China and India and The New Climate Regime: The Emergence of a New Paradigm
| Author | Bo Wang,Mukul Sanwal |
| Published date | 01 November 2015 |
| Date | 01 November 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12297 |
China and India and The New Climate
Regime: The Emergence of a New Paradigm
Mukul Sanwal
United Nations 1993–2008
Bo Wang
University of International Business and Economics, Beijing
Faced with global ecological limits a new era of interna-
tional cooperation is emerging. Will the climate regime
also move beyond the North–South framework to discuss
practical solutions and not just emissions reduction?
China and India have made climate change an integral
part of their transformation opening up possibilities for
new forms of international cooperation that are not
based on the 20-year-old climate convention. At the mul-
tilateral level, too, there are signs of a movement away
from the narrow focus on ‘environmental risk manage-
ment’to ‘economic growth within ecological limits’and
‘national security’. The global trends, related transforma-
tion underway in China and India, consequential re-shap-
ing of their climate policy and the combined impact of
these developments on the international negotiations
suggest the possibility of a meaningful consensus on
dealing with climate change; the question is whether it
will remain centred on the new climate regime.
The changed context
At the global level urban areas are now responsible for
nearly three-quarters of all emissions and final energy
consumption, and three-quarter of the human population
is expected to be in cities in 2050. The policy focus is
shifting from production patterns, or the transformation
of natural resources, to consumption patterns, or the
goods and services on which human wellbeing depends
in cities. It has been estimated that currently three ‘basic’
human needs –housing, food, mobility –directly
account for 80 per cent of resource use, 60 per cent of
household spending, 40 per cent of energy demand and
36 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions; nearly two-fifths
of the cumulative emission reductions required by 2050
could come from efficiency improvements, making
energy efficiency essentially a fuel (IEA, 2014a). Respond-
ing to this trend social sciences are reframing climate
and global environmental change from a physical into a
social problem (ICSSC/UNESCO, 2013). Social scientists
have also stressed the need to frame the Sustainable
Development Goals within a global meta-goal of a ‘pros-
perous, high quality of life that is equitably shared and
sustainable’(ICSU/ICSSC, 2015). The stress is now on
transforming key systems such as the transport, energy,
housing and food systems as they lie at the heart of
long-term remedies (EEA, 2015).
The global challenge is to develop a broad consensus
on what kind of urbanization will nurture sustainable
growth (IEA, 2014, Sept; Clos, 2015) as projections sug-
gest that urban demand for natural resources can be
reduced by up to 50 per cent by 2050 without affecting
wellbeing (University of Cambridge and ICLEI, 2014).
However, there is no model for sustainable cities; for
example, two-thirds of the emissions in the US come
from buildings and transport while only half of Japanese
emissions come from these sectors (WRI, 2014).
The world has also changed in ways other than urban-
ization since the climate treaty was negotiated. China has
overtaken the US in 2014 to become the largest economy
in purchasing-power-parity (PPP) terms and India has the
potential to do so by 2050 (PwC, 2015); two-thirds of
future global growth is going to take place in Asia (OECD,
2012). In 2014, China saw greater generation of electricity
from renewable sources, such as hydropower, solar and
wind and less burning of coal decoupling economic
growth from greenhouse gas emissions (IEA, 2015). China
has also announced the establishment of a China South–
South Climate Cooperation Fund
1
.
The third major global trend is the ageing and decline
of the human population, impacting on the trajectory of
emissions of CO
2
of more than half the world by 2050
and the population of Europe, Japan and Russia will also
shrink by one-fifth. This trend is extending to China
reaching the equivalent of nearly 450 million or about
one-quarter of the world’s elderly in 2050. China is also
projected to add only 25 million by 2050, compared with
80 million in the US (McKinsey Global Institute, 2015).
The demographic transition supports China’s aim to cap
Global Policy (2015) 6:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12297 ©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 6 . Issue 4 . November 2015 517
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