About the Meeting
UNFCCC: Common but Differentiated Responsibilities
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-12-05 21:05
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During negotiations in recent years, some developed countries, including the United States, have expressed dissatisfaction with the principle, demanding that developing countries also commit themselves to the binding targets on emission cuts.
Why, then, don't some developing countries such as China, India and Brazil, also major carbon emitters, have to commit themselves to the legally binding targets on emissions cuts?
The reason is that the per capita emissions of those countries are far less than those of the developed ones, and they have produced only "survival emissions" instead of "luxury emissions."
More importantly, the carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere was mostly produced during the industrialization process of the developed countries.
It is worth noting that carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, has an atmospheric lifetime of between 50 to 200 years.
That means that the carbon dioxide discharged by Western countries during the Industrial Revolution period some 200 years ago still remains in the atmosphere.
As the convention said: "The largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries," and "per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low."
Though the collective carbon output produced by developing countries has grown significantly in recent years, it is still quite low compared with the unchecked emissions produced by the industrialized countries during the past 200 years.
The developing countries, however, should also take initiatives to address global warming and strive to not advance their economies at the cost of the environment, like most of the developed countries did.
To this end, many developing nations have recently put their emission targets on the table.
One thing, however, must be made clear: under the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities," the emission cut targets are a legally binding commitment for the developed countries, while the measures and objectives set by the developing ones are their voluntary actions.
