How can fair carbon emissions targets be achieved?

The "Danish text" proposed by the developed countries at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, regardless of the principle "common but differentiated responsibility" that the UN has long established, set "target caps" and "deadlines" for developing countries. This has again intensified the "North-south contradictions."

In response, the G77 group and China are on the same side, arguing on the basis of reason, striving to preserve the rights and interests of their common development since the end of the Cold War. Not only is this reasonable and proper, but it also respects the evolving history of the world's industrial revolution.

In fact, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, there are currently three major methods to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets. The first is technical emissions reduction which refers to establishing a technological emissions system, including new energy, underground carbon dioxide storage and energy efficient technology systems, to fundamentally reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The second is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) proposed by the UN which urges relevant countries to help developing countries reduce emissions in exchange for carbon dioxide emissions rights. The third is the emissions trading scheme that seeks to achieve emissions targets through the trading of carbon dioxide emissions rights in the market.

In today's world, developed countries have virtually monopolized the world’s most advanced emissions reduction technology systems. Both new energy systems such as nuclear, wind, solar and biological energy, and production technology systems such as pollution-free home appliances, electric automobiles, environmentally-friendly power generation stations and low-carbon steel plants are under the control of developed countries. There is an insurmountable "technology gap" between developed countries and developing countries.

In particular, facing the common threat to human survival, developed countries have deliberately ignored both the interactive relationship between the history of technological development and the history of the industrial revolution, and the historical facts about the parallel development of the accumulation of intellectual property rights and carbon dioxide emissions. Not only have they refused to transfer technologies to developing countries using the excuse of protecting intellectual property rights, but they have also forced developing countries to meet specific emissions targets that the latter are not strong enough to meet.

On the other hand, it is quite clear that the actual "technology gap" makes developing countries unable to benefit from the UN's Clean Development Mechanism. After the Kyoto Protocol came into effect, almost all the world's developed countries directly approached developing countries to "help them clean fertilizer plants and iron and steel mills" or to "dispose sewage" in order to obtain carbon dioxide emissions rights to ensure their own goals could be met. It is one good method in which developed countries reach their standards without efforts in policies. Obviously, developing countries do not have such technologies and capabilities. They still stand in a position of needing help and cannot achieve specific emissions reduction goals with this method.

In this case, the only emissions reduction method left for developing countries is to buy carbon dioxide emissions rights at the "carbon market." This means that developing countries would inevitably have to pay much higher economic development costs. It may even lead to the developing countries' wealth flowing away and to the creation of a huge economic gap again.

Human beings need to exist and economies need to develop, but at present, there is still nothing that can replace fossil energy. If developed countries set a "maximum emissions limit" and a "deadline" for developing countries, it means that they are obstructing developing countries, blocking their economies and depriving them of their development rights.

The environment and climate issue is an issue for all the people in the world. It needs developed countries and developing countries to cooperate with each other peacefully and hold their respective responsibilities fairly. Fairness means that we should historically, materialistically and comprehensively consider the historical facts between carbon dioxide emissions and things such as the industrial revolution, technical progress and intellectual property rights accumulation, comprehensively consider humankind's right to exist and develop, as well as every country's political right to speak, and jointly construct a good environment for humanity’s safety, harmony and development.

By Liu Junhong, director and researcher at the Research Center on Globalization under China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations