A report released this week helps dispel the notion that developing countries are not contributing in the fight against climate change, and suggests ways in which doing more can help rather than harm their development.
Brazil, China, India, and South Africa are featured in the report as examples of countries with varying degrees of emission-reducing measures incorporated into national policies and practices. In his foreword to the report, former president of Brazil and current World Resources Institute (WRI) board member Fernando Henrique Cardoso notes that the greatest responsibility for preventing dangerous climate change still rests with industrialized countries.
Nevertheless, he argues, "If we want to avoid a global catastrophe, developing countries will have to find development paths that avoid huge greenhouse gas emissions."
WRI's Rob Bradley and Dr. Jonathan Pershing discussed Growing in the Greenhouse: Protecting the Climate by Putting Development First at a press conference here today during the UN climate talks. Representatives from more than 150 countries are here to determine how to structure the Kyoto Protocol after its first phase ends in 2012. Kyoto requires developed nations to cut their emissions of heat-trapping gases by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
"The climate science clearly tells us that developing-country participation in cutting emissions will be vital to avoiding dangerous climate change,�? Pershing said. "At the same time, these countries have pressing development needs, and are not yet ready to take on emission caps of the kind adopted by industrialized nations. What we need is a more innovative approach that both promotes development and reduces emissions."
Growing in the Greenhouse, a work involving eleven authors from both developed and developing countries, presents an approach known as Sustainable Development Policies and Measures (SD-PAMs). This focuses on how best to meet the development goals of developing countries, while finding low-emission development choices. The authors flesh out part of the great deal of work that needs to be done to implant SD-PAMs into the international policy framework.
Although higher levels of funding will be required for improvements in developing countries, integrating climate into broader development concerns may help increase the effectiveness of both development and climate spending. SD-PAMs offer the potential to promote economic development while reducing the long-standing tension between industrialized and developing nations surrounding climate-change goals and agreements.
To illustrate the SD-PAMs approach, the report presents four detailed policy studies from major developing countries: Brazil, China, India and South Africa.
Since the 1970s, Brazil has used ethanol from sugarcane as a partial substitute for gasoline. The decision to use ethanol was driven by concerns over oil imports and a desire to support sugar producers. The authors estimate that Brazil has saved $100 billion in external debt by avoided oil import and debt service costs. But the incidental impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been significant: an estimated saving of 574 million tons of CO2 over 30 years, or about 10 percent of the country's total emissions during that period.
"Climate change played no part in Brazil's decision to embrace biofuels," Bradley added. "But the climate has certainly benefited. Our authors suggest that some 20 other countries could benefit from the same strategy, which would further help reduce global emissions. The SD-PAMs approach aims to harness both the development and climate change advantages of such measures."
China's growing transport sector presents a more complex case. In urban areas in particular, the growth in car ownership and use is spectacular and has given rise to rapidly increasing GHG emissions. Although China itself has begun to implement policies, such as improved vehicle-efficiency standards, the sectors involved – especially the automobile sector – are global in scope. In such a case, concerted international action may prove more effective than a select number of countries acting individually.
In India, 56 percent of the households have no electricity supply, and the problem is growing worse as new connections fail to keep pace with population growth. Based on concerns raised about the grid and diesel technologies, there are significant reasons for India to prefer renewable energy on domestic policy grounds. The authors suggest that making India's electrification goals part of an international climate effort might successfully help to address the country's current high cost of renewable energy technologies.
South Africa, meanwhile, offers an example of the limitations of the SD-PAMs approach. Carbon capture and storage technology has the potential to cut emissions while expanding the public's badly needed access to electricity. It would be possible for donor countries to finance the future capture and storage of South African emissions, but this would mean a step change in the willingness of the international community to pay for climate protection.
While the concept of combining domestic and climate priorities is firmly embedded in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), existing climate agreements have not attempted to systematically foster the integration of climate change and development at the policy level.
The World Resources Institute (www.wri.org) is an independent, non-partisan and nonprofit organization with a staff of more than 100 scientists, economists, policy experts, business analysts, statistical analysts, mapmakers, and communicators developing and promoting policies that will help protect the Earth and improve people's lives.
