Global Insight Perspective

Significance

The official release of China's first National Climate Change Assessment that was due to take place this week has been delayed indefinitely.

Implications

There looks to be a lack of consensus regarding China's climate change strategy and, in the absence of a major public policy shift, China's commitment to economic development means that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will continue to grow virtually unabated.

Outlook

As and when the climate change action plan is actually released, little by way of change to "business as usual" should be expected. State authorities are unwilling to take concrete steps to address China's contribution to global warming in any meaningful form.

Shelved

It is perhaps fitting that in a week where the security issues surrounding climate change in Asia have received unprecedented attention, where the country's future economic development itself has been seen to be at risk through global warming, China has been unable to deliver on the long-awaited promise of a national policy on climate change. Originally due for official release on Monday (23 April), China's first-ever National Climate Change Assessment Report has now been delayed indefinitely.

So what happened? State officials have been tight-lipped about the circumstances surrounding the roll-out, but it has been offered that wide-ranging consultations on the report failed to deliver a clear endorsement. A few details have been picked up here and there by the international press since the weekend, and these shed some light on the matter. The report offers a description of climate change effects seen in China to date, along with those expected in the near term. These include the warning that by 2020, the average temperature in China will increase by between 1.1 and 2.1 degrees Celsius (°C), causing worsening droughts in northern China and extreme weather that will have grave effects on agricultural production sites and the country's coastal regions. The report goes on to outline the steps China should take to adapt to the threat posed, including making improvements to its agricultural infrastructure, enhancing water treatment systems, and developing increased forestation and better ecological monitoring. It is unlikely that these sorts of passages, covering issues such as human security, food security and water security, were the bone of contention that precluded the necessary consensus across the state ministries and different levels of government required for the official launch to go ahead. This is common-sense material that would elicit broad subscription.

Symptomatic

Although no official explanation has been offered, one can surmise that it was the report's strategic energy use content, covering what China can and should do to curb its contribution to the clear social and economic threat posed by climate change, that proved contentious. This should be no real surprise, because while China can do much, the state's foregoing commitment to rapid and stable economic development implies that it in fact should do little. Let us be under no illusions here. Given the prevailing orientation towards growth, the role of specific energy inputs in furthering economic development, and the structure of China's energy industry, the country faces a clear choice: continue to develop or forfeit the established pace and scale of economic progress for the sake of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions.

That may sound dramatic, but considers the following. Despite an unprecedented wave of environmental policies, there has been no discernable shift towards an alternative model of energy use in the Chinese economy. Markets remain irrationally priced and inefficient, where there is next to no incentive for conservation and waste is actually encouraged. What tentative objectives have been put forward, including the loose targets for reductions in energy (4% per annum) and GHG (2% per annum) intensity under the 11th Five-Year plan, have been insufficiently supported by regulations and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of China's annual economic growth. State authorities have been unwilling to diversify the energy supply mix to any meaningful degree. There are new pilot programmes for alternatives, and some less carbon-intense technologies and supplies are being incorporated here and there, this is true. Nevertheless, when one considers that demand for coal—already accounting for over three-quarters of the country's total energy consumption—is growing even faster, the impact of these tentative steps is rendered meaningless in practical terms. The established approach to policymaking has not proven at all effective, and while China desperately needs a strategic plan for climate change to level the playing field, it has made a different choice. However, as the report's own suggested content indicates, short-term economic self-interest is paving the way for a desperately threatening future. China's state policymakers have gambled on being able to outrun the consequences of the economic growth model they have adopted, but the odds are looking increasingly stacked against that result.

Outlook and Implications

Treating major policy initiatives in such a casual manner does little to improve China's image as a responsible member of the international community, and the delay in China's National Climate Change Assessment bodes ill for the forthcoming international negotiations on developing country commitments to GHG reductions. The adoption of some, any, mandatory emissions targets may have fed into that dialogue, but China's persistence with the business-as-usual model can be seen as a blow to the United Nations (UN)-sponsored climate change control regime. First and foremost though, the country's GHG emissions profiles will continue to grow largely unabated. That heightens risks of climate change at both the local and global level.

Recent estimates have suggested that China will surpass the United States as the world's largest annual emitter of carbon dioxide much faster that previously thought. That acceleration is a function of the poor environmental policymaking that this week's developments have made all too plain. China is perhaps well within its rights to state that economic development comes first. After all, the history of the economic development enjoyed across the economies comprising the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is littered with similar calculations and indifference to consequences that lay beyond their national borders. As a result, one cannot be too quick to judge, especially from the point of view to which the greatest historical responsibility for climate change has been rightly assigned. Still, this feels like a missed opportunity to improve climate change policymaking and set an example for other emerging economies. That is difficult to stomach, even if it is readily understood. The report does not look to include any mandatory GHG targets, though Reuters has reported that it proposes cutting GHG emissions per unit of economic output by 40% by 2020. It is well established that such an approach will not yield the sort of cuts necessary to curb GHG emissions growth, let alone bring about substantive reductions. In the simplest of terms then, by failing to set a firm cap on carbon dioxide and the like, supported by adequate policies and measures, China has made a clear choice. Development it is and the atmosphere be damned.