E3G

Climate Change: Australian drought and Chinese engagement

By Quentin de Molliens

E3G Founding Director John Ashton was recently in China in his role as special representative for climate change of the UK Foreign and the Commonwealth office. While in Beijing, John Ashton was interviewed by Reuters covering the topics of the drought in Australia and the diplomatic challenge of engaging China in global efforts to tackle climate change.

Australian Drought
Commenting on the news that unless heavy rain falls soon, Australia may have to cease irrigation of land providing one third of its agricultural production, John Ashton said:

If that happens, that is not just an economic blow to Australia, it will do significant damage beyond Australia because of its effect on world food prices… That is a current threat which almost certainly, or at least very probably, arises from human-induced climate change”.

Leadership for climate change
The interview then turned to the leadership efforts of the international community, especially rich countries, which have to engage themselves more deeply to take the lead to curb emissions growth:

It’s right that we should lead the effort,” he said. “Most of the excess burden of emissions which is in the atmosphere at the moment is the result of (industrial nations’) development”.

Furthermore, the developed world’s ability to lead confers a responsibility to do so:

We have more of the capital, more of the innovative capacity, more of the capacity to shield ourselves from some of the worst consequences of climate change”.

One way in which this could be driven forward will be through supporting the take-up of clean energy technologies worldwide:

The successor to Kyoto should massively expand the Clean Development Mechanism, a system that allows developed world polluters to fund emissions cuts in poorer countries and put them towards their own quotas”.

The diplomatic task: engaging China in the solution
As China is becoming the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, the international community is under pressure to respond to global warming and succeed with a new post-Kyoto effort.

Nevertheless, John Ashton indicated that putting direct pressure on China to reduce emissions without taking into account their need to grow their economy would be counter productive, saying:

I think a much more productive conversation with China is how we can help them build an alignment between energy security and climate security”.

In the face of rising temperatures and an increased awareness of threats to food supplies; Ashton indicated that he had seen a change in the receptiveness of Chinese leaders to discuss future climate change plans.

Even since last year...it is on the agenda of a much wider range of people including people in leadership positions who until pretty recently would have been pretty difficult to engage on climate change”.