From Asian Perspective:
Abstract: This paper demonstrates that prospects for emission reduction are not realistic under the current policy environment and we argue in this paper that China is unlikely to take on commitments in the near future. We analyse the major determinants of China’s climate change policy, relating these to China’s stance in global climate change negotiations. The article discusses the main actors involved, and how their dominance influences China’s climate change policy. Energy is seen as the key to economic development and is one of the main causes for China’s unwillingness to take on emission reduction commitments. Vulnerability to climate change is an emerging issue in China, and could contribute to elevating the climate change issue on China’s domestic agenda in the future. Global climate change is still seen as a remote matter by the country’s policymakers, and remains a foreign policy issue. China is an active participant in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which has become a way to apply an international mechanism on domestic problems and one of the channels that China itself prefers to use in its climate change efforts. [Full Text]
G√∏rild Merethe Heggelund is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of Global Programme at Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway.
