Environmental Leader

The global community is hoping for cooperation on climate change, particularly from developing countries including China and India that have been hesitant to agree to carbon emission caps due to economic reasons.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on a recent trip to Beijing made a plea to China to join the industrialized countries in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, reports Environmental News. He said without China there will be no new global climate framework, but with China there is a potential for the world “to seal the deal in Copenhagen.”

In response, the Premier Wen Jiabao said the Chinese government supports the UN’s leading role in promoting international cooperation to curb climate change, and agrees climate change is an environmental and development problem, according to Environmental News.

Ban says all major developing economies have a critical role to play in climate change negotiations, reports Environmental News.

Yet, several developing countries including India are not budging. Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh recently reiterated that India will not agree to a legally binding agreement on cutting carbon emissions but will deal with climate change issues per its own plans, reports Economic Times.

Ramesh said in the article that at the recent G-8 meeting India made no commitment to cutting emissions and there was no mention of developing countries like India to cut emissions.

Russia is also absent from the global discussion on an agreement on how to distribute the economic burden of greenhouse gas emissions as well as how to curb its own emissions, reports the New York Times.

Russia is expected to rival the United States as the top per capita emitter within the next 20 years, if the country doesn’t make any efforts to curb its carbon emissions, according to the New York Times.

Andrew Light, the director of the Center for Global Ethics at George Mason University in Virginia and a senior fellow focusing on climate and energy policy at the Center for American Progress, a research institute in Washington, told the New York Times that no climate deal will likely succeed without Russia’s participation.

According to the 2008 Environmental Report, rapid economic growth in Brazil, Russia, India and China means that by 2030 the annual emissions of these four countries together will exceed those of the 30 OECD countries combined.