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

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that the world has until about 2020 to reverse the trend of rising greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst effects of climate change. A joint statement issued recently by the national science academies of all G8 nations and Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa drew attention to the IPCC findings and urged a goal of confining global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The academies said: “Our present energy course is not sustainable … The problem is not yet insoluble, but becomes more difficult with each passing day.”

While it may be unrealistic to expect countries such as China and India to reduce emissions from their present levels, it is clear that the rapid growth of these and other developing countries of Asia require that they play an active part in addressing global climate change concerns.

One possible approach may be, for example, for the developing countries to agree not to exceed two tons of carbon emissions per capita by 2025. On the other side of the coin, developed countries could make a commitment to reduce their emissions to two tons per capita by 2025.

By that time, it’s likely that newer technology such as solar photovoltaic (PV) and fuel cells will have come down in price substantially, enabling their wider use. All countries could then reduce their per capita ­emission targets together to reach the levels required to stabilize the world’s climate. In view of their current high levels of per capita emissions, the United States, Canada and Australia may require a few more years to achieve this level, and a special provision could be made in a new treaty or protocol to permit this, as was the case in the Kyoto Protocol.

The main objective should be on starting action now, and refining targets later, rather than finding ­reasons for delay.

There was an industrialist who used to say, “Why should we do anything for the future? What has the future ever done for us?” He changed his mind when it was pointed out to him that the “future” is not an abstraction, but the time during which his grandchildren and their children would be living, and how they will live is what we are determining today.

The EWC and global climate change

In 1979, in an era when energy professionals talked mainly to other energy professionals, and those working on ­environmental issues met primarily with others having a similar interest, the Environment and Policy Institute (EAPI) of the East-West Center initiated a cooperative ­program on “The Environmental Dimensions of Energy Policies.”

Probably the first such effort in the Asia Pacific region, the program brought together senior policymakers and ­professionals from a number of major countries in the region, including Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea and the United States. Participants were asked about the energy-environment issues of greatest concern to them and where the East-West Center could make an important ­contribution through cooperative work.

During the same planning meeting, senior officials and professionals were asked whether it would be useful to ­initiate a project dealing with global climate change. Most of them felt that it was way too early and not on the priority list of environmental concerns in the Asia Pacific region.

A full decade was to pass before the East-West Center, in cooperation with the Argonne National Laboratory, hosted a conference on global climate change in Honolulu in 1989. Many of the participants have ­subsequently played important roles in their countries, and at the international level, in formulating policies to address the challenges of global climate change.

To mention just two, Qu Geping was China’s first Administrator of their Environment Protection Agency and is a senior member of the leading group that oversees environment issues in that country. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri is Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

Toufiq Siddiqi is an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Research Program of the East-West Center and president of Global Environment and Energy in the 21st Century, a non-profit organization based in Hawai‘i. Dr. Siddiqi was a Fellow and Senior Fellow at the East-West Center for 18 years, where he initiated in 1980 the Center’s projects on “The Environmental Dimensions of Energy Policies” and on ­mitigation strategies to address global climate change. Dr. Siddiqi has a doctorate in nuclear physics from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt (Germany), and a B.A. (Honours) from Cambridge University. He has served as the Regional Advisor on Energy at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific from 1995-97, and as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.