Michael Richardson: Heat on China, India in climate debate

It was not only the spectre of terrorism that loomed over last week's meeting of the Group of Eight major powers at Gleneagles, Scotland.

The possible consequences for the global environment of Asia's rapid economic growth and soaring demand for energy were a prominent feature of the G8 leaders' statements after the meeting on Friday, with aid to Africa.

The apparent consensus on climate change papered over major differences between the United States and the other group members - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia - on how to tackle the issue.

After discussion with counterparts from China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, the G8 leaders said they would pursue a new dialogue with developing countries on climate change, starting in November when parties to the Kyoto Protocol meet in Montreal to discuss the treaty's future.

A major issue then will be how to bring developing nations, led by fast-growing energy consumers China and India, into any future compact to limit carbon dioxide and other emissions blamed for heating the planet.

China is now the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US, according to a study published in December.

It found that in 2000, China was responsible for about 15 per cent of the emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere, barely 6 per cent less than US emissions and a fraction more than the European Union with 14 per cent.

Russia and India each contributed just under 6 per cent of total emissions, Japan 4 per cent, Brazil 2.5 per cent, South Korea 1.6 per cent, Mexico 1.5 per cent and South Africa 1.2 per cent.

Many scientists now warn that the resulting climate change from these accumulating global emissions will disrupt nature, melt the polar caps and mountain glaciers, raise sea levels and intensify extreme weather events like storms, floods, droughts and fires, causing widespread damage and serious economic disruption in many parts of the world.

The climate change discussion in Gleneagles also included the head of the International Energy Agency.

In its latest World Energy Outlook report for last year, the IEA forecasts that on present trends global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, will increase by 1.7 per cent each year between 2002 and 2030.

They will reach 38 billion tonnes in 2030, a rise of 15 billion tonnes, or 62 per cent over the 2002 level.

About 70 per cent of this increase will come from developing countries as their industrial economies expand, cities grow and demand for electricity and modern transport rises.

The IEA says the developing countries will overtake the 30 industrialised nations in the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as the leading contributor to global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions early in the 2020s.

Last year, the emissions from developing countries were two-thirds of the OECD group. By 2030, they will be 16 per cent higher.

China's emissions alone will climb by more than 3.8 billion tonnes, equal to more than a quarter of the increase in world emissions.

The IEA says other Asian countries, notably India (which, like China, relies heavily on coal to generate electricity and power its basic industries), will also contribute in a major way.

Yet China, India and other developing countries are excluded from the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse gases that runs until 2012.

Only industrialised economies are covered by the first phase of this treaty, which came into force in February.

Under it, rich nations are obliged to reduce their overall gas emissions by at least 5 per cent below their 1990 levels.

All G8 members except the US have signed the 1997 Protocol. But the US is responsible for around 21 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The US and Australia refused to ratify the treaty, arguing it would wreck their energy-intensive economies and was unfair because it failed to include developing countries in the emission cuts.

US President George W. Bush insisted in the G8 talks last week that cleaner energy technologies, not mandatory curbs on emissions, were the key to a better climate policy.

But many of these technologies for wind, solar and other renewable power and for making fossil fuels, including coal, cleaner are expensive. Developing countries question how they can pay.

The G8 said in response that the World Bank would take a leadership role in creating a new framework for spreading clean energy, including investment and financing.

China is a far less efficient energy user than Japan or even the US. But as it struggles to overcome shortages of electricity and declining domestic oil output, it is wary of committing to make big cuts in its greenhouse gases because that would almost certainly mean sharply curbing future economic growth, based on large-scale use of coal, oil and natural gas.

"It's easy to talk about conservation, but it's very hard to fundamentally change China's inefficient production methods," says Zhao Jianping, the World Bank's senior energy specialist in Beijing.

"What's involved here are not just Government policies, but a whole series of structural problems, societal habits and regulations that can't be changed in a year or two."

When the global negotiations for the post-2012 period of the Kyoto Protocol begin in Montreal, the EU has indicated it will seek cuts by all significant energy users of 15 to 30 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020.

For its part, China will watch how other countries move to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions before deciding whether to implement its own action plan.

* The writer, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.