Negotiation won’t take a break and delegates can't enjoy Copenhagen’s sunshine as the crowded troops in climate demonstration did. Without banners, without slogan, China government delegation holds a unique meeting with over 30 Chinese youth. The event was held in the same venue as daily news briefing’s-China Information and Communication Center (CICC). As the representative of China’s official government delegation, three distinguished guests* were invited to this first ever formal communication between “China leaders” and “China future leaders”.
Young people showed good insight into the climate talk and special eagerness to understand China’s situation in the negotiation. The initial problem focused on China’s standpoint towards KP and LCA approaches. “Some developed countries exhaust their ideas to blur the distinction between developing countries so that they could jump out of the restriction of historical responsibility” Prof. He Jiankun proposed. The major conflict is G77 and China will defend the KP while without the restriction to US, other umbrella group members are ready to jump out it at any time and EU’s promise to keep the target will be meaningless when all the members have gone. [The outcome verified the conflict that G77 walked out the LCA plenary and declared them will be back only if the KP restarted and reached an acceptable result.] In term of “finance”, Jiankun emphasized that the future is not decided by who provide the money. African groups’ action slogan could describe the mechanism appropriately- “Rich Countries Pay the Climate Debt”.
Following the basic standpoint of China, youth negotiation observer mentioned sensitive words from Sudan representative on Friday’s G77 briefing moment. In response, Ms. Chao and Prof. He critically evaluated this statement. 350 ppm and 1.5 degree were good expectation, in a better word-wish. China does hope entire human being could take action now and make effort to retard climate change, but this target is unrealistic at this point. In Prof. He’s point of view, China’s target is ambitious enough. The low carbon economy is not only an attractive name but very expensive. Tens of trillions of foregone cost will be added to fulfill China’s climate commitment. REDD is excluded to the total promised number which means 40~45% might still underestimate China’s reduction goal. According to China’s calculation of leading developed group, United States only promised an insignificant target of 32% carbon intensity reduction when adopting China’s framework.
Youth people raised a question based on civil society’s observation that some NGO recently summarized all developed countries carbon reduction commitments in a single table and intend to conduct a side by side comparison across different groups where all countries were following BAU only except China and India. Ms. Chao and Prof. He expressed opinions to multi-countries comparison from both negotiator and technical expert’s angles. Some arguments have been made that India and China’s commitment is tricky since not following BAU. However, considering the high speed of clean technology substitution and a larger room for energy efficiency enhancement, the BAU of developing countries will take a more dramatic decrease than the developed group. Hence, BAU can make the commitment number small but less comparable across developing and developed countries.
As an ending of the conversation, government delegation indicated young people are the future of the country and youth have comparative advantage to bring the encouraging information and ideas back to China and spread to the public. Increasing number of young people is expected to devote themselves to the development of low carbon economy. Also, long term cooperation in youth globally should be initiated.
As a member of China youth delegation, I would say: Chinese youth lag behind in climate change action at first, but as the significant progress our country has made - we caught up soon. There were only 2 Chinese youth in Poznan last year, which was super tiny delegation compared to over 100 US students. Enthusiasm for climate action gathered 40 Chinese students from Mainland China, HK, Britain and States to Denmark. To date, it was only one month since the first proposal of this delegation has been organized. We, Chinese youth, should take the future responsibility in climate change and build up the leadership in global environment. We are ready to devote ourselves to either industry or government to fulfill China’s ambitious commitment in following decades. So we proudly deliver us to Copenhagen as “China Youth Delegation”.
* Ms. Chao Qingchen from China negotiation group, vice director of technology and climate change bureau of China meteorological administration; Chinese chief climate policy specialist Professor He Jiankun, the director of Tsinghua Low carbon energy laboratory; China climate change science specialist Prof. Luo Yong, director of climate change center of China meteorological administration.
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