Toufiq A. Siddiqi » The Evolving Role of Asia in Global Climate Change

By Toufiq A. Siddiqi

HONOLULU (Jan. 24) – Global climate change has moved firmly during the past six months to the forefront of the international agenda.

Last September, Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, convened a meeting of heads of state and other world leaders at the United Nations headquarters for a forum entitled “The Future in Our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change.”

“Today I heard a clear call from world leaders for a breakthrough on climate change in (the December 2007 climate change conference in) Bali. And I believe we have a major political commitment to achieving that… Action is possible now and it makes economic sense. The cost of inaction will far outweigh the cost of early action,” the Secretary-General said.

That event was followed by a two-day meeting convened in Washington by President Bush with the participation of the 17 largest emitters of ­greenhouse gases. The president stressed the ­development of new technologies and voluntary measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In direct contrast, most of the other countries said mandatory controls were necessary to address the challenge posed by global climate change.

In October, the Nobel Committee announced that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was to be awarded jointly to former U.S. Vice President Albert Gore, for focusing the attention of the world on the need to address climate change, and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has been working for more than 15 years on identifying the scientific consensus on the human contribution to global ­climate change and its likely impacts.

The year 2007 concluded on a high note with the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, where, after lengthy and difficult negotiations, a “Bali Roadmap” was finally worked out. The roadmap lays out a course for a new negotiating process leading to a post-2012 international agreement on climate change. Important decisions were taken for the launching of an Adaptation Fund on reducing emissions from ­deforestation and on technology transfer. No decisions were taken regarding the limitation of greenhouse gas emissions from the industrialized or the developing countries, and these will be the focus of detailed ­negotiations during the next two years. No global agreement can be successful if some of the large ­emitting countries impose limits on their emissions while others continue to have voluntary emission ­limits.

The role of the Asian countries in global climate change has changed enormously since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, and they can be expected to play a much more active role in any new agreement to address this important global issue.

As recently as the early 1990s the perception in Asia was that the region was an “impactee” rather than an “impactor.” That is, the region was likely to be affected by global climate change, but the duty to reduce future greenhouse impacts rested with the industrialized countries.

This was reflected in the Kyoto Protocol, which did not place any limits on emissions from the ­developing countries, while requiring the industrialized countries to reduce them by an average of five percent from the levels of 1990 by 2012.

All of the industrialized countries agreed to limit their emissions, with the notable exception of the United States and Australia. (The new government in Australia has just signed the Kyoto Protocol.) U.S. ­delegates argued such limits would have an adverse impact on the American economy. At the same time, they said, there would be no significant global climate change benefits so long as large developing countries such as China, India and Brazil continued to increase their emissions of ­greenhouse gases.

For a better perspective, let us look at the current status of emissions from the larger Asian countries and compare them with emissions from the leading ­industrialized countries. Many gases contribute to global climate change, but the largest contributor is carbon dioxide (CO2). The use of fossil fuels is by far the largest source of man-made CO2 emissions, and shall be the focus of our discussion here.