A fascinating and entertaining overview of Chinese history and where things will go from here – this is a podcast by Ross Garnaut. He is good at painting the broad picture.
Ross Garnaut only talked a little about climate change issues in China. This article suggests an approach to the issue close to my own heart – an internationally-oriented ETS.
Hu Angang proposes an emission reduction scheme that is applicable internationally as well as domestically to China based on the principles of fairness and efficiency. He challenges the traditional dichotomy of developed countries versus developing countries in climate change debate with four new divisions based on the Human Development Index, HDI. He argues that major emitters including the US and China should bear the brunt of responsibility for emission reduction.
In his work, he points out that as of 2006, there were 70 countries with 1.6 billion people in the first division with high HDI representing 25.5 per cent of world’s population. They are the main group responsible for emission reduction and, he argues, it should be mandatory for them to devise a unified, multilateral plan to achieve that goal.
Of the top twenty emitters in the world, 14 emitters belong to the first division of high HDI, and their reductions should be made mandatory. There are 5 other countries belonging to the second division of medium to high HDI, and they should be subject to conditional emission reductions. Of all top twenty emitters, only India belongs to the third division of medium HDI, and it should be encouraged to actively pursue an emission reduction strategy.
Such divisions are not carved in stone and are subject to change as countries move up the ladder to a higher division of HDI. For example, once a country moves from second division to the first division, its emission reduction effort becomes no longer conditional but mandatory.
Different regions and provinces of China are also divided into four divisions according to HDI. For example, the major urban centres such as Beijing and Shanghai along with the prosperous coast provinces, with high HDI, belong to the first division. The rest of country is categorised according to the level of their HDI achievement.
Hu Angang’s plan to link emission reduction to HDI is an alternative way to bridge the old divide between the developed and developing countries in the debate over the respective responsibility for climate change. The additional principles of inclusion of major emitters in any global emission reduction framework would also ensure that major emitters from the developing world would shoulder a fair share of their responsibility depending on their available resources.
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