GO GREEN!China starts showing signs of turning
green
By HISANE MASAKI
Staff writer
Is China -- a demographic and potentially economic leviathan --
getting serious about international cooperation to protect the
environment after more than two decades of putting development
first?
Yes, maybe.
Acting on China's initiative, environmental ministers from Asian and
European countries, including Japan's Yoriko Kawaguchi, will get
together in Beijing later this week.
It will be the first meeting of environmental chiefs of the
Asia-Europe Meeting -- a fledging cooperation forum of 25
countries from the two regions -- although ASEM has convened
meetings of top leaders and of foreign, economic and financial
ministers.
The Beijing conference will focus on cooperation between Asia and
Europe on a wide range of environmental issues, including global
warming, ahead of the World Summit on Sustainable Development,
which is scheduled to be held in Johannesburg from late August
through early September.
"We welcome the initiative China took to convene the ASEM
environmental ministers' meeting," a Japanese government official
said, requesting anonymity. "This is proof that China is becoming
interested in international cooperation in the fight against
environmental problems."
But the question remains: How far will the world's most populous
and increasingly ascendant global economic power be willing to go
in addressing environmental concerns, especially global warming,
when the price may be the slowing of the pace of its development?
China, which relies heavily on coal for energy, is by far the largest
producer of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas blamed for
the global warming, in the developing world.
After the United States, China is the second largest carbon-dioxide
emitter in the entire world, followed by Russia and Japan. The U.S.
and China alone account for more than one-third of all carbon
dioxide emissions around the globe.
At the third conference of parties to the 1992 United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP3, in Kyoto in
December 1997, signatory countries adopted a protocol imposing
legally binding requirements for industrialized countries alone to cut
their greenhouse gas emissions. The convention was signed at the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
At COP7 in Marrakech, Morocco, in November, the convention
signatory countries worked out specific rules for implementing the
Kyoto Protocol, paving the way for industrialized countries to ratify
the document.
Japan and the 15-nation European Union will ratify the Kyoto
Protocol before the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, despite the United States' refusal to ratify the
protocol under the administration of President George W. Bush.
The Bush administration has claimed that the Kyoto Protocol is
fatally "flawed" because it would hurt the U.S. economy and also
because it inequitably imposes no greenhouse gas-reduction
obligations on developing countries such as China.
Although Japan has decided to ratify the Kyoto Protocol during a
150-day ordinary Diet session convening Monday, it still hopes the
U.S. will ratify the protocol soon.
At COP7, Japan went so far as to propose beginning discussions
at COP8 this autumn about possible greenhouse-gas reduction
targets for developing countries, in hopes of paving the way for the
U.S to join other industrialized countries in ratifying the Kyoto
Protocol.
But the proposal was adamantly rejected by most developing
countries, which insist that the industrialized world is primarily to
blame for the global warming.
"We hope that China will become willing to participate in efforts to
cut back on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases," another Japanese government official said, asking for
anonymity. "If the leading country in the developing world does so,
it will encourage other developing countries to follow suit."
The Japan Times: Jan. 14, 2002