Enlightened self-interest

Last year, David Wheeler, a researcher at the Centre for Global Development in Washington, calculated that if nothing changed, by 2075 the combined greenhouse-gas emissions of India and China would equal all the historic and current emissions of the world’s richest countries. In other words, even if we could magic away the climate impacts of all the industrial revolutions that took place before 1990, it would make little difference. Absent a dramatic change in the way India and China do business, we would only postpone the day of reckoning by a few decades; come 2060, we would be back where we are now, scrambling around against the clock to avoid catastrophe.

It was a sobering piece of work, not least for India and China. In their public postures, both countries were sticking firmly to the Kyoto-based division of the world into Annex 1 countries—those that had grown rich on emitting carbon—and non-Annex 1 countries, roughly categorised as blameless victims. At Kyoto, Annex 1 countries accepted that their historic responsibility imposed on them the obligation both to reduce their own emissions and to fund developing countries’ adaptation to the impacts of climate change, and to a less damaging, if more expensive, path to prosperity.

When the Kyoto protocol was being negotiated in the early 1990s, India and China had hardly begun their dizzying development of the past two decades. The landmark moment, 18 months ago, when China overtook the US as the world’s biggest emitter of CO2, was barely imaginable then. Both nations had been grouped with other developing countries.



Until three years ago, climate change was not a subject in China’s public debate, despite the fact that by then the world’s most populous nation had had the biggest and fastest industrial revolution in history. That only changed when the Chinese leadership began to realise that its upcoming status as the world’s leading emitter could no longer be ignored. The leadership also had to deal with the fact that the economic model on which it had relied—of cheap, export-led manufacture with low added value—was running out of steam.

Expert witnesses were summoned from the country’s universities and academies to brief the leadership on what effects climate change could have on China’s future. Their message was stark: the prosperity that the Communist party had promised, and on which its continuing claim to the monopoly of political power depended, would be in jeopardy. The nation’s water supply was vulnerable; its food security could not be guaranteed; the newly-built cities of the eastern seaboard, glamorous beacons of 21st-century prosperity, would be flooded by rising seas; the south and east were vulnerable to tropical storms.

Beijing maintained its intransigent negotiating posture internationally, but at home the policy began to change. China would not give up its claim on the compensatory mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol, but the party understood that the smart move was towards the technologies of a carbon-constrained world. If the rich countries could still be induced to pay, all the better; but in any event, self-interest dictated that China make its own effort.

Once a taboo subject, climate change quickly became a compulsory citizenship class. The government directed funding toward energy efficiency and renewable power and instructed the state media to educate the public about the virtues of low-carbon growth. Coal remains the primary driver of the economy, but China now also has the world’s biggest solar and wind-power generation capacity.

Despite this quiet revolution, China remained the whipping boy for those in the US who saw a global climate deal as a foreign entanglement too far. For the many fans of Fox News and their political representatives, it is the Chinese who ate the American lunch and who threaten future US primacy. For them, the politics of climate change are a proxy for geopolitical rivalry with China: they will countenance no compromise on the right of every American to emit 20 tonnes of CO2 a year, unless China, with one-fifth of the per capita emissions and a fraction of the wealth, makes an equivalent sacrifice.

Yet if the concern here was really about the dangers of climate change, India could be seen as more of a problem. India’s development has been slower, which means its future needs are greater. And while Beijing understands that politics alone will not save the country from a changing climate, for India’s government, and much of its highly active civil society, talk of mitigation remains a conspiracy against the national interest.

For Shyam Saran, the Indian prime minister’s special envoy on climate change, the blame lies heavily—and indiscriminately—on the richest countries. (See Sam Knight’s analysis of the convoluted Copenhagen process, “Eleven Days in December” p3). Saran complained in August that developed countries had missed their targets and want to evade their commitments. Saran argued that they wish to force caps on the developing world and, instead of offering cash within a UN framework, they were invoking the World Bank and the market to finance poor counties’ adaptation; instead of sharing technologies, they offered only commercial licensing. Imperialism, in sum, was up to its old tricks.

This perception is widely shared in India. When the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, dared to agree in July that a temperature rise beyond 2°C was best avoided, Sunita Narain, a leading Indian environmentalist and a member of the prime minister’s council on climate change, was one of many who attacked him. The Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, has publicly argued that India’s water supplies are not really threatened by the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. On the surface, it seems that India continues in a state of belligerent denial.

Yet that is not entirely true. Like China, India has made a late rush towards a low-carbon future, announcing ambitious plans for solar energy and with further projects in development, including a national water strategy, plans for sustainable agriculture and replacing inefficient coal-fired power stations. Almost every evening in Delhi there are packed public meetings to discuss climate change, and Indian business is arguably far more effective than Chinese state enterprises in accounting for and reducing emissions.

So why this disparity between domestic action and negotiating posture? The economist, Nitin Desai, put it plainly: “The problem is that the climate negotiations are being conducted like a trade round. Everybody goes in holding their cards close to their chest, determined to give as little away as possible and to extract the maximum concessions from the opposition. That is what negotiators do.” There is no mechanism in the language of international negotiation that can transcend old habits.

In the closing weeks before Copenhagen, India has begun to signal a new flexibility—anxious, perhaps, to shed its obstructive image. China has announced that it will impose obligations on domestic industries to account for and reduce their emissions. These are serious offers that demand a serious response. But neither country believes that a strong deal at Copenhagen is likely. The consolation has to be that both understand that their own futures, like ours, are contingent on how well they execute their initiatives at home.