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US-China cooperation fails-China shifts responsibility
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US-China cooperation fails-China shifts responsibilityLieberthal and Sandalow 9 (Kenneth Lieberthal Visiting Fellow, The Brookings Institution Professor, University of Michigan, David Sandalow Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution January 2009 “Overcoming Obstacles to U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change” HY) China’s rise has been so rapid since the turn of the century that there is great attention both in Beijing and abroad to the way China is positioning itself on major international issues. China’s leaders seek to be seen as constructive international players, protecting China’s own interests while also reducing international instability, enhancing prosperity, and contributing to the capacity of the international system to manage the global issues of the 21st century. This mix of goals makes the Chinese leadership both desirous of contributing to progress on the climate change issue and wary about obligations that might negatively impact China’s own growth prospects. China positions itself as a developing country in international relations. As noted above, while retaining some merit, this positioning does not nearly capture the full reality of the PRC, which both confronts the problems of developing countries and has many of the attributes of an industrialized nation. China is now in a somewhat uncomfortable transition period, where the balance is shifting toward more explicit acceptance of its rights and obligations as a major power but where the most comfortable and internationally acceptable posture is not yet clear. This situation complicates China’s role during 2009 in addressing the global economic crisis, and it also has a complicating effect on China’s posture in climate change negotiations leading to Copenhagen and beyond. China is a leader in articulating the three major framework issues that developing countries in general raise with the advanced industrial countries on climate change obligations. These are Countries should be held responsible not only for their current emissions but also for their cumulative historical emissions, given that greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere over many decades. • Metrics should not focus on total national emissions and neglect to account for per capita emissions in densely populated countries. • Developed countries have already gone through high emissions stages of development (such as building out their infrastructure), while developing countries still have much of this work to do. International agreements should recognize this fundamental reality. The above three issues have the intended effect of placing the major burden for global warming and its mitigation on the industrialized countries and of laying down a conceptual framework to permit ongoing increases in greenhouse gas emissions by developing countries even as industrialized countries assume cap and reduction obligations. China specifically points to provisions in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, reaffirmed in the 2007 Bali Roadmap, which obligate advanced industrial countries to aid the transfer of pertinent technologies and to provide financial support to developing countries to meet their climate obligations. The current international economic malaise makes the demand for financial support likely to be politically more difficult to achieve. Download 357.18 Kb. Share with your friends:
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