At face value, the 50 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 the eight richest countries announced on Tuesday looks impressive. But scrap the surface and you will find the reduction, without a base year, means little, if not nothing.
The five developing nations invited to the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Japan and environmentalists say that not specifying a base year would leave the actual cut in emissions open. For instance, reduction from the 1990 levels, as prescribed by the Kyoto Protocol, would be far larger than say the 2000 or 2005 base level.
No wonder, the five developing nations - China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico - say the G8 goal falls short of the rich countries' global responsibility. What makes the cut even more vague is that the G8 agreement makes it binding on the whole world (and that perforce includes the developing nations) has to reduce emissions.
The five developing nations say in their joint deceleration that the G8 should cut its emissions by 80-95 percent by the middle of the century taking 1990 as the base year. And to ensure that they propose the G8 cut 25-40 percent of its emissions by 2020, with the same base year.
The G8 leaders are trying to make the UN endorse their target as a global goal when the international community, especially environmentalists, is desperate to draft a climate treaty to guide the world after 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends.
Given the devastations already caused by climate change (though many in the developed world disagree with it), the five nations have urged the G8 countries to fight global warming also by changing their wasteful way of consumption and living style.
The G8 agreement is actually an effort to make good the pledge made at the last summit of the richest countries in Germany a year ago. Then they had said the G8 countries would seriously consider the 50 percent target.
But some observers see it as a success because perhaps for the first time the US has agreed to be part of any deal on global warming - it has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
"It's a step forward in the sense that the world has at least reached a consensus that emission cut is a must," says Zhang Jianyu, an expert with the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.
UN studies, conducted by leading environmentalists and scientists from across the world, show global temperatures could rise 2-4 C by 2080. That could spell disaster for low-lying coastal areas and the small islands in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, the Arctic and Antarctic ice plates, the glaciers in the Himalayas, the Andes, the Alps and other mountains that supply drinking water to most of the people across the world. And the only way to avoid such a catastrophe is to cut the global emission level by 60-80 percent by 2050, taking 2000 as the base year.
The G8 announcement fails to clarify what the rich countries' commitments are and will be. It does not even specify their mid-term goal, let alone how they intend to achieve it.
"If the G8 target is global, the planet can probably prevent the temperature from rising that high," Zhang says. "But the problem is the target is vague, and the rich countries have not considered that the responsibilities of nations in different stages of development have to be different." Which means developed countries' emission cuts should be much higher than developing ones.
"To be meaningful and credible, a long-term goal must have a base year, it must be underpinned by ambitious mid-term targets and actions," Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South African Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, has said. "As it is expressed in the G8 statement, the long-term goal is an empty slogan."
Still, other observers say the G8 agreement is aimed at shifting the responsibility of fighting global warming on next year's UN climate change conference where world leaders will try to agree on a post-Kyoto treaty.
"The 50 percent G8 target means putting more pressure on the developing nations," says Zou Ji, professor of environmental sciences at the Renmin University of China. "But we should insist on shared but different responsibilities in fighting climate change."
President Hu Jintao has made it clear that the rich countries have to play an exemplary role in fulfilling the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.
The UN convention and the Kyoto Protocol constitute the framework, principles and goals of international cooperation in the fight against climate change. They reflect the differences in the level of economic development, historical responsibilities and per capita emissions of different countries and detail the efforts that developed and developing countries should make to fight climate change, he has said.
This year and the next, according to the president, are crucial to the efforts aimed at implementing the Bali Road Map, which charts the course and sets the timetable for discussions on an international climate change arrangement after 2012.
Source: China Daily
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