Time is running out for world leaders as they prepare for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from December 7-18.  While many governments are playing their cards close to the chest, all the current diplomatic posturing has brought many diverse perspectives into the open.  And with every passing day observers are growing more confident in speculating where the road to Copenhagen will end.  Below is an analysis of major national positions which will govern any potential climate agreement.

The Knuckle Draggers

A host of countries have shown, through policy initiatives and high-level diplomatic statements, that they are wholly uninterested in any serious agreement, such as Canada and Russia.

Russia

The Russian position is contingent on a number of concerns.  An important aspect is that many Russians believe that temperature increases would actually benefit their country, as large parts of Siberia would become habitable.

But most fundamental to the Russian standpoint is that the Russian economy relies heavily on exports of their abundant sources of natural resources.  And if, as scientists predict, the severe melting of Arctic ice takes place, Russia would then be able to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean, where there is substantial evidence to suggest that vast reserves of fossil fuels remain untouched.  President Dmitri Medvedev announced the country’s emissions targets earlier this year, which would unbelievably see a 30% increase in Russian emissions by 2020. "We will not cut our development potential," Medvedev added.

Elena Chistyakova, Chief Advisor to the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, noted that although her country’s position on a climate change treaty is one of reluctance, she conceded that Russia could in fact sign an agreement, however insincere that signing may be: “Russia will drag out the ratification as long as they can. And if they ratify it, then they’ll drag out the implementation. There’s just no political will.”

Canada

While Canadians have traditionally held a positive opinion of their country’s environmental efforts, to say that this opinion is justified by present government policy has clearly become fantastic thinking.

The Canadian position, as outlined by recent comments by Environment Minister Jim Prentice, is one in which there are no signs of anything that could be considered climate leadership.  Prentice confessed that Ottawa would not release its climate change plan, including its proposed emissions caps on large emitters such as oil sands and power plants, until there is more clarity on how the United States intends to proceed in global climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.

The Conservative government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been heavily criticized for proposing to reduce emissions 20% below 2006 levels by 2020.  This proposal, though, was not accompanied by a plan through which this target would be met.  Even if achieved, Canadian emissions would only be reduced to 3% below 1990 levels; under the Kyoto Protocol, Canada committed to cutting its greenhouse gases by 6% from 1990 levels by 2012.

As one opposition member put it, the current Canadian government is “ragging the puck, killing time and hoping to avoid the issue until the next election.”

The “It’s not me, it’s you” Group

At the forefront of this group are China and India, who take the position that developing countries should not have to stunt their economic growth in order to meet deep emission targets.  This position is due to their belief that any internationally binding climate agreement should, in all fairness, be maintained in such a way that actually recognizes the developed countries historical responsibility for climate change.

In other words, western countries should have stringent emission targets because climate change is largely due to their development, whereas developing nations should not have to impede their own development because of poor development habits undertaken in the past by rich western nations.

China

According to Charlie McElwee, an international energy and environmental lawyer based in Shanghai, the Chinese position is largely contingent on sincere actions undertaken by developed countries.  China has traditionally demanded that developed countries reduce their emissions by at least 25-40% from 1990 levels by 2020.  China has since dropped the range and insisted on a 40% reduction.

While China has not outlined any definite targets, they have promised to cut C02 emissions by a “notable margin” from 2005 levels in return for genuine action by developed countries in the form of a 40% emission reduction.  As with developing countries worldwide, China continues to limit statements about its climate intentions due to what they perceive as a persistent lack of responsibility taken by developed countries, particularly the US.

China stands together with most developing nations by demanding that the US and other developed countries adopt the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, stating that doing so is necessary in order to reach a new agreement. The US did not ratify Kyoto, which required that developed countries agree to legally binding cuts, while limits were not applied to developing countries.  With Kyoto expiring in 2012, there is a growing sense of urgency in reaching a new treaty, but the positions of major players are still miles apart.

While in Beijing two weeks ago, the US joined other developed countries in emphasizing their stance that binding cuts were also necessary for developing countries, even as they fought calls from those nations to make stronger cuts themselves.  The Wall Street Journal reported that Lu Xuedu, deputy director of China’s National Climate Center, said that the objective of the developed countries to discard the Kyoto Protocol and set binding emission cut targets for developing countries was a very distressing message.  Mr. Lu called the message “shocking,” and said it had angered developing countries: “If the trend can’t be turned around in the next round of meetings, I estimate the Copenhagen meeting can only fail,” he added.

In an interview with Greenpeace China, environmental activist and journalist George Monbiot claims that it would be unjust for developed nations to expect China to withstand the entire burden of emissions outsourcing: “When goods are manufactured in China then bought in other countries, I believe that the greenhouse gases produced in their manufacturing should be divided equally between the two trading partners.”

Without seeing any genuine action by the U.S., China is not likely to take any meaningful steps of its own.  If governments in the West were to demonstrate that they were serious about tackling emissions issues relating to high per capita consumption, it would be much more possible for China to follow suit.  But with the current stance taken by Western countries, most notably the US, Western governments are in a “very weak position when it comes to lecturing other counties about how much they should consume” relative to overall emissions: “If the Chinese people do achieve a level of consumption similar to ours, however, many of the world’s natural systems will collapse,” added Monbiot.

India

India, along with China, is a major proponent of the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ outlined in the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change.  India’s position, then, is based strictly on the basis that the Copenhagen agreement should involve major emission cuts by developed countries without imposing limits on developing nations, says Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) and director-general of the Energy & Resources Institute in New Delhi.

From India’s perspective, any climate agreement in Copenhagen should also clearly state the support that developed countries will provide to developing countries in accessing low-carbon technologies. By implementing clean-technology transfers from rich to poor nations, developing countries will be able to grow economically with the possibility of achieving a level of development on par with developed countries.  In doing so, developing countries will not be denied the right to economic prosperity that the developed world has achieved through heavy industrialization and intense pollution practices.

To this end, the BBC reported that India and China signed a climate agreement in October, which outlines how the two countries will cooperate on technology development and reducing emissions.  Both agree that the developed countries must play a bigger role in reducing emissions.  Jairam Ramesh, the Indian Environment Minister, said there is virtually no difference between Indian and Chinese negotiating positions for Copenhagen, stating that “internationally legally binding reduction targets are for developed countries and developed countries alone, as globally agreed under the [2007] Bali action plan.”

This stance should not be understood as a refrain from climate issues by India, writes Sanjay Vashist and Michael Köberlein of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, an independent institute for developmental cooperation and international policy.  On the contrary, India has always been an active player and a protagonist on international climate issues, and has drawn much attention in negotiations leading to Copenhagen.

Western countries have asked India to take responsibility in substantially mitigating its future greenhouse gas emissions.  There is concern because India’s emissions are growing at a permanent rate, and this trend is not likely to stop any time soon.  However, as Vashist and Köberlein point out, it would be unfair to label India as an intransigent actor in the international climate since it only accounts for less than 5% of total global emissions, while containing 16% of the world’s population.  Per capita emissions in India are far below the global average, with projections putting India’s emissions less than 3.5 tons of CO2 by 2030, meaning that India “will always remain below the per capita levels of the developed countries, a fact which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also promised at the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm in 2007.”

This point gives an amount justification to the Indian government’s assertion that tackling climate issues will take ‘common but differentiated responsibilities,’ because, as India asserts, emissions in the developed world are lifestyle emissions, whereas in developing countries they are developmental emissions.

The “Do or die” Group

This group includes those whose livelihoods will be either severely damaged or simply come to an end if action is not taken to stop or reverse global warming.  The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which includes the Bahamas, Maldives, and Kiribati, is under substantial threat, as well as many African states, which face some of the greatest challenges if rising temperatures are not averted.

The Alliance of Small Island States

While most of the world’s countries are considering whether decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is worth the damage it will cause to economic development, the countries which are part of the AOSIS have no such luxury.  A September 21, 2009 declaration by AOSIS makes their position on climate change very clear: “Climate change poses the most serious threat to our survival and viability, and, [climate change] undermines our efforts to achieve sustainable development goals and threatens our very existence.”

Without aggressive action by the international community to halt climate change, many of the AOSIS countries are in danger of disappearing under the rising waters of a warming ocean.  Mohamed Nasheed, President of Maldives, the world’s lowest lying country, has recently shown himself to be the leading voice in the AOSIS.  At a two-day gathering of countries deemed to be at particular risk from global warming, President Nasheed heavily criticized the wealthy nations of the world for pledging to hold temperature rises to 2°C.  Even with a 2°C rise, “we would lose the coral reefs… melt Greenland, and… my country would be on death row.”  Furthermore, the rich nations made the 2°C pledge while refusing to commit to carbon targets that would make it possible to realize such a pledge.

With such insincerity on the part of wealthy industrialized countries, it is no wonder that the AOSIS Declaration stated a profound “disappointed [with] the lack of apparent ambition with the international climate change negotiations.”

In order to reverse the global warming trend, and illustrate their genuine intensions, the AOSIS demands that the rich industrialized countries of the world, given their historical responsibility, reduce their collective greenhouse gas emissions by more than 45% below 1990 levels by 2020, and more than 95% below 1990 levels by 2050.

The African Continent

The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment met in late October for a final round of discussions leading up to the Copenhagen Conference.  The meeting in the Ethiopian capital produced a clear African position: 40% reduction of emissions by the industrialized world by 2020, 95% reduction by 2050, and a monetary injection of 1.5% of GDP from developed nations to compensate for climate change effects in the developing world.

What is also clear is that African nations strongly oppose the position of developed nations to scrap the principles of the Kyoto Protocol, specifically the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities,’ in favour of a new agreement with equal responsibilities for developing and developed countries alike.  Demanding equal responsibility from African nations is somewhat disingenuous, since the entire African continent emitted less than half the emissions produced by the UK between 1990 and 2004.

Carbon emissions from the entire African continent are a mere 3.7% of global emissions, including South Africa’s 1.5% of global emissions, but due to its geographical position Africa is likely to experience some of the most severe effects.  It is predicted that the continent is looking at a 10% rise in average temperatures over the next 90 or so years.

Without practically effective measures being taken, areas such as East Africa are expected to see an increase in what is already a region wide drought.  Spreading from the Horn of Africa across most of Ethiopia, Kenya and other countries, East Africa has undergone an increasingly intense cycle of drought and flooding that has relentlessly damaged the lives of some of the most vulnerable people on Earth.

A recent study by UK scientists published in the Oxford Review stated that “the impact of climate change on Africa is likely to be severe because of adverse direct effects, high agricultural dependence, and limited capacity to adapt… Adaptation will be impeded by Africa’s fragmentation into small countries and ethnic groups, and by poor business environments.”

Climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in the form of monetary assistance for the African continent are a crucial element in any new viable climate agreement.

The Pushers

The European Union

There is only one group of nations that have shown leadership in the ongoing climate negotiations: the European Union.  In a November 9, 2009 publication entitled The Copenhagen climate change negotiations: EU position and state of play, the EU confidently put its cards on the conference table. The EU is pushing for “a global, ambitious, comprehensive and legally binding international treaty” with the objective of keeping global temperatures “below 2°C above the pre-industrial level.”

What is refreshing about the EU climate position is that it first takes into account scientific evidence regarding necessary reduction targets, and then acts accordingly.  In contrast to nearly all positions taken by other developed countries and major developing countries such as China and India, the EU recognizes that in order to put global emissions on a trajectory that is compatible with achieving the 2°C above pre-industrial level temperature ceiling, industrialized countries must cut emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

In recognition, the EU has committed to unconditionally reducing its emissions to at least 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, and has committed to providing its share of monetary assistance to developing countries in order to aid the advancement of their adaptation and mitigation strategies.  In acceptance of the ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ principle established by the Kyoto Protocol, the EU believes that developing countries need to limit their rapid emissions growth to around 15-30% below the projected business as usual level in 2020.

Taking note of their historical responsibility for climate change, the EU has committed to increasing its emission cuts to 30% by 2020 on the condition that other industrialized countries make similar reductions, while developing countries need only “contribute adequately to a global deal.”

However, the EU does acknowledge that emissions targets outlined by industrialized countries total only 10-17% of necessary reductions, while economically advanced developing countries, like China and India, have offered little in terms of concrete action which would control their emissions.

The Conspicuous Consumer

The United States

Writing for Forum for the Future, a non-profit organization which promotes sustainable development, Jonathan Porritt takes a fairly strong line in describing the US position:

US negotiators still refuse to acknowledge historical responsibility.  They’re still trying to force developing countries to do what America itself has totally failed to do up until now – and doesn’t show much readiness to do it even now.  They’re still trying to change the baseline date from 1990 to 2005 – and, in essence, want to tear up Kyoto rather than build on it by allowing each country to determine its own path to greenhouse gas reductions.

Going further, Porritt describes the current political situation within the US regarding climate change as “despicable, immoral, self-serving” and “no better than what George Bush was doing during his eight poisonous years in the White House.”

While his language may be over the top, Porritt’s frustrated sentiments about US policy are understandable.  Emitting 6.4 tons of greenhouse gases annually, which make up 20% of the world’s total emissions, the US is second in terms of overall global emissions.  But with a per capita emissions rate of 21.2 tons per citizen, the US substantially overshadows China, its main rival.  China is the world’s largest polluter, producing 21% of global emissions, but has a per capita emissions rate of only 5.5 tons.

Until the US takes appropriate measures to address its extensive consumption levels, its moral high ground will continue to be on a somewhat delicate footing.  Ignoring the historical responsibility for climate change, which developing countries justifiably place at the feet of rich industrialized nations, particularly the US, is not a sincere method in driving other nations to hinder their economic development in the face of global warming.

Through the Waxman-Markey bill, there is now movement on the part of the US government, although at sloth-like speed.  Positive spin on this bill is evident, like that put forward by a New York Times editorial: “There is much to commend in the House bill. It seeks a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases from 2005 levels by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction by midcentury – the minimum, according to scientists, required to avert the worst consequences of climate change.”

How one views these emission reduction targets depends entirely on one’s perspective.  A 17% reduction from 2005 levels amounts to a 4% reduction from 1990 levels, which is 16% less than the EU committed without conditions, 26% less than the EU is willing to commit if other developed nations made a comparable effort, and 36% under what developing nation’s demand of wealthy industrialized countries.

If averting the ‘worst consequences’ is the sum of US conviction on effectively dealing with climate change, then global leadership must be found in other places where people still believe it is possible to live in the ‘best possible world.’

While hopes for a climate deal at Copenhagen have essentially faded to nothing, the national positions outlined above are likely to continue clashing on route to a future conference next year.  Perhaps in 2010 the issue of global warming will be addressed by cooler minds.

Images Courtesy of Creative Commons

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