Climate Change as a New Challenge to Environmental Governance in China

Abstract

The debate on a post-2012 Kyoto regime depends to a large extent on the question of how to include developing countries into the global endeavor to cut GHG emissions. The use of the CDM has been a first step in raising revenues and capacity for GHG emission reductions in developing countries. Demands for a more stringent inclusion of developing countries in the world’s efforts to combat climate change have become louder — the US has virtually made its participation in any successor to the Kyoto Protocol conditional on the inclusion of large GHG emitters such as China and India. From the perspective of most developing countries, the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ ensures them the right to develop first, while it puts the main responsibility for cutting emissions on industrialized countries. But if developing countries realize their ambitious economic growth targets and their legitimate achievement of comparable living standards to those in the West without a restructuring of the energy system, there will be no possibility of mitigating climate change. Instead, various factors will conspire to produce a gloomy picture: pressure on natural resources, together with high population densities in an already deteriorated environment, will exacerbate the negative impacts of climate change, which will in turn undermine the development capacities of developing countries. Not surprisingly, China is one of the crucial players in the worldwide race to arrest global warming. The following section will highlight why not only China’s high GHG emissions but also its weak environmental governance pose a serious challenge to any international regime to combat climate change.