Doing its part

A recent report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says that climate change is happening faster and its extent is wider than the world's leading scientists had predicted.

For instance, the Arctic Ocean is losing sea ice 30 years ahead of the predictions made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007.

If this is too vague to be translated into what worries China, check what is happening in the country.

China has warned that it faces warmer weather, more extreme climate events and more severe drought in the future in a white paper on China's climate change policies and actions released last week.

"Extreme climate phenomena, such as high temperatures, heavy rain and snow and severe droughts, have increased in frequency and intensity," reads the white paper.

The sea level will also rise faster than ever, it says.

In China's coastal zones, the sea surface temperature and sea level have risen by 0.9 C and 90 mm, respectively, over the past 30 years.

The financial hub of Shanghai has seen the sea level rise 115 mm, or the length of half a chopstick.

Tianjin, a major port about two hours' drive from Beijing, has seen the level rise as much as 196 mm, about the length of a new pencil.

Climate change has also had visible adverse effects on China's agriculture and livestock-raising sectors, such as severe damage to crops and livestock due to extreme weather, the white paper says.

The Chinese government pays great attention to climate change, and the country has taken aggressive measures to mitigate the impacts of global warming, said Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), at a recent media conference releasing the white paper.

Through energy conservation and utilizing of renewable energies, China reduced 835 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent in 2006 and 2007, according to the white paper.

The reduction is about the size of the combined greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the United Kingdom and Belgium in 2005, the latest figures from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change shows.

The country's ambitious energy-saving blueprint, with an aim to cut energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by 2010 from 2006, has contributed to progress on in cutting GHG emissions.

In 2006 and 2007, energy conservation through means of optimizing industrial structure has saved 147 million tons of coal equivalent, which equals avoiding 335 million tons of CO2 emissions, according to Xie.

Through using renewable energies, such as wind and solar power, the country saves 220 million tons of coal, equivalent to 500 million tons of CO2 emission reduction.

China's National Climate Change Program, released in June 2007, calls for efforts to reduce 950 tons of CO2 equivalent by 2010; although as a developing country, China does not assume binding targets for emission reduction under the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement linked to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That amounts to an average of 5 percent cut against the 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012.

Nonetheless, as a developing country with a large population, a relatively low level of economic development, China is still in the process of industrialization.

As experienced by developed nations earlier, it is difficult for the country to control greenhouse gas emissions because of the coal-dominated energy mix, Xie says.

So developed countries should take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as their greenhouse gas emissions from 1950 to 2000 accounted for 77 percent of the world total, Xie says.

However, developed countries have failed to deliver on commitments made on funding and technology transfer to help developing countries combat global warming, Gao Guangsheng, with the NDRC's climate change department, says.

Under the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, developed countries are obliged to provide financial support and transfer technology to developing countries with favorable terms.

Developed countries should spend at least 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) helping developing nations address climate change, but till now their spending is far below that level, according to Xie.

Also, the lack of an effective mechanism to facilitate technology transfer from developed countries has also hampered the fight against global warming, according to Gao.

"More than 90 percent of the advanced technology related to climate change is in the hands of developed countries, but they are reluctant to provide it to developing countries out of concern for losing their competitiveness," Gao says.

As the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is going to expire in 2012, the world is getting busy to work out a successor to the pact.

China holds that the clean development mechanism (CDM) should continue to be implemented even after 2012, and to be made more conducive for technology transfer to developing countries, the white paper says.

CDM, the carbon trading system established under the Kyoto Protocol, has effectively boosted the development of China's renewable energy.

The country will play an active and constructive role in the upcoming international conferences in Poznan and Copenhagen, as it did in Bali, according to Xie.

"Whatever the negotiation results will be, China will continue to mitigate the climate change," Xie says, "there is no way out for China other than developing in a sustainable mode."

(China Daily 11/03/2008 page4)