RICH nations, including the US and UK, are planning to push rapidly industrialising nations like China and India into accepting 鈥渂ack door鈥� limits on their greenhouse gas emissions. They want climate negotiators to agree global technical standards on 鈥渄irty鈥� manufacturing industries like aluminium, iron and steel, cement and chemicals 鈥� standards that would apply equally to factories in the US, Italy or India, for example. This strategy emerged last week in meetings at to discuss the successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.
鈥淕lobal technical standards would require industrialising countries to cut pollution from their burgeoning industries鈥�
Chris Dodwell, a UK-government climate negotiator, outlined the idea. 鈥淎t a minimum, we need to have middle-income countries accepting 鈥榮ectoral鈥� targets,鈥� he said. This would require rapidly industrialising countries to cut pollution from their burgeoning industries. Dodwell sees such a legally binding deal as essential if an incoming US president committed to joining the battle against global warming is going to be able to persuade Congress to accept limits on US emissions.
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The idea of global industry standards 鈥� aimed at improving energy efficiency and requiring pollution-cutting technology 鈥� originated in the US. Drawing them up is a central activity of the , a body promoted by the Bush administration which counts the US, Japan and Australia among its members. The partnership develops voluntary guidelines and is widely seen as a soft alternative to the Kyoto protocol鈥檚 binding targets, but at this month its ideas on standards began receiving some support from European governments.
Developing countries are hostile to global standards, which they see as a way of imposing targets by the back door on countries which have far lower emissions per head of population than most developed nations. 鈥淚ndia is opposed to all sectoral global standards,鈥� said Malini Mehra of India鈥檚 Centre for Social Markets at the Royal Society meeting.
Dodwell says China is also opposed, but he claims support from Mexico, Indonesia and South Africa. Some climate campaigners are sceptical of such standards, because they believe the real aim of the US is to scrap national emissions targets altogether in favour of global industry standards. But on the other hand, there are concerns that without global standards, emissions targets in rich nations will result in factories moving to countries that have no emissions limits.
A European carbon limit alone 鈥渋s not going to curb emissions鈥�, warned Ian Rodgers, director of the trade association UK Steel, last November. 鈥淚t will just move the emissions elsewhere.鈥� For example, Dodwell says that European cement companies could simply relocate across the Mediterranean to north Africa.
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