilitator among all parties to the negotiations in order to create an atmosphere of confidence, bring viewpoints together and ensure that an agreement is adopted unanimously.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992. The convention brings together 195 countries and the European Union.

The first practical and binding application of the convention was formalized by the Kyoto Protocol. This was adopted in 1997, entered into force in 2005 and has been ratified by 192 parties. It imposed on 37 developed countries overall emissions reductions of 5 percent below 1990 levels (8 percent for the EU) during 2008-12. The other countries did not commit to quantified objectives but were involved in the process through incentive mechanisms.

Laurent Fabius, French foreign minister and chairman of this year's UN climate talks, says the scientific reality of climate disruption and its serious consequences are now established.

"And the political will now needs to be sufficiently strong for each country to commit itself, so that, based on the results achieved in Lima in December, an ambitious agreement can be reached in Paris in December 2015," he said in a recent statement.

fujing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 01/02/2015 page23)