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Excerpts of an Interview with Professor Jiahua Pan

by Global Climate Network
People's Daily Online - 20 January 2010

Excerpts of an Interview with Professor Jiahua Pan, Executive Director of the Research Centre for Sustainable Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and member of the Global Climate Network.

Reporter: Since the UN General Assembly started negotiations on "The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change" in 1990, action on international climate governance were [sic] pushed forward continuously and all the governments have considered it as a main area of diplomacy. Some even said that 2010 would be the year of climate diplomacy. Would you like to say something on this point of view?

Pan Jiahua: The UN climate talks have experienced a difficult period for 20 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988. In 2009, the clouds of the Copenhagen climate talks have left lots of intricate mysteries. So, I think that climate diplomacy cannot be cool but will only heat up in 2010. As climate change is involved with... national rights and interests, climate diplomacy turns out to be very important. However, in view of the impacts of the global financial crisis, it is easy to predict that international negotiations on climate change will be a complex game in 2010.

Reporter: During the previous international negotiations on climate change, new concepts and formulations were continuously put forward.... Is it feasible that new mechanisms for multilateral cooperation can be realized? Are there any difficulties?

Pan Jiahua: [Addressing] climate change is, in the final analysis, a development issue… [C]limate agreements, carbon tariffs… carbon trading, all of them are of great importance, but they can not be committed to easily. Why? The reason is simple: developed countries have higher historical and current emissions and more difficulties in… future emission reduction. If developing countries can reduce emissions with capital and technology, why can developed countries not do so with enough capital, advanced technologies and... management capacity?

Without international cooperation, addressing climate change can only be empty talk. So, how can we make... cooperation [effective]? I think that historical emissions of developed countries should be regarded as a climate debt and they should give financial support to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and achieve low-carbon development.

For future emissions… developing countries can sell carbon credits to developed countries [with high per capita emissions] for capital, technology and [to help them] take the low-carbon development road. However… financial support and simple technical cooperation make it difficult to protect the rights and interests of developing countries and controlling global carbon emissions will thus be difficult to implement.

Reporter: Equity and efficiency are two basic principles of international cooperation… What are the relationships and conflicts between them?

Pan Jiahua: There are trade-offs between fairness and efficiency in economics research. Too much equity will be at the expense of efficiency [but with] too much emphasis on efficiency, fairness may be ignored and then… efficiency will be difficult to achieve. That is to say equity has a bottom line and efficiency must be subordinate to the bottom line… A sovereign state will not give up the standpoint and demand of climate justice for temporary efficiency.

For example, U.S. annual greenhouse gas emissions per capita [are] 20 tonnes. To reduce 1 tonne of carbon will cost $100 in developed countries. While, in developing countries, it only [costs] $20. Obviously, reducing emissions in developing countries costs less and gains higher efficiency than in developed countries. However, the key is that developing countries also need further development. If carbon emissions were related to development rights, developing countries [woould] not want and can not give them up. So in such a case, developed countries must consider climate justice and guarantee the rights and interests of developing countries in… multilateral climate cooperation.

Reporter: As international cooperation on climate change is added [to] political, diplomatic [and] economic factors, climate change has gone deep into all aspects of international relations. When will 'climate theory' from [an] international relations perspective come into being?

Pan Jiahua: It may be too absolute to say that politics and diplomacy serve the economy. However, if we say they all serve the 'country', I think no one will disagree. Climate change has a great relationship with nations' interests, which is the basic reason why the Copenhagen meeting has not reached a substantial result. On the climate change issue, the interest of all countries has a certain complementary feature in the short term and consistency in the long run...

From the perspective of international relations, climate cooperation theory needs to be re-examined. Firstly, the current comparison between conflicts and complementary interests must be recognized. Conflicts should be reduced and complementary interests should be expanded. Secondly, short-term interests and long-term fundamental interests should be well-matched. Climate catastrophe… [does not] respect [the interests] of developed or developing countries, which means that all nations should sacrifice some current interests in order to safeguard the common interests of the future of humanity.