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<\/a><\/p>\nIn John Whalley and Sean Walsh\u2019s article \u201cBring the Copenhagen Global Climate Change Negotiations to Conclusion\u201d, they mentioned two different interpretations of \u201ccommon yet differentiated responsibilities\u201d that are prevailing now. One is that developing countries should receive financial compensation for taking commitments of emissions reductions. The other one is different countries take differential commitments between emissions intensity and emissions levels. The issue will be further discussed in the Copenhagen negotiation.<\/p>\n
China and the climate change crisis<\/a><\/p>\n China and the climate change crisis 2<\/a><\/p>\n It is developing countries\u2019 hope for \u201ccommon yet differentiated responsibilities\u201d to be effective. Without a doubt, developing countries need to make economic growth and to create a better standard of living for its people. The videos I embeded in the post are talking about China\u2019s balance between economic development and the environmental crisis. China is one of the developing countries that have been developing very rapidly over the past decades. It is introduced in the interview that seventy percent of China\u2019s industrial development depends on coal which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. China is consuming energy at the rapid pace but it is rather difficult to control energy consumption when development is essential at the same time. \u00a0However, this does not mean that China, or any other developing country, has not realized the seriousness of climate change. China has stated its position<\/a> on the issue by expressing that \u201cAny future arrangement on climate change should continue to follow the principles of common yet differentiated responsibilities established in the Convention, addressing climate change within the framework of sustainable development, equal treatment of mitigation and adaptation, and effectively solve the problem of financing and technology which the developing country parties are most concerned.\u201d And this is probably the voice of all the developing countries.<\/p>\n Some developing countries are acused for having small amount of historical gases emissions compared with developed countries and low emissions per capita, and the fact of developed countries being the major contributor to climate change is neglected. This is not fair. \u00a0The purpose for doing this is to give those developing countries more pressures so they would make commitments on emissions reduction. But by enforcing quantitative emissions reduction, it would limit developing countries\u2019 development. Poverty results in rapid population growth which is one of the main factors that cause the environmental problems for developing countries.<\/p>\n It is interesting that in the report, the authors also discussed about liabilities of emissions reduction. In both the report and the videos, it is said that almost one third of China\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions relate to exports. Whether this should be the liabilities of the countries that enjoy the final goods from the production is a question that needs to be further explored, but it is definitely not fair to blame it on China.<\/p>\n Up to this point, most of the nations have reached the consensus that the strategy of \u201ccommon yet differentiated reponsibilities\u201d should be taken, but the question now is how. I am hoping the answer will be found out during the Copenhagen negotiation this coming december.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is really interesting to see how big developing countries want to see United States\u2019 actions on climate change first and then they will be following. But at the same time, United States is waiting to see what plans major developing countries will offer. India even challenged to the West by saying: \u201c You do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1811],"tags":[1550,1301,1574],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kyoto-to-copenhagen-course","tag-china","tag-climate-change","tag-common-yet-differentiated-responsibilities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}