Climate Change: US and other Developed countries must take their responsibilities

Unreasonable requirements that press big developing countries, such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa, to reduce emissions will undermine the smooth proceeding of the talks, as it is an alternative way in which the developed countries shift their responsibility。

Ekaterina Volozova

Beijing――(October 8, 2010)— Developed countries including the US have been told to be committed in tackling global warming and to take their responsibilities in cutting emissions if next month’s climate change meeting in Cancun, Mexico must be a success.

In preparation for the Cancun meeting next month, UN talks were conducted in Tianjin. China’s global warming negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, said a few days before the talks that “All parties at the Tianjin Conference should work to expand common ground and lessen disagreement to lay out the negotiation text for the Cancun meeting.

At the conference, Xie complained that developed nations were not living up to their own commitments, while demanding more from poorer countries, reported the New York Times. “The commitments made so far are far from what we expected” he said.

Xie said that developed countries should “do more and do better in taking the lead in substantially reducing energy and pollutants while providing financial and technological transfer to help developing countries increase their capacity to tackle climate change” adding “that emerging economies will do our best to increase the transparency of our measures in terms of tackling climate change and integrate our measures into global efforts."

According to “Friends of the Earth”, an international environmental organization, there could be criticism of the United States at the talks because the U.S did not return to the Kyoto Protocol, which is the only international instrument related to climate change that contains legally binding emission reduction targets.

Last year in Copenhagen, countries were not able to come to an agreement due to disagreements on the specific quota of emission cuts which developing countries were being pressed to accept. This was that developed countries insist on emission cuts from some of the major developing countries such as India and China.The developing countries on their part argued that richer were not living up to their own commitments of emission cuts. Negotiators warned that the United Nations Framework for Talks on Climate Change could lose their international support if they do not come to a conclusion in the near future, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Negotiators in the Tianjin talks had two major tasks - to make a 70-page text in preparation for the talks in Cancun, and to draft a proposal and prepare a better document under the Kyoto Protocol for the Cancun Conference to reach agreement on more points in order to quicken the process.

Unreasonable requirements that press big developing countries, such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa, to reduce emissions also will undermine the smooth proceeding of the talks, as it was an alternative way in which the developed countries shift their responsibility。

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