West exporting emissions to China
Carbon Positive, 8 August 2008
One third of China’s greenhouse gas emissions can be sheeted home to exports, increasingly advanced consumer goods going to developed countries, according to a US study.
The findings bring a new perspective to the international debate over emission targets and burden sharing as the UN struggles to strike a new global accord to succeed the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Economic researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania have for the first time come up with a fully quantified measure of China’s export-related emissions using standard money flow models and official China emissions data. The team, led by Christopher Weber, found that in 2005, China emitted 1.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases from its export-related sectors, 33 per cent of the national total. This up from an estimated 12 per cent of total emissions in 1987.
The study highlights a shortcoming of the current international approach of setting emissions targets on a nation-by-nation basis, and at the point of production rather than consumption, amidst increasing globalisation of the world economy.
As manufacturing industries and their jobs shift from high-wage developed economies to low-wage developing economies, and more and more goods and services flow the other way, national emissions targets have less meaning. It becomes easier for Western countries’ to slow the growth in their emissions and meet their targets at the expense of developing countries - in effect, exporting their emissions.
Fast-industrialising China and India currently lead resistance to firm targets for emissions reductions being imposed on developing countries, arguing that this would impair their efforts to lift living standards for their people. They have already used their export profile to argue against such targets and this study will only add weight to their case. Already, negotiations for a new climate treaty have been in stalemate for the past three years and the deadline for their completion is now less than 18 months away.
Weber says the study findings raise “a million dollar question” over whether climate policies should be re-oriented to account for developed world liability for developing world emissions. “Whoever is responsible for these emissions, China's rapidly expanding infrastructure and inefficient coal-powered electricity system need urgent attention,” the study authors say.
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