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China unveils action plan to address climate change

Pallavi Aiyar

Beijing says it will not sacrifice growth

Beijing: China on Monday released its first national strategy to combat global warming, promising to make strong efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but reiterated its belief that the main onus of tackling climate change rests with the developed world. It also made clear that it would not sacrifice economic growth to satisfy international demands to help curb emissions.

The 62-page document released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's economic planning agency, is more of a broad outline of the country's policy intentions rather than a detailed roadmap of specific targets.

It does, however, list the steps China will take to meet its previously announced goal of boosting its 2005-level of energy efficiency by 20 per cent before the end of this decade.

These steps include promoting the adoption of new energy-saving technologies and the planting of more trees.

The plan promises "to integrate climate change policy into other interrelated policies." It also reaffirms China's commitment to increasing the percentage of renewables in the country's energy mix to 10 per cent by 2010 up from the present seven per cent.

China currently relies on coal to meet almost two-thirds of its energy needs and is projected to overtake the United States as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases within the next two years. The head of the NDRC, Ma Kai, however, stressed that Beijing rejected mandatory caps on emissions and saw the redressal of climate change as primarily a duty of the rich, industrialised countries.

He said that global warming had been caused, for the most part, as a result of 200 years of unrestrained industrialisation by the West. Mandatory caps on developing countries, Mr. Ma said, would "hinder the development of developing countries and hamper their industrialisation."

The report also stated that for China, the "first and overriding concern" was "economic and social development and poverty eradication."

China's national strategy on global warming is the first such national programme announced by a developing country. It comes days before Chinese President Hu Jintao attends an expanded summit of the Group of Eight (G8) nations in Germany where climate change is expected to be one of the main foci of discussion.

Global warming had, in fact, been in the international limelight all year.

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