China Environmental Law

Let me admit what many of you have already concluded: I’m confused.  After a week of immersion in the US-China climate change dynamic, I feel less certain about where all this is heading than before.  With little more than six months to go before the world’s climate change negotiators meet in Copenhagen, it make sense to take stock of where we are, and where we need to be in order to fully appreciate the challenges ahead.  I tried to capture everything in one post, but it grew so long it would tax the patience of even the most hardcore US-China climate change devotee.  Consequently, I’ve split it up, and will run portions each day this week.  First up, China’s position.

The Chinese have been all over the map lately.  China has always demanded cuts from developed countries in the 25-40% range off 1990 levels by 2020, but at the beginning of last week it appeared to be dropping the range and insisting on cuts of 40%.  By the middle of the week Gao Guangsheng, an official with China’s National Coordination Committee for Climate Change, was back pedaling and suggesting that just about any “quantified emissions cuts” by the US would be acceptable.  At the other end of the spectrum, the fire-breathing Pan Jiahua was scorching more earth (”China is not at all impressed with Obama”).  So polarizing is Pan that cap and trade opponent Congressman Sensenbrenner was passing out copies of a Sydney Morning Herald article containing Pan’s latest diatribe at a press conference in Beijing last week.

Xie Zhenhua, China’s Special Representative on Climate Change and Vice Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), is probably one of the few officials whose views matter at this point.  He wrote a piece for the Guardian that reiterated China’s standard Copenhagen talking points (formalized in a submission to the UN Copenhagen authorities) without changing a note:

Developing countries [which here includes China] will, in the context of sustainable development and with measurable, reportable, and verifiable support in terms of financing, technology, and capacity-building, take nationally appropriate mitigation actions.

China is also reportedly working on a “national plan to further cope with the issue of climate change.”  The goal of the plan is “to strengthen the enforcement of international treaties about the issue,” said Xie.  Its aim is to “better tackle climate change and boost economic growth in the meantime.”  None of this makes much sense, and unfortunately Vice Minister Xie “did not elaborate [on] the plan, only saying that the country aims to accumulate useful experiences to establish a low-carbon economy through some pilot projects.”  That makes sense-death by pilot project; don’t expect too much from this plan.

At the US-China Clean Energy Forum I attended on Tuesday in Beijing, several speakers directly addressed climate change negotiation issues, but little was said that helped clarify matters.  Lu Guoqiang from the NDRC’s Climate Change Office reiterated the standard line set forth by Vice Minister Xie in his Guardian piece, and Jiang Kejun from China’s Energy Research Institute reported that he was working on models that showed China could reduce emissions by 20% or 50% with improved energy efficiency.  I apologize that I can not be more precise as to whether Mr. Jiang said 20 or 50% or provide you with the baseline he was using for the reductions (BAU, 2005,etc?).  As he was providing this crucial information, the cell phone of the man next to me struck up a loud and rollicking rendition of “London Bridge is Falling Down,” and, as his phone was buried in his briefcase, it took some time to locate and, yes, answer.  If anything Jiang is working on is set to be adopted by China as a bold new initiative to help strike a deal at Copenhagen, it was not evident from his remarks or the remarks of other officials this week. 

I will feature some remarks of Zhang Guobao, Vice Chairman of the NDRC and Director of the National Energy Administration in tomorrow’s post, but they simply reinforce my sense that nothing has changed on the Chinese side.  There have certainly been no public pronouncements that signal a change in negotiation postition, and given the reaction of the visiting US delegation to their set of talks with Chinese counterparts (which we will discuss in more detail later), it does not appear that the position has changed much in private either.  There is still time, of course, but my knuckles are starting to lose a little color.