Chinese walker

UN-led climate talks drew to a close in Copenhagen on December 19. Although a weak outcome had been widely predicted, many were still shocked by just how little the conference managed to achieve.

The World Resources Institute had listed five indicators for success at Copenhagen: targets, timetables and actions for cutting emissions; funding for global climate action; common standards for tracking emissions reductions; a peer review mechanism for measurement, reporting and verification of cuts; and a legally-binding climate agreement. The conference failed on virtually all counts.

Al Gore may believe a carbon pricing mechanism can create a link between emissions reductions and incentives in daily life, but the negotiations achieved almost nothing in this regard. The only concrete achievements were the statement of intent on the need for urgent global action on climate change, and the US$100 billion (683 billion yuan) in aid from developed nations to the developing world and island nations to be disbursed from 2020.

The endless stream of proposals put forward at the negotiations %26ndash; and accompanying diplomatic onslaughts %26ndash; highlighted how much disagreement still surrounds four basic issues; namely, emissions cuts by developed nations; emissions caps for developing nations; assistance to poor nations; and a future emissions reduction deal. Clearly, there are still barriers to joint action on climate change.

There is a limit to the world%26rsquo;s capacity for greenhouse gases and the international community must curb the emissions of individual nations. But they must do so while taking into account economic growth, inter-generational equality and human survival. The result is tension between environmental capacity and development needs.

At the same time, if we are to slow down climate change, we need innovation in new energy sources and a technological revolution. These areas will affect any nation%26rsquo;s basic ability to compete and influence changes in the international system.

Climate change has gradually morphed from a matter of science and environmental diplomacy into one of economics and geopolitics. Developed and developing world camps have split into three groups: the European Union, the US-led Umbrella Group, and the Group of 77, a loose coalition of 130 developing countries, including China. Within these, there are further divisions %26ndash; eastern and western Europe; the United States, Japan and Australia; the African Union; island nations; and the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) group. The multiple dealings and checks and balances created by this system make for exceptionally complex negotiations.

In the past, the most prominent characteristic of climate talks has been to pre-empt the other side and make concessions, or to propose environmental protection measures %26ndash; with conditions attached. But all the signs at Copenhagen suggest the differing interests of small island nations and superpowers cannot always be settled by negotiations and discussion.

The Copenhagen talks have overturned some accepted beliefs; for example, that climate change is a classic, non-traditional security issue that can only be solved by global cooperation, and that doing so will create new areas of growth for all nations.

This idealistic thinking ignores the fact that action by sovereign nations is invariably driven by their own ecological vulnerability, the costs of emissions cuts and special interests. No nation will sacrifice its own welfare for the sake of the world%26rsquo;s %26ndash; even if it means disaster for others.

Realism may be cruel, but it makes clear that the existing system of international governance is powerless in the face of irresponsible superpowers; and that the current arrangements, above all, serve the interests of northern nations. People once believed that the election of president Barack Obama would lead to fundamental change in US climate change policy %26ndash; that the United States would start to consider its image as an international leader and the competitiveness of its green industries and thus commit to mandatory emission reductions and a return to multilateralism.

But during the negotiations, Obama and US climate representative Todd Stern showed that, while the US stance may have softened somewhat in line with international trends, the new administration has done little to set itself apart from George W Bush on the substantive matters of mandatory emissions reductions, necessary cuts from emerging economies, financial and technical support and the principle of %26ldquo;common but differentiated responsibilities%26rdquo;. Changes in US climate-change policy are therefore limited and, at most, merely alterations in attitude, intention and ideals.

From start to finish, US climate-change policy has prioritised its own national interests; it is designed to fight for the lifestyle of its citizens and national supremacy, even in the context of this global issue. The principle of sovereignty above all else still survives, even in the postmodern era.

Thanks to determined campaigning from developing nations, the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, the Bali roadmap and the two-track negotiation mechanism were all upheld at Copenhagen. But the future direction of development trends also began to emerge %26ndash; developing nations will also gradually commit to emissions targets, and emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil should sign up to mandatory measurable targets and submit to international verification.

In the run-up to Copenhagen, China and many other emerging nations announced carbon reduction targets and used a meeting of BASIC nations to express support for the Copenhagen negotiations and their unshakeable diplomatic %26ldquo;red lines%26rdquo;. A string of incidents during the negotiation process showed that developed nations, on the other hand, were not prepared to accept and respect the interests and hopes of the developing world.

It is clear from these events that, in international climate diplomacy, the right to speak has to be fought for and this is how climate-change mechanisms are formed. We should not think that developed nations will surrender their own interests and provide finance and technology of their own accord, nor should we expect continued unity among developing nations when interests among them are so varied.

Developing countries will have to protect the just principles of climate negotiations and fight for even the smallest of interests. Climate change has become an accepted part of political discourse, but that does not mean, as some Chinese academics have suggested, that we should adopt mandatory emission targets too soon and surrender our development rights and future environmental capacity.

Emerging nations have already made remarkable efforts with voluntary emissions reductions, but it is hard to convince the developed world that these countries are already doing as much as they can. Red lines aside, emerging nations must let the climate diplomats know that we need, support and, as far as possible, will adopt measures to ensure humanity%26rsquo;s success in the battle against climate change %26ndash; but, crucially, we should not fear pressure and demands that are beyond our ability to meet.

Tang Wei is assistant researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences%26rsquo; Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development Institute.

Homepage image by Polska Zielona Sieć

Imagine Karl Marx calling for capitalism, Gandhi advocating war or the Pope embracing atheism. That is the scale of the disbelief that will likely greet a new book by one of my favourite thinkers, Stewart Brand. He is perhaps best known as the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog series, a powerful icon of the Sixties counterculture, recently described by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as a forerunner of the World Wide Web. From 1968 on, this was a basic reference for people like me, focusing on back-to-the-land pioneers, appropriate technology, renewable energy, self-sufficiency and sustainability, though we didn%26rsquo;t then use that word.

So it will come as a huge shock to many to find Brand arguing robustly for rapid urbanisation, the urgent application of genetic engineering, the widespread adoption of nuclear power technology and the development of new forms of geoengineering, all of which are seen as almost satanic forces by most environmentalists.

Don%26rsquo;t get me wrong%26mdash;I like and admire most environmentalists. Indeed, almost 50 years ago, in 1961, I became one, raising money for the World Wildlife Fund in its first year. At the time, environmentalists were seen by many as some sort of weird mutation. Now, in the face of climate change, you risk being seen as a mutant if you are not an environmentalist. But, as Stewart Brand argues in a new book, Whole Earth Discipline, the tipping point where almost everyone becomes an environmentalist is %26ldquo;tough not just for people who have been comfortable thinking of themselves as antienvironmentalist; it%26rsquo;s even tougher for long-term Greens.%26rdquo;

At a time when much of the environmental movement is morphing into a climate-change movement, Brand argues that the greens %26ldquo;are no longer strictly the defenders of natural systems against the incursions of civilization; now they%26rsquo;re the defenders of civilization as well.%26rdquo; And the climate challenge to civilisation is going to force us all to think %26ndash; and do %26ndash; the currently unthinkable.

The central problem is that environmentalism, at root, is an ideology, %26ldquo;and ideologies hate to shift.%26rdquo; Worse, we are not simply talking about an ideological shift but a paradigm shift, something that happens very rarely. The scale is planetary, the scope will be measured in centuries %26ndash; and the stakes are now civilisational.

The key feature of the climate challenge, Brand argues, still escapes many of those who have been negotiating global policy in the build-up to the Copenhagen COP15 climate conference. This thing doesn%26rsquo;t go in straight lines, it is discontinuous. For example, some years back the Global Business Network (GBN), which Brand also co-founded, predicted that the melting of Arctic ice would lead to massive releases of freshwater into the Atlantic, in turn triggering abrupt climate change %26ndash; with the result that by 2020 much of Europe would suffer a climate like Siberia%26rsquo;s.

Instead of dealing with predictable climate trajectories, we are dealing with a system that is intrinsically unstable %26ndash; and is characterised by what scientists call %26ldquo;positive feedback%26rdquo;. So, for example, as the highly reflective Arctic ice melts, it is replaced by dark, energy-absorbing seawater, which accelerates a vicious cycle of warming and of the release of powerful greenhouse gases like methane from the tundra. As the process of climate change accelerates, Brand argues that there is a growing risk that the twenty-first century will see an unparalleled %26ldquo;die-back%26rdquo; in human numbers, measured in billions of deaths.

Given current %26ndash; and likely future %26ndash; human population numbers, back-to-the-land policies, renewable energy and the like are not going to save us if the climate starts to go haywire. Instead, Brand insists, we must abandon key parts of our old ideologies and embrace genuinely transformative solutions. Foremost among these, he believes, will be a radical acceleration of urbanisation worldwide, with slum-dwellers seen as the leading edge of this trajectory. Whereas half the world%26rsquo;s human population now lives in cities, the goal should be at least 80% by mid-century. Why? Well, partly because the more concentrated cities are intrinsically more resource-efficient than rural settlement patterns %26ndash; and because as rural areas are progressively abandoned, nature will move back in, cutting back on greenhouse emissions.

Even more controversial, however, will be Brand%26rsquo;s conclusions on genetic engineering (which he argues can help create crops that use less land, less pesticide and less water), nuclear power (the carbon footprint of which is dramatically lower than that for fossil fuel-powered electricity generation) and geoengineering (ranging from ships that create artificial clouds over the oceans to giant space mirrors, both designed to bounce back incoming solar radiation into space).

What is most striking about Brand%26rsquo;s vision of the future is not so much the nature of the solutions proposed but the long time-scales he envisages governments, business, financial markets and communities being forced to embrace. %26ldquo;We%26rsquo;re facing multidecade, multigeneration problems and solutions,%26rdquo; he concludes. %26ldquo;Accomplishing what is needed will take diligence and patience%26mdash;a sustained bearing down, over human lifetimes, to bridge the long lag times and lead times in climatic, biological, ands social dynamics, and to work through the long series of iterations necessary for any apparent solution to become practical.%26rdquo;

Brand is worried that environmentalists won%26rsquo;t change fast enough, so that we will see the emergence of what he calls %26ldquo;Post-Greens, Greens-plus, Greens 2.0, Off-Greens%26mdash;who knows?%26rdquo; Whoever ends up doing what needs to be done, the rules of the game are likely to run along the following lines: %26ldquo;Find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1.0, then (f) iterating rapidly.%26rdquo;

Very much, in fact, as the environmental movement began. With China planning to build three times more nuclear reactors than the rest of the world over the next decade, some may recall what happened last time a major nation went nuclear fast. The United States was shaken by controversies around reactors at Diablo Canyon and Three Mile Island, helping launch modern environmentalism. Will history repeat itself?

John Elkington is co-founder of SustainAbility and of Volans.

The homepage image is a detail from the cover of Whole Earth Catalog (Fall 1969 issue), published by Stewart Brand.

UN-led climate talks drew to a close in Copenhagen on December 19. Although a weak outcome had been widely predicted, many were still shocked by just how little the conference managed to achieve.

The World Resources Institute had listed five indicators for success at Copenhagen: targets, timetables and actions for cutting emissions; funding for global climate action; common standards for tracking emissions reductions; a peer review mechanism for measurement, reporting and verification of cuts; and a legally-binding climate agreement. The conference failed on virtually all counts.

Al Gore may believe a carbon pricing mechanism can create a link between emissions reductions and incentives in daily life, but the negotiations achieved almost nothing in this regard. The only concrete achievements were the statement of intent on the need for urgent global action on climate change, and the US$100 billion (683 billion yuan) in aid from developed nations to the developing world and island nations to be disbursed from 2020.

The endless stream of proposals put forward at the negotiations %26ndash; and accompanying diplomatic onslaughts %26ndash; highlighted how much disagreement still surrounds four basic issues; namely, emissions cuts by developed nations; emissions caps for developing nations; assistance to poor nations; and a future emissions reduction deal. Clearly, there are still barriers to joint action on climate change.

There is a limit to the world%26rsquo;s capacity for greenhouse gases and the international community must curb the emissions of individual nations. But they must do so while taking into account economic growth, inter-generational equality and human survival. The result is tension between environmental capacity and development needs.

At the same time, if we are to slow down climate change, we need innovation in new energy sources and a technological revolution. These areas will affect any nation%26rsquo;s basic ability to compete and influence changes in the international system.

Climate change has gradually morphed from a matter of science and environmental diplomacy into one of economics and geopolitics. Developed and developing world camps have split into three groups: the European Union, the US-led Umbrella Group, and the Group of 77, a loose coalition of 130 developing countries, including China. Within these, there are further divisions %26ndash; eastern and western Europe; the United States, Japan and Australia; the African Union; island nations; and the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) group. The multiple dealings and checks and balances created by this system make for exceptionally complex negotiations.

In the past, the most prominent characteristic of climate talks has been to pre-empt the other side and make concessions, or to propose environmental protection measures %26ndash; with conditions attached. But all the signs at Copenhagen suggest the differing interests of small island nations and superpowers cannot always be settled by negotiations and discussion.

The Copenhagen talks have overturned some accepted beliefs; for example, that climate change is a classic, non-traditional security issue that can only be solved by global cooperation, and that doing so will create new areas of growth for all nations.

This idealistic thinking ignores the fact that action by sovereign nations is invariably driven by their own ecological vulnerability, the costs of emissions cuts and special interests. No nation will sacrifice its own welfare for the sake of the world%26rsquo;s %26ndash; even if it means disaster for others.

Realism may be cruel, but it makes clear that the existing system of international governance is powerless in the face of irresponsible superpowers; and that the current arrangements, above all, serve the interests of northern nations. People once believed that the election of president Barack Obama would lead to fundamental change in US climate change policy %26ndash; that the United States would start to consider its image as an international leader and the competitiveness of its green industries and thus commit to mandatory emission reductions and a return to multilateralism.

But during the negotiations, Obama and US climate representative Todd Stern showed that, while the US stance may have softened somewhat in line with international trends, the new administration has done little to set itself apart from George W Bush on the substantive matters of mandatory emissions reductions, necessary cuts from emerging economies, financial and technical support and the principle of %26ldquo;common but differentiated responsibilities%26rdquo;. Changes in US climate-change policy are therefore limited and, at most, merely alterations in attitude, intention and ideals.

From start to finish, US climate-change policy has prioritised its own national interests; it is designed to fight for the lifestyle of its citizens and national supremacy, even in the context of this global issue. The principle of sovereignty above all else still survives, even in the postmodern era.

Thanks to determined campaigning from developing nations, the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, the Bali roadmap and the two-track negotiation mechanism were all upheld at Copenhagen. But the future direction of development trends also began to emerge %26ndash; developing nations will also gradually commit to emissions targets, and emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil should sign up to mandatory measurable targets and submit to international verification.

In the run-up to Copenhagen, China and many other emerging nations announced carbon reduction targets and used a meeting of BASIC nations to express support for the Copenhagen negotiations and their unshakeable diplomatic %26ldquo;red lines%26rdquo;. A string of incidents during the negotiation process showed that developed nations, on the other hand, were not prepared to accept and respect the interests and hopes of the developing world.

It is clear from these events that, in international climate diplomacy, the right to speak has to be fought for and this is how climate-change mechanisms are formed. We should not think that developed nations will surrender their own interests and provide finance and technology of their own accord, nor should we expect continued unity among developing nations when interests among them are so varied.

Developing countries will have to protect the just principles of climate negotiations and fight for even the smallest of interests. Climate change has become an accepted part of political discourse, but that does not mean, as some Chinese academics have suggested, that we should adopt mandatory emission targets too soon and surrender our development rights and future environmental capacity.

Emerging nations have already made remarkable efforts with voluntary emissions reductions, but it is hard to convince the developed world that these countries are already doing as much as they can. Red lines aside, emerging nations must let the climate diplomats know that we need, support and, as far as possible, will adopt measures to ensure humanity%26rsquo;s success in the battle against climate change %26ndash; but, crucially, we should not fear pressure and demands that are beyond our ability to meet.

Tang Wei is assistant researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences%26rsquo; Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development Institute.

Homepage image by Polska Zielona Sieć

Imagine Karl Marx calling for capitalism, Gandhi advocating war or the Pope embracing atheism. That is the scale of the disbelief that will likely greet a new book by one of my favourite thinkers, Stewart Brand. He is perhaps best known as the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog series, a powerful icon of the Sixties counterculture, recently described by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as a forerunner of the World Wide Web. From 1968 on, this was a basic reference for people like me, focusing on back-to-the-land pioneers, appropriate technology, renewable energy, self-sufficiency and sustainability, though we didn%26rsquo;t then use that word.

So it will come as a huge shock to many to find Brand arguing robustly for rapid urbanisation, the urgent application of genetic engineering, the widespread adoption of nuclear power technology and the development of new forms of geoengineering, all of which are seen as almost satanic forces by most environmentalists.

Don%26rsquo;t get me wrong%26mdash;I like and admire most environmentalists. Indeed, almost 50 years ago, in 1961, I became one, raising money for the World Wildlife Fund in its first year. At the time, environmentalists were seen by many as some sort of weird mutation. Now, in the face of climate change, you risk being seen as a mutant if you are not an environmentalist. But, as Stewart Brand argues in a new book, Whole Earth Discipline, the tipping point where almost everyone becomes an environmentalist is %26ldquo;tough not just for people who have been comfortable thinking of themselves as antienvironmentalist; it%26rsquo;s even tougher for long-term Greens.%26rdquo;

At a time when much of the environmental movement is morphing into a climate-change movement, Brand argues that the greens %26ldquo;are no longer strictly the defenders of natural systems against the incursions of civilization; now they%26rsquo;re the defenders of civilization as well.%26rdquo; And the climate challenge to civilisation is going to force us all to think %26ndash; and do %26ndash; the currently unthinkable.

The central problem is that environmentalism, at root, is an ideology, %26ldquo;and ideologies hate to shift.%26rdquo; Worse, we are not simply talking about an ideological shift but a paradigm shift, something that happens very rarely. The scale is planetary, the scope will be measured in centuries %26ndash; and the stakes are now civilisational.

The key feature of the climate challenge, Brand argues, still escapes many of those who have been negotiating global policy in the build-up to the Copenhagen COP15 climate conference. This thing doesn%26rsquo;t go in straight lines, it is discontinuous. For example, some years back the Global Business Network (GBN), which Brand also co-founded, predicted that the melting of Arctic ice would lead to massive releases of freshwater into the Atlantic, in turn triggering abrupt climate change %26ndash; with the result that by 2020 much of Europe would suffer a climate like Siberia%26rsquo;s.

Instead of dealing with predictable climate trajectories, we are dealing with a system that is intrinsically unstable %26ndash; and is characterised by what scientists call %26ldquo;positive feedback%26rdquo;. So, for example, as the highly reflective Arctic ice melts, it is replaced by dark, energy-absorbing seawater, which accelerates a vicious cycle of warming and of the release of powerful greenhouse gases like methane from the tundra. As the process of climate change accelerates, Brand argues that there is a growing risk that the twenty-first century will see an unparalleled %26ldquo;die-back%26rdquo; in human numbers, measured in billions of deaths.

Given current %26ndash; and likely future %26ndash; human population numbers, back-to-the-land policies, renewable energy and the like are not going to save us if the climate starts to go haywire. Instead, Brand insists, we must abandon key parts of our old ideologies and embrace genuinely transformative solutions. Foremost among these, he believes, will be a radical acceleration of urbanisation worldwide, with slum-dwellers seen as the leading edge of this trajectory. Whereas half the world%26rsquo;s human population now lives in cities, the goal should be at least 80% by mid-century. Why? Well, partly because the more concentrated cities are intrinsically more resource-efficient than rural settlement patterns %26ndash; and because as rural areas are progressively abandoned, nature will move back in, cutting back on greenhouse emissions.

Even more controversial, however, will be Brand%26rsquo;s conclusions on genetic engineering (which he argues can help create crops that use less land, less pesticide and less water), nuclear power (the carbon footprint of which is dramatically lower than that for fossil fuel-powered electricity generation) and geoengineering (ranging from ships that create artificial clouds over the oceans to giant space mirrors, both designed to bounce back incoming solar radiation into space).

What is most striking about Brand%26rsquo;s vision of the future is not so much the nature of the solutions proposed but the long time-scales he envisages governments, business, financial markets and communities being forced to embrace. %26ldquo;We%26rsquo;re facing multidecade, multigeneration problems and solutions,%26rdquo; he concludes. %26ldquo;Accomplishing what is needed will take diligence and patience%26mdash;a sustained bearing down, over human lifetimes, to bridge the long lag times and lead times in climatic, biological, ands social dynamics, and to work through the long series of iterations necessary for any apparent solution to become practical.%26rdquo;

Brand is worried that environmentalists won%26rsquo;t change fast enough, so that we will see the emergence of what he calls %26ldquo;Post-Greens, Greens-plus, Greens 2.0, Off-Greens%26mdash;who knows?%26rdquo; Whoever ends up doing what needs to be done, the rules of the game are likely to run along the following lines: %26ldquo;Find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1.0, then (f) iterating rapidly.%26rdquo;

Very much, in fact, as the environmental movement began. With China planning to build three times more nuclear reactors than the rest of the world over the next decade, some may recall what happened last time a major nation went nuclear fast. The United States was shaken by controversies around reactors at Diablo Canyon and Three Mile Island, helping launch modern environmentalism. Will history repeat itself?

John Elkington is co-founder of SustainAbility and of Volans.

The homepage image is a detail from the cover of Whole Earth Catalog (Fall 1969 issue), published by Stewart Brand.

Outside analysts have long stressed that climate change threatens China%26rsquo;s basic national interests. The Chinese government has come to embrace a similar rationale, as a result moving towards aggres%26shy;sive efforts to limit the country%26rsquo;s greenhouse-gas emissions.

In August 2009, China%26rsquo;s cabinet, the Standing Committee of the State Council, announced that China would seek to control its greenhouse-gas emissions even as it continues its economic de%26shy;velopment. Climate change, the council affirmed, threatens the country%26rsquo;s development by increasing extreme-weather events and exacerbating water shortages. As a result, China will set itself on a path towards low-carbon economic growth, stabilising emis%26shy;sions within the next few decades.

This announcement, perhaps more clearly than any previous statement, illus%26shy;trates the growing trend in China towards viewing climate change as a direct threat to the country%26rsquo;s development objectives. It is clear that a number of factors, includ%26shy;ing economic interests and international political pressure, frame the Chinese gov%26shy;ernment%26rsquo;s position on climate change. Nonetheless, given Beijing%26rsquo;s attention at the highest levels to the strategic implications of climate change, it is vital to understand how it may affect the country%26rsquo;s fundamental interests.

At the heart of these challenges to China%26rsquo;s future are changes in the quantity and distribution of water resources throughout the country and its neighbours. Droughts and flooding are expected to become more severe in many areas and the melting of Himalayan glaciers to lead to steep, long-term declines in water avail%26shy;ability in several areas of China and south Asia. Moreover, because of these changes, most major river systems are likely to experience increased variability in water flow, making it harder for farmers and other users to predict water supply. Other interlinked processes, such as desertification in northern China and saltwater in%26shy;trusion in low-lying coastal areas, pose further challenges to food production and ecosystems.

These changes in water availability have important implications for the Chinese government%26rsquo;s objectives both at home and abroad. China already has contentious relations with its neighbours over many transboundary water resources, especially the Mekong River. As these resources shift and, in many cases, dwindle under climate change, China will have to become increasingly adept at dealing with transboundary water issues. Moreover, melting glaciers and shrinking snow packs portend severe water shortages in fragile border regions like northern Pakistan. Such spectres are of great concern to Beijing as it pursues its policy of %26ldquo;peaceful rise%26rdquo;.

Domestically too, water-resource changes threaten China%26rsquo;s vision of stable and orderly economic development. Its restive western areas, including Xinjiang and Ti%26shy;bet, are expected to suffer most from declining water resources. Already poor and underdeveloped, these regions could experience rising inter-ethnic tension over the distribution of water or become a source of growing environmental out-migration as water-stressed inhabitants seek better opportunities elsewhere. Such migration has been documented in several parts of western China and identified by environmental security scholars as a key risk factor for environmental conflict.

These implications indicate that climate change will increasingly bear on China%26rsquo;s strategic ambitions and priorities, forcing the revision of some. Three themes are particularly relevant for policymaking. First, climate-change impacts are defined primarily by the uncertainty that they introduce; it is difficult to plan large-scale development objectives, for example, without being able to count on stable water resources. Second, it is clear that regional climate change impacts will be more acute in some places, like north-western China, than in others. Third and finally, there will be a growing opportunity cost, in terms of financial, administrative and other resources, to adapting to climate change. For a developing country like China, this opportunity cost is of no small concern.

The eastern portion of the Asian landmass faces particularly acute changes in wa%26shy;ter availability and distribution as a result of climate change. Many Asian nations are already under water stress, and the Asian continent has the lowest per-capita water allocation of any continent save Antarctica.

In northern China, the water use-to-availability ratio was three to four times the level in the south as of the year 2000. In China and its immediate neighbourhood, climate change threatens to exacerbate this already tenuous water situation in several ways.

China%26rsquo;s National Climate Change Program asserts that %26ldquo;Climate change has already caused changes [in] water resources distribution over China,%26rdquo; focussing on an increase in %26ldquo;hydrological extreme events%26rdquo;, such as drought in the north and flooding in the south. This assessment draws largely from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data indicating an observed increase in precipitation in north and north-eastern China and a marked increase in the Yangtze River delta region and the south-east.

Researchers stress that, as a result of climate change, precipi%26shy;tation is decreasing in eastern China%26rsquo;s agricultural areas, with drought-related agri%26shy;cultural losses increasing steadily since the mid-twentieth century. Soil degradation as a result of climate change is further expected to increase the possibility of %26ldquo;disastrous drought and floods%26rdquo; in central, south-western and north-eastern China.

A tendency towards more extreme climate events is also predicted for other regions surrounding China. A major study of the Indian Himalayas found that climate change will increase the variation of seasonal flows significantly. In the Mekong basin, south-east Asia%26rsquo;s most important river system, maximum monthly water flows are expected by the IPCC to increase by 35% to 41% by mid-to-late century over twentieth century levels, while the minimum monthly water flows are expected to decline by 17% to 24%. Such increased variation threatens to disrupt normal economic and agricultural activity in vulnerable regions. In the case of the Mekong, this vari%26shy;ability is enhanced by additional risks from sea-level rise and resulting saltwater in%26shy;trusion, which pose a profound threat to agricultural production in the river%26rsquo;s delta region.

Potentially even more serious, however, is a predicted long-term decline in water availability as Himalayan glaciers melt and snow packs are reduced in size. The IPCC estimates that a decrease in Himalayan glacier mass of about 25% is possible by 2050 as global temperatures rise. This is significant as glacial meltwater ac%26shy;counts for some 70% of summer flow in the Ganges River system and 50% to 60% of the flow in other major Asian river systems. One major study pre%26shy;dicted that the flow of Himalayan-melt fed water systems will peak by 2050 to 2070, with mean annual flow declining thereafter by between one-fifth and one-third. The consensus of modelling studies is that a significant portion of north-west China and northern India will be subject to declining water availability by the end of the century as seasonal water shortages arrive abruptly, %26ldquo;going from plenty to want in perhaps a few decades%26rdquo;.

Nonetheless, there is likely to be substantial regional variability in these effects. Some river basins are likely to be particularly affected; the Tarim River for instance, Xinjiang%26rsquo;s most important river system, depends on glacial meltwater for 40% of its mean annual flow. Other areas of north-western China are likely to be severely impacted by changes in water availability. As the IPCC has reported, %26ldquo;The duration of seasonal snow cover in [Chinese] alpine areas %26ndash; namely the Tibet Plateau, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia %26ndash; is expected to shorten, leading to a decline in volume and resulting in severe spring droughts.%26rdquo; Changes of similar magnitude are predicted for major river systems elsewhere in China and Asia.

Water distribution patterns will become much more variable. Many areas of China are likely to have too much water when they don%26rsquo;t need it %26ndash; namely, flood%26shy;ing during the rainy season %26ndash; and too little when they do, during the dry summer months. Certain areas, such as north and north-western China and the Mekong River system, will be impacted more, and by a greater combination of factors, than others. This con%26shy;clusion has important implications for both China%26rsquo;s national and regional security.

Scott Moore is a graduate student at the University of Oxford%26rsquo;s Environmental Change Institute and previously held a Fulbright Fellowship at the College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Peking University.

An earlier version of this article was published in China Security in 2009 as %26ldquo;Climate Change, Water, and China%26rsquo;s National Interest%26rdquo;, Vol.5, No.3. It is used here with permission.

NEXT: The need for diplomacy

Homepage image from Greenpeace

A key deadline for countries to submit emission-reduction goals to the United Nations as part of the recently negotiated Copenhagen Accord passed on Sunday, January 31. The United Nations received commitments from 55 nations, but 139 countries remain unsupportive of the political statement, leading the international body to push back the commitment deadline indefinitely.

Since the high level climate-change summit in Copenhagen concluded in December, global climate talks have been in a state of confusion. Two parallel tracks are already under way %26ndash; one that includes the United States and one that omits this significant world emitter. The Copenhagen Accord, some say, threatens to introduce a third procedural track, complicating the already tense deliberations.

The accord, a non-binding political statement introduced in the 11th hour of the Copenhagen summit, has been praised by some for garnering stronger commitments from major developing nations, which could in turn deliver a binding global climate treaty. Yet its formulation has also threatened to destabilise the nearly 20-year-old process developed under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the leading international body for climate-change negotiations.

The United States, Brazil, South Africa, India and China formulated the accord with the understanding that the text would later be adopted by all 194 nations. But many participants considered this outcome to be undemocratic and a departure from a UN process meant to offer equal voice to every nation. Many had hoped that the Copenhagen conference would deliver a legally binding international treaty on climate change or at least provide direction on many of the core components under negotiation. But the accord itself contains little such detail and provides instead for countries to set their own emission-reduction targets unilaterally.

Among other elements, it states that two degrees Celsius is the target above which global temperatures must not rise; it proposes the mobilisation of US$30 billion (205 billion yuan) by 2012 and US$100 billion (683 billion yuan) by 2020 for developing countries to address climate change; and it calls on developed and developing countries to submit their national actions on climate change to the United Nations by January 31, a deadline that has now been postponed %26ldquo;indefinitely%26rdquo;.

According to Sanjay Vashist, director of Climate Action Network South Asia, without larger consensus the accord reflects %26ldquo;an outcome of a flawed negotiating process…negotiated by a small group of countries%26rdquo; rather than the 194-nation body. There are further reservations about the accord%26rsquo;s content itself. While the text addresses several key negotiation issues, many crucial details remain undetermined. %26ldquo;It is far from clear where the funding [for climate change mitigation and adaptation] will come from, if it is genuinely new and additional and how it will be allocated and channelled,%26rdquo; says Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow with the International Institute for Environment and Development%26rsquo;s climate-change group, who co-authored a recent report on climate finance.

Some observers say the accord does not contain the level of ambition with respect to temperature rise that is needed to protect the rights to survival or livelihood of many nations and people. According to recent analysis from sustainable energy consultant Ecofys, the emission-reduction targets agreed so far will commit the world to a 3.5-degree Celsius rise in global temperature, not the agreed two degrees.

Other advocacy groups have taken a different perspective, highlighting the accord’s value in establishing an important basis for a shift in US domestic politics. Firmer commitments from large emerging economies such as China and India may facilitate domestic climate-change legislation in the US Senate %26ndash; an action seen as crucial to obtaining strong commitments from Australia, Canada, and Japan, they say.

%26ldquo;It%26rsquo;s a powerful signal to see president Obama, premier Wen, prime minister Singh, and president Zuma agree on a meeting of the minds,%26rdquo; said senator John Kerry, chair of the US Senate%26rsquo;s foreign relations committee, in a prepared statement. %26ldquo;These are the four horsemen of a climate-change solution. With this in hand, we can work to pass domestic legislation early next year to bring us across the finish line.%26rdquo;

The United States has submitted a pledge to reduce national emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, and 54 other nations, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India and South Africa, have also provided commitments to the United Nations.

What next? In the wake of contention over the accord, major developing countries have restated their commitment to concluding a successful global treaty at meetings to be held in Mexico in December 2010. In a joint statement in Delhi, India, in late January, environment ministers from the so-called BASIC countries %26ndash; Brazil, South Africa, India, and China %26ndash; reiterated their support for the Copenhagen Accord and their %26ldquo;commitment to working together with all other countries to ensure an agreed outcome…later this year%26rdquo;. The ministers called on Danish prime minister Lars L%26oslash;kke Rasmussen, who hosted the Copenhagen summit, to convene meetings of the two negotiating groups by March 2010 and ensure that they meet %26ldquo;at least five times%26rdquo; prior to the Mexico gathering, the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP-16) under the UNFCCC.

Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, remains optimistic that nations will announce deeper commitments in the months ahead. %26ldquo;I think [the accord%26rsquo;s] adequacy…will depend greatly on what actions the world is willing to take now, and I hope they will take urgent and adequate action in the future,%26rdquo; he said last month in an interview with Science magazine.

The four BASIC countries coordinated their positions closely in Copenhagen, exerting pressure on industrialised nations to commit to ambitious goals for emission reductions as well as to provide technical and financial support to developing nations. But some observers argue that these large developing countries betrayed the interests of their smaller allies in the Group of 77 (G77), a broader grouping of developing nations. There was concern that, by breaking off into a separate bloc, the BASIC nations put at risk many of the fundamental negotiating tenets that the G77 had embraced.

Jairam Ramesh, India%26rsquo;s minister for environment and forests, sought to address this concern at a press conference following a meeting of BASIC leaders on January 24 in New Delhi. %26ldquo;BASIC is embedded in the G77, so there is no fissure,%26rdquo; he said. %26ldquo;Since these four are the big countries, they need to have some coordinated actions towards helping the poor and vulnerable countries within the G77, as well as taking [their] own actions.%26rdquo; Ramesh further emphasised that after each BASIC meeting %26ndash; gatherings that are now scheduled to take place quarterly %26ndash; the group%26rsquo;s decisions will be communicated to the G77 for consideration prior to any wider UN meetings.

Some critics have raised questions about the ability of the United Nations to manage the global negotiations fairly and effectively. %26ldquo;This is a declaration that small and poor countries don%26rsquo;t matter, that international civil society doesn%26rsquo;t matter and that serious limits on carbon don%26rsquo;t matter,%26rdquo; Bill McKibben, a US environmentalist and founder of the climate action group 350.org, said in December. %26ldquo;The president has wrecked the United Nations and he%26rsquo;s wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming.%26rdquo;

Others suggest that the UN-sponsored climate talks have become unwieldy and should be addressed within a smaller forum of the major emitters, such as the G8+5 %26ndash; a group including the G8 nations plus the BASIC countries and Mexico %26ndash; or the G20. Notably, the 55 nations that are reported to have submitted targets or actions under the accord to date represent 78% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. %26ldquo;We…need to have major reform of the UN body overseeing the negotiations and of the way the negotiations are conducted,%26rdquo; wrote UK climate secretary Ed Miliband in a late-December commentary in UK newspaper, the Guardian. In a more recent interview in the same publication, US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing observed, %26ldquo;It is…impossible to imagine a negotiation of enormous complexity where you have a table of 192 countries involved in all the detail.%26rdquo;

In their joint declaration, the BASIC environment ministers were quick to stress their wish for the accord%26rsquo;s content to feed into the current framework of climate negotiations and not to adopt a new framework based on the agreement. India%26rsquo;s Ramesh said: %26ldquo;All of us are unanimously of the view that the value of the accord lies not as a stand-alone document but as part of the two-track negotiating process.%26rdquo;

Anna da Costa is a Worldwatch Institute fellow based in New Delhi.

An earlier version of this article was published by the Worldwatch Institute as %26ldquo;As Climate Talks Stumble, UN Process in Question%26rdquo;.

Homepage image from IISD

The January 31 deadline set in Copenhagen for nations to submit national plans to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to the United Nations under the newly formed Copenhagen Accord has been and gone. By February 1, 55 countries had made pledges to either cut or limit their emissions. Despite this positive news, it is unclear where international negotiations go from here.

The voluntary pledges submitted to the United Nations in association with the accord vary noticeably in form and substance, with a range of baseline years and commitment levels. Norway, for instance, is committed to reducing its emissions by at least 30% on 1990 levels by 2020, while the United States will probably seek to cut its emissions by 17% on 2005 levels %26ndash; although, as made clear in their very brief submission, US action is dependent on securing domestic legislation, the prospects of which have dimmed significantly in the last month since the Democrat party lost the Massachusetts by-election, bringing an end to the party%26rsquo;s senate supermajority. China and other members of the newly formed BASIC block of countries %26ndash; Brazil, India and South Africa %26ndash; have re-affirmed their pre-conference pledges to limit the rise of their emissions.

No one is yet sure how the accord fits in with the existing framework of global climate governance and negotiation. Yvo De Boer, who coordinates the United Nations negotiating process, hailed the submissions as %26ldquo;an important invigoration of the UN climate-change talks%26rdquo;. China%26rsquo;s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, meanwhile, is one of many who have expressed hope that the accord will set the stage for the agreement of a binding global climate deal at negotiations in Mexico this year that expands on the institutions and mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, with binding targets for industrialised nations.

But economists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based think tank, recently argued that %26ldquo;the entire Kyoto framework for reducing carbon emissions died with the UN climate negotiations at Copenhagen.%26rdquo; In its place, they suggest the Copenhagen Accord may be a step towards a more fractured series of national- and regional- policy measures and a non-binding, bottom-up international system. %26ldquo;The real international action will involve bilateral and multilateral negotiations to develop and deploy clean-energy technologies,%26rdquo; they say.

Such an approach presents new dangers and may be insufficient to meet the specifically global challenges presented by climate change. Put simply, a more voluntary approach may be less successful in reducing emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recommended that developed-country emissions drop by 25% to 40% on 1990 levels by 2020. According to the World Resources Institute, the voluntary targets pledged in association with the accord are likely to result in developed-country emissions decreasing by between 12% to 19% on 1990 levels by 2020.

Recent reports from the UN Environment Programme, Project Catalyst and Ecofys have suggested that current pledges are not sufficient to prevent a rise of two degrees Celsius or more. Janos Pasztor, a climate advisor to UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, reaffirmed this after reviewing pledges made in association with the accord. An analysis by Climate Interactive goes a step further, suggesting that %26ldquo;if current proposals were fully implemented, average global temperature would overshoot the two degrees goal and would in fact increase by approximately 3.9 degrees Celsius by 2100.%26rdquo;

In the past, international negotiations have acted as a catalyst for ambitious national commitments that push countries beyond domestic constraints. A voluntary, non-binding system may instead promote an unfortunate race-to-the-bottom scenario, where nations renege on the voluntary commitments they make. We are already seeing examples of this: Canada submitted a weaker target to the United Nations on January 31 than it was committed to at the start of Copenhagen. Feeble targets, coupled with an absence of measures to enforce compliance, will most likely result in a larger rise in temperatures.

Progress on securing finance was one of the few areas where the Copenhagen summit may be judged a success. Developed countries pledged US$30 billion (205 billion yuan) over the three years from 2010 to 2013 and US$100 billion (683 billion yuan) a year from 2020 for developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. But as a recent report from the International Institute for Environment and Development highlights, crucial questions remain about where this funding will come from and how it will be distributed. Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates also recently expressed concern that climate-change finance would not be additional and may eat into existing aid budgets. These concerns seem justified %26ndash; the Guardian newspaper reported that some of the United Kingdom%26rsquo;s initial commitment would be recycled from existing government-aid budgets.

The accord also lacks supporting legal architecture and institutions to facilitate international finance for low-carbon development. In the short term, countries like Brazil, which is reliant on international finance to support efforts to reduce deforestation, are likely to face difficulties in implementing national climate-change policies.

Without binding commitments and strong institutions, a new regime would rely more heavily on trust between nations. At some point, it is likely that this trust would break down, triggering new threats to trade and financial flows between nations. The United States and France have already openly discussed the possibility of placing tariffs on carbon-intensive imports from countries seen to be failing to do their share. Such tariffs would likely be implemented unevenly, creating further international friction and possible retaliation.

Faced with these serious challenges it might seem logical for countries to renew attempts to secure a deal in Mexico that builds on the Kyoto Protocol and the twin-track negotiating process begun in Bali in 2007. But the problems with these institutions create political impediments to a deal that are not likely simply to disappear.

A degree of pragmatism is therefore required when assessing the Copenhagen Accord. It is still possible that the agreement, combined with more progress on key issues mentioned briefly in its text %26ndash; avoiding deforestation, providing finance for low-carbon development and adaptation in the developing world and monitoring efforts to reduce emissions %26ndash; can form the basis of a new international architecture for dealing with climate change.

On the evidence of the past month, this architecture may well be messy, incomplete and inefficient. But it is still preferable to international anarchy. Climate change is a global challenge that cannot be dealt with by nations acting in isolation. At this particularly difficult moment, we should welcome any moves towards international cooperation and recognition of interdependence.

Tan Copsey is development manager at chinadialogue.

Homepage image by Tattooed JJ

Last August, dozens of cars filed out of a gated housing compound in a northern Beijing suburb and paraded through the surrounding streets. Slogans plastered on the vehicles read: %26ldquo;Resolutely oppose garbage incineration.%26rdquo; Just a few days before, the protesters found out that the government had decided to build a waste-to-power plant at A Su Wei three kilometres west of their homes.

Both sides of the debate over China%26rsquo;s rubbish incinerators %26ndash; discussed previously on chinadialogue by Ma Jun (see %26ldquo;Solving the incinerator uproar%26rdquo;) %26ndash; agree that sorting and waste reduction have to feature much more prominently in garbage management, but many questions remain. Slashing the creation of waste is a goal that everyone can applaud. After that, the agreement breaks down. Some argue that thorough sorting and recycling can turn most trash into resources. Others say that the majority is unusable rubbish, and that burning waste for electricity is the best way to reduce the amount of solid waste.

Wei Panming, deputy director in charge of Beijing%26rsquo;s cityscape, said that the city%26rsquo;s garbage output will stop growing by 2015. The districts that exceed growth limits will see their waste-processing fees soar. %26ldquo;You can pay if you are rich,%26rdquo; he said, %26ldquo;or you can reduce the amount of your waste.%26rdquo; Beijing will build more waste-fired power plants, Wei added, and the city will do everything %26ldquo;to maximally protect the interests of neighboring residents.%26rdquo;

However, some city dwellers, such as those near A Su Wei, are not convinced. In addition to public demonstrations, the residents compiled a well-researched report arguing against garbage incineration and sent it to government officials and reporters. %26ldquo;We want to defeat incineration on the policy level,%26rdquo; said Bai Fuqin, a chief organiser of the protest, who asked to use an alias.

Burning trash out in the open or in small furnaces is a practice with a long history in China. In 1985, the southern city of Shenzhen built the country%26rsquo;s first garbage incinerator that converts the heat into electricity. Since then, the government implemented a series of policies, including tax credits and subsidies, to encourage waste-to-power projects. By the end of 2008, there were over 70 incinerators across China. The current number is not known, but certainly many more are in the planning stages.

But protests have spread with the incinerators. Last October, thousands of people blockaded a newly-built incinerator near Wujiang, a city on the eastern seaboard, and forced the government to halt its operation. In November, public demonstrations near the southern metropolis of Guangzhou saw the government delay a waste-to-power plant for further environmental study. In December, residents near Shenzhen, also in the south, protested the building of a third incinerator near their community.

Most public concern is about a family of toxic chemicals called dioxins, which can be generated through combustion. The toxins can damage human immune systems, as well as nervous systems. Some studies show chronic exposure to high levels of dioxins can dramatically increase the risk of cancer among humans. %26ldquo;I have a one-year-old child,%26rdquo; said Tan Sitong, another A Su Wei anti-incinerator activist, and who also uses an alias. %26ldquo;Taking in such toxins will have the most impact on him when he%26rsquo;s growing.%26rdquo;

Advocates for incineration say the public%26rsquo;s fear of dioxins is often based on misleading information from sensational media reports. Dioxins can be reduced to a level that is safe to human health, said Xu Haiyun, chief engineer at the China Research Society of Urban Development. %26ldquo;Technologically there%26rsquo;s no problem. There are many mature cases in the United States and Europe to prove that%26hellip; Taiwan and Macau also have successful examples.%26rdquo;

According to the World Health Organisation, there is a level of exposure to dioxins below which cancer risk would be negligible. China requires that incinerators discharge no more than one nanogram of dioxin per cubic metre. The European Union sets a standard that is one-tenth of that amount.

Beijing officials say that waste-to-power plants will be built according to EU standards.

But that does not placate incineration opponents. %26ldquo;So what if they can reach the EU benchmark?%26rdquo; asked Zhao Zhangyuan, a researcher on environmental protection at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has emerged as a leader of China%26rsquo;s anti-incineration movement. Dioxin can stay in the environment for hundreds of years and accumulate in human bodies, therefore, %26ldquo;no one can guarantee that the EU standard won%26rsquo;t be harmful to human health.%26rdquo; And to meet the requirement, %26ldquo;the prescribed procedure has to be strictly followed,%26rdquo; said Zhao. %26ldquo;But in our country, abnormal practices often happen in such a complicated operation.%26rdquo;

Certainly in a number of fields, there are documented examples of companies cutting corners and government officials turning their heads the other way. Even supporters of incineration admit that it is not enough just to import western technology.

Two-thirds of Beijing%26rsquo;s rubbish, said Wei Panming, the city planning official, is kitchen waste. That means the garbage is moist and generates less heat than other types of solid waste. To minimize dioxin, it is critical to keep the temperature in the incinerator above 850 degrees Celsius. Companies therefore often add coal or diesel for extra heat, which costs more and generates more greenhouse-gas emissions. Critics of incineration say there is no trusted body in China to make sure companies are doing the right thing.

The fierce debates on incineration have sometimes turned personal. Some supporters of incineration call Zhao a hoax. Opponents dub scholars like Xu %26ldquo;unscrupulous experts%26rdquo; bought off by business. %26ldquo;Their interests are connected,%26rdquo; said Bai, the activist at A Su Wei, referring to what he considers expert-industry collusion. %26ldquo;There%26rsquo;s no-one to counterbalance them other than the public. And the information available to the public bears no comparison to theirs.%26rdquo;

Public opposition makes it difficult for companies and investors to plan for the long term. %26ldquo;Those in the industry feel confused,%26rdquo; said Wen Yibo, CEO of Beijing Sound Group, which runs the A Su Wei garbage-processing facility. %26ldquo;The government hasn%26rsquo;t stood up and spoken about garbage incineration. Is waste-to-power good or bad? When problems arise, the government seems to be speechless.%26rdquo;

Each side of the debate is looking to the central government for support. Those in the pro-incineration camp are calling for more efforts in a propaganda campaign to inform and educate the public. The opposition wants the government to stop giving financial incentives to waste-fired power plants.

But so far, dramatic policy changes look unlikely. %26ldquo;Turning garbage into a resource and using it is a good thing for sure,%26rdquo; said Xue Huifeng, director of the legislative office of the National People%26rsquo;s Congress. At a Beijing conference on solid waste processing, he said problems surrounding incineration mostly come from the enforcement of the policies, rather than the policies themselves. He affirmed that the government will continue to support waste-to-power. %26ldquo;But I%26rsquo;m talking about giving support according to the law,%26rdquo; he said. %26ldquo;Companies that don%26rsquo;t follow the law certainly won%26rsquo;t receive support.%26rdquo;

That may explain why, at a recent meeting, Beijing officials told A Su Wei residents that they will %26ldquo;resolutely%26rdquo; continue pushing for the building of the incinerator. Hence the struggle continues. %26ldquo;You can talk about governing by law,%26rdquo; said Bai Fuqin. %26ldquo;We can fight for our rights by law.%26rdquo;

Xie Yanmei is a Beijing-based freelance reporter

Homepage image from longquanzs.com

On returning from the climate conference at Copenhagen, the Vanke Group chairman, Wang Shi, posted a picture of himself pushing an old bike through the streets of the city on his blog. On December 7, the head of the largest property company in China %26ndash; who climbs an 8,000-metre high mountain every year %26ndash; had joined a group of Chinese businessmen on a week-long cycling tour around the city, after which he announced the saving of 115 kilograms of carbon.

The trip was quickly branded a mere stunt. But Wang did not seem to mind, saying that, unlike actors, the businessmen were playing themselves and that he hoped to see more, and better, such events in the future. Afterwards, he and his companions made numerous appearances in the Chinese media, talking about Copenhagen and advocating low-carbon ideas.

On December 5, Wang and Feng Lun, chairman of Beijing Vantone Real Estate, were chosen to board the %26ldquo;Climate Express%26rdquo;, a special train from Brussels to Copenhagen organised by the United Nations Environment Program, the International Union of Railways and the World Wildlife Fund. Another group of %26ldquo;green entrepreneurs%26rdquo;, including Marjorie Yang, chairwoman of textile manufacturer Esquel Group; Zhang Yue, chairman of Broad Air-conditioning; Zhang Zaidong, chairman of Beijing Fengshang Real Estate; Song Jun, president of hotel and travel investment firm Beijing Jiuhan Tiancheng and Huang Ming, chairman of Himin Solar Energy Group travelled north from Germany with Lu Zhi, Peking University professor and head of the Shanshui Conservation Centre. They met with Deutsche Bank%26rsquo;s climate finance team in Frankfurt, visited Europe%26rsquo;s solar-power %26ldquo;capital%26rdquo;, Freiburg, and then joined the property group in Copenhagen.

This was the first time Chinese entrepreneurs had attended a UN climate-change conference as observers and a rare high-profile appearance at an international climate-change event. Hopes were high for these enlightened businessmen, both in China and overseas. So what did they actually do?

At a small ceremony to mark the start of the trip held at Beijing%26rsquo;s exclusive Chang%26rsquo;an Club, they said they wanted to put forward the Chinese business world%26rsquo;s stance on climate change, and learn about the business risks and opportunities it will bring. On December 8, they set out this stance at their first appearance in Copenhagen. This took place away from the Bella Center, the main conference facility, at the five-star Radisson hotel, where Chinese premier Wen Jiabao would later stay. Unfortunately very few foreign reporters were present and almost all the attendees were Chinese. So why, those present wondered, couldn%26rsquo;t they just have held the press conference in China?

On December 11, these business leaders were not present at the Business Day event, hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBSCD) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).

The WBCSD has 200 members, including Shell, Duke Energy, E.ON, BP and Rio Tinto. At Copenhagen the WBCSD advocated a global carbon market and a voluntary industrial code, covering industry, agricultural oil use, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage. The ICC, a similar organisation whose members include several major polluters such as Areva, Exxon Mobil and Vattenfall, continued to tell political leaders that business is part of the solution and that economic growth and free trade should be given priority.

The reason the Chinese group was absent was simpler than many thought. The head of the delegation, Wang Shi, had already left Copenhagen due to a prior engagement and the other members, for the most part having poor English and little experience of international events, were not too keen to attend %26ndash; and so they didn%26rsquo;t.

As head of one of the world%26rsquo;s largest property firms, Wang Shi was undoubtedly the most prominent member of the delegation. In 2007, Vanke started to use reusable steel frames in buildings, rather than the traditional wood. Over the past three years, this method has been applied to 600,000 square metres of building space and, after Copenhagen, Wang set a new target of two million square metres. His ambitions do not stop there, however. Wang wants to lead China%26rsquo;s property sector in making a contribution of more than 10% to China%26rsquo;s 2020 emissions target.

Wang told all of this to the Wall Street Journal and Daily Telegraph newspapers while he was on the Climate Express, to widespread acclaim. And so his early departure, to a certain extent, reduced the voice of Chinese business at Copenhagen. More disappointing was the fact that, although the Business Day was on the agenda provided at the pre-departure press conference and was widely reported in both Chinese and western media, not a single Chinese businessperson was seen at the actual event.

However, the Business Day, which brought together chief executives of giant multinationals, was also lacking attendees from South Africa, Brazil and India. Moreover, those who did attend did not gain much. As Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change told them, the negotiations going on at the Bella Center were inter-governmental and the participants temporarily had to put business to one side.

The delegation was more influenced by events not on the agenda; namely, the civil society activities they attended as private individuals, such as marches organised by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Song Jun of the Jiuhan Tiancheng, commented that the range of protests by NGO members gave him more to think about than the disorganised negotiations and dull reports and made him more determined than ever to keep his business on a green path. This entrepeneur, often criticised for being too idealistic, has always tried to persuade more people to accept traditional Chinese ideas of conservation, calling for a limit on human demands rather than technical solutions to environmental and climate issues.

In 2002, Song started investing in the Moonlight Lake eco-tourism project in the deserts of Inner Mongolia, in northern China. But it is hard to stick to environmental ideals in today%26rsquo;s China and he has suffered a number of financial setbacks, only making a profit after five or six years. Next he plans to implement his new grasslands conservation plan in Xilin Gol, which aims to bring back herders forced to leave by environmental problems. The plan won support from Wang Shi and Zhang Zaidong at Copenhagen %26ndash; perhaps the most concrete result Song got from the summit.

Regardless, many people were left disappointed by the performance of these entrepreneurs at Copenhagen. Like the Chinese government, the Chinese business world has, over the last few years, been striving to improve communications and keep up with the global response to climate change and environmental protection. But getting that message across fully and accurately still needs work.

However, some are doing better than others. The story of how Zhang Yue of Broad Air-conditioning gave up his private jet is well known. And Broad’s non-electric air-conditioners were the focus of the only corporate case study in a report presented to G8 leaders by former UK prime minister Tony Blair in 2008. Zhang came and went at Copenhagen, clutching his own document, Measures to Reduce CO2 Emissions. He believes that there is huge potential for emissions reductions to be made by the Chinese public, though nobody knows how he has worked this out.

Many are also familiar with the story of Huang Ming%26rsquo;s solar empire and he was one of the delegation%26rsquo;s most active speakers. He also organised a football match to urge countries not to pass the buck on climate change and, on returning to China, called for COP18, the UN-sponsored climate summit scheduled for 2012, to be held in China. Shi Zhengrong of solar firm Suntech Power is even better known internationally. In May 2009, he was the only Chinese entrepreneur from the private sector to appear at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen. Unfortunately he was not able to be present at COP15.

But, for these business personalities, whether they come across well or badly is not the important thing. Wang Shi, Zhang Yue and Song Jun are more concerned about the weak message sent out by Copenhagen. Without a clear, strong and long signal, it is hard for businesses to make investment decisions %26ndash; even for these pioneers who have not hestitated in going with the green flow.

Feng Jie is a journalist at Southern Weekend and was formerly a reporter at the China Economic Herald.

Homepage image from hudong.com shows (left to right) Song Jun, Feng Lun, Wang Shi, Zhang Yue and Zhang Zaidong.

On Commander Ebi%26rsquo;s baseball cap, the logo reads: %26ldquo;Alaska%26rdquo;. Little else connects the 42-year-old %26ndash; who has spent the past five years in a militant camp deep in the tropical creeks of the Niger Delta %26ndash; with the prosperity and polar bears of the northernmost US state.

Except, that is, for oil. But while petroleum has made Alaskans among the wealthiest people in the world%26rsquo;s wealthiest country, Nigeria%26rsquo;s oil province %26ndash; on which the United States depends for nearly one in every 10 barrels of crude it imports %26ndash; has known little but conflict, corruption and misery in the half-century since the first barrel was shipped.

Yet Nigeria%26rsquo;s rulers are hoping a new policy to deliver the benefits of oil to the local population %26ndash; as Alaska does with its pioneering approach of distributing petrodollars in cash to citizens %26ndash; might help placate an insurgency that has cut production by as much as 40%.

That puts them at the frontier of new ideas for solving the problems that oil brings. %26ldquo;Countries that have managed natural resources well are those with powerful constituencies that can stop the government from feeding at the trough [of oil money],%26rdquo; says Todd Moss from the Washington-based Center for Global Development and an advocate of cash distributions. He favours Alaska-style pay-outs, which he says %26ldquo;are a way to manufacture such a constituency%26rdquo;.

Where civil society or non-resource business is weak, Moss points out, natural resources do not put a country on a fast track to development. %26ldquo;Look at Nigeria %26ndash; [US]$300 billion [in oil revenues] over the past three decades, but the average Nigerian has got poorer.%26rdquo;

So thoroughly has crude corroded the contract between government and citizens that most of Nigeria%26rsquo;s 150 million people regard the state more as predator than benefactor. In the delta, thousands of jobless young men extort, kidnap and blow up pipelines under the banner of resistance to a state that has failed them, and oil companies that have despoiled their lands.

A recent amnesty has lured them to surrender their arms for the present. Under government proposals designed to keep the delta from re-arming, the state would hand over 10% stakes in the joint ventures that run Nigeria%26rsquo;s biggest energy industry to %26ldquo;host communities%26rdquo;.

While the proposals could face stiff opposition from elsewhere in the country, they have been approved by ministers and a presidential implementation committee has been created, according to the architect of the plans, Emmanuel Egbogah, special adviser to president Umaru Yar%26rsquo;Adua on petroleum matters. The initiative, he says, is %26ldquo;revolutionary%26rdquo; and will mean that %26ldquo;every community %26ndash; whether blind or deaf or dumb, every citizen %26ndash; will say: %26lsquo;I own a part of this business.%26rsquo; %26rdquo;

Direct cash distributions are perhaps the most radical idea that has emerged from a decade-and-a-half-old movement to transform the way poor states manage their natural resources. That movement sprang from a growing realisation of a %26ldquo;paradox of plenty%26rdquo;: life in resource-rich countries often remains miserable.

Part of the reason is economic. Volatile commodity prices, and the built-in revenue bust inherent in depletable resources, complicate planning. Even in good times, resource economies can suffer from 1970s-style %26ldquo;Dutch disease%26rdquo;: the hard currency a country earns from its oil, gas or minerals distorts its economy, crowding out agriculture or manufacturing.

The other problem is political. States flush with resource revenues have a strong incentive for patronage and outright corruption. Entrepreneurship becomes an effort to %26ldquo;feed at the trough%26rdquo; in rent-seeking that at best fritters away productivity and at worst breaks down the rule of law.

There are exceptions. Norway, Botswana and Chile have harnessed oil, diamonds and copper for national development, giving hope that other countries too may succeed. In 2002 Tony Blair, then the British prime minister, announced the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), with dozens of governments, mining companies and oil groups pledging to declare payments and revenues. But neither such pledges, nor even the strictures of Washington%26rsquo;s multilateral institutions, can ensure countries keep to the straight and narrow.

Under fire from critics claiming resource extraction harmed the poor, the World Bank in 2000 placed conditions on financing an oil pipeline from Chad to the coast of Cameroon. It required that Chad%26rsquo;s royalties went into a special account rather than the national budget and that all payments were published. A share would be saved for future generations. Withdrawals had to go towards health, education or other social needs.

%26ldquo;It was a beautiful plan on paper %26ndash; but there was nothing to stop the government from reneging on the deal,%26rdquo; says Moss. Chad soon diverted money to military spending. In 2008 the World Bank withdrew from the project. Still, an international consensus emerged on policy for commodity-dependent countries: channel revenues into funds to insulate national budgets; increase transparency of payments; include checks and balances in spending.

Yet not even countries that have adopted such policies may succeed where Chad failed. East Timor%26rsquo;s government raided its savings fund by withdrawing more than the prescribed maximum. Such cases suggest the standard recipe is not enough to end the cycle of corruption. Advocates say only giving the people a direct stake in the resources will mend the bond between state and citizens.

%26ldquo;If every citizen [of Chad] had been entitled to cash payments … the political dynamic would have been very different,%26rdquo; says Moss. %26ldquo;Cash distribution is complementary to transparency efforts; in fact, it would help. If the amount paid out to citizens is different from what the government receives from oil companies, or if this year%26rsquo;s distribution is $52 while last year%26rsquo;s was $58, the government would have to explain that to people.%26rdquo;

The idea is gaining interest. When she was in the US Senate, Hillary Clinton, now secretary of state, sponsored a resolution recommending that Iraq set up a trust fund to distribute part of its oil revenues to the people. Presidential candidates in Iran and Venezuela have mooted the idea too, as has Muammar Gaddafi, Libya%26rsquo;s leader. According to proponents, the scheme could make about US$555 million annually available %26ndash; about $20 a year for every man, woman and child of the delta%26rsquo;s 28 million people, a significant amount in a region where 70% live on less than $1.50 a day.

Nigeria%26rsquo;s oil producing states already receive an extra slice of oil proceeds %26ndash; but much of the money vanishes. Dimieari Von Kemedi, an activist recently drafted into the government of oil-rich Bayelsa state, says his audit of state finances found contracts had been inflated to the tune of 17 billion naira (US$114 million).

Whether the new scheme can avoid such problems is critical to its success. %26ldquo;It will not be like the Alaskan case, when each individual gets his money,%26rdquo; Egbogah says. The intended option is a system of trust funds administered at the behest of each community %26ndash; bypassing the delta%26rsquo;s state and local governments.

By receiving a share in the proceeds of an oil industry they have long resented, delta dwellers would have an incentive to facilitate production, Egbogah reasons. But even so, critics warn that trusts risk replicating what they say is oil companies%26rsquo; practice of allocating funds to some communities in order to safeguard their own facilities, generating resentment in less favoured settlements.

A heated debate one recent morning in the royal hut of the Edagberi clan suggests the tensions that could emerge. %26ldquo;Some communities, they only have a pipeline or access road,%26rdquo; says Anigbo Williams, 52, chief of one of the clan%26rsquo;s six communities. %26ldquo;If you give him with his one well [a payment] and come and give me with 44 wells the same, you have a problem: we will feel we have been cheated.%26rdquo;

The proposals come at a critical moment not just for the delta. Tensions and a sense of paralysis are mounting with each day that the ailing Yar%26rsquo;Adua remains in the Saudi hospital to which he was rushed in November. The government is in the thick of oil industry reforms. It wants to incorporate the state oil company %26ndash; long regarded as a vessel of patronage %26ndash; and formalise loose joint ventures.

Oil companies are fighting tougher terms and negotiating renewals of 40-year leases on prime oil blocks. Adding the 10% plan into the mix heightens what was already a sense of make or break ahead of elections due in 2011.

All the while, the delta holds its breath. %26ldquo;It is left to [the government] to do something that will be favourable to each and every one of us in this part of the country,%26rdquo; says the Alaska-capped Ebi. But he warns that a badly executed plan would have harsh consequences, bringing new vigour to the guerrilla campaign to disrupt oil production. %26ldquo;If we are not developed, we will bounce back to the creeks. We are not afraid.%26rdquo;

Delta proposals

Can the centre hold together an oil fund handout?

The title of Nigeria%26rsquo;s most famous novel, Chinua Achebe%26rsquo;s Things Fall Apart, hangs like a perpetual warning over a country of 150 million disparate people stitched together under British rule, writes Tom Burgis. Predictions of imminent unravelling are often alarmist but the tension %26ndash; broadly between the mainly Muslim north and mainly Christian south %26ndash; is real, particularly over the distribution of oil wealth.

Another rift between the 28 million people of the crude-producing Niger delta and the rest has been sharpened by proposals to grant delta residents 10% stakes in oil ventures, to be taken from the national oil company%26rsquo;s holdings.

The proposals%26rsquo; architects hope to give people who have long resented the oil industry an incentive to support it. Others fear that acknowledging the delta%26rsquo;s rights to %26ldquo;ownership%26rdquo; could increase discord. After a string of initiatives to placate the volatile region, one northern legislator speaks for many when he says the delta has already been offered %26ldquo;too many carrots%26rdquo;. To which many Ijaw, the delta%26rsquo;s biggest ethnic group, retort: give us our due or let us go our own way.

When civil war broke out in 1967, the central government, terrified of losing the delta%26rsquo;s newly drilled oilfields to secessionists, declared all natural resources state property. Today, however, the delta oil-producing states, where poverty is often less acute than in the north, receive 13% of oil proceeds before the remainder is shared out among all 36 states. Once the proceeds of a multibillion-dollar trade in stolen crude are included, the delta looks awash with cash. But, with graft and mismanagement, little reaches its inhabitants, even if oil spills do.

Nonetheless, delta leaders demand that the extra share is raised to 50%, arguing that the same principle could be applied to the barely exploited natural resources of other regions.

Privately, at least one minister expresses willingness to concede to delta demands if it would end militant attacks on the oil industry. The proposals%26rsquo; authors calculate that, with a restructuring of the national oil company, the treasury would lose only about 2% of oil revenues.

Yet striking such a bargain would be delicate %26ndash; especially for president Umaru Yar%26rsquo;Adua, who draws much of his political capital from his northern home city. By diverting oil revenues directly to deltans, he might break the hold of militant commanders. But by bypassing the state authorities, he risks alienating the delta barons of the ruling party ahead of 2011 elections. Everyone else will be left to ponder whether there is more prising them apart than holding them together.

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Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010

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