China not to undertake quantitative task for reducing greenhouse gas emission: official
4/6/2007 16:01
Not undertaking quantitative task for reducing greenhouse gas emission
does not mean China won't undertake GHG mitigation obligation, China's top
economic planner Ma Kai said at a press conference in Beijing today.
China
should not take the traditional industrialization path with high emission and
high energy consumption. It should blaze a new road of fast and efficient
economic growth in concert with low resources consumption and low waste
discharge, said Ma, minister in charge of the National Development and Reform
Commission.
"This process itself will be part of China's contribution to the
world's sustainable development and to worldwide efforts to address climate
changes," he said.
Ma said climate changes have attracted increasing
attention from the international community, which has reached consensus on the
following facts:
-- Global warming is an indisputable fact.
-- Global
warming has brought about serious results to natural ecological environment as
well as to the environment for human survival and development.
-- Apart from
natural factors, global warming has been resulted from human activities,
particularly the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which account for 65
percent of carbon dioxide emission worldwide.
-- Climatic problems have no
boundaries. Global warming is a common challenge facing the human being, which
needs the joint efforts of international community.
"The Chinese government
has always attached importance to climate changes and always been willing to
cooperate with the international community in easing global warming," the
minister said.
Talking about whether a developing nation should undertake
quantitative task for GHG mitigation, Ma said it is necessary to properly
understand the essence of the climatic change issue.
He quoted Chinese
President Hu Jintao's judgement made at a G8+5 meeting held the year before last
year. Hu said climate change was a problem of environment and a problem of
development at the same time.
Ma said the climatic change issue cropped up in
the process of development and should be addressed through development, citing
the indisputable fact that developed nations discharged unlimited greenhouse
gas, mainly carbon dioxide, during their industrialization process.
The
developed nations accounted for 95 percent of carbon dioxide emission worldwide
resulting from the use of fossil fuels from the start of the Industrial
Revolution to 1955, and for 77 percent in the 1950-2000 period, Ma quoted
statistical data.
Therefore, the minister said, developed nations are
inescapably liable for climate changes and should take major
obligations.
"They are under an obligation to provide financial and
technological support for developing nations in their efforts against climate
changes," Ma said.
As for developing nations, they recorded less accumulative
amount of GHG discharge and low per-capita emission, their priorities are
economic development and poverty relief, according to Ma.
While addressing
the climatic change issue, the international community should take into full
consideration developing nations' right and space to develop.
"We think if
facts, historical accountability and different nations in different stages of
development are ignored and climatic problems are taken as an excuse in
improperly requiring developing countries to take on GHG mitigation obligations
as their developed peers do, it is not objective and unfair, as the requirement
may restrict the industrialization and development of developing nations," Ma
said.
According to China's National Climate Change Program issued today,
China will likely mitigate carbon dioxide emission by approximately 50 million
tons by 2010 through the development of hydro power projects. Another 110
million tons of the greenhouse gas will not be discharged by eliminating small
thermal power projects.
Meanwhile, bio-energy projects will help reduce GHG
emission by 30 million tons by 2010, and wind, solar, marine and terrestrial
heat projects help slash such gas emission by 60 million
tons.
Xinhua
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