Foreword

Climate Change Mitigation in Developing Countries: Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey

Eileen Claussen, President, Pew Center on Global Climate Change

One of the most contentious issues in the debate over global climate change is the perceived divide between the interests and obligations of developed and developing countries. Equity demands that developed countries-the source of most past and current emissions of greenhouse gases-act first to reduce emissions. That principle is embedded in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding emission targets for developed countries only. With the Protocol now likely to enter into force, the focus will turn increasingly to the question of developing country emissions.

Addressing climate change in developing countries poses a fundamentally different challenge. For most, emission reduction is not a viable option in the near term. With income levels far below those of developed countries-and per capita emissions on average just one-sixth those of the industrialized world-developing countries will continue to increase their emissions as they strive for economic growth and a better quality of life. But their steadfast resistance to the idea of limiting their emissions has led to claims in some quarters that developing countries are not doing their fair share. Indeed, the Bush administration, in rejecting Kyoto, declared the Protocol unfair to the United States because it does not mandate action by large developing countries.

Accepting emission limits, however, is not the only measure of whether a country is contributing to climate change mitigation. Efforts that serve to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions, whether or not undertaken in the name of climate protection, nonetheless contribute to climate mitigation. These efforts can occur across virtually every sector of an economy. This report seeks to document and quantify the climate mitigation resulting from such efforts in six developing countries-Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey.

The report demonstrates that efforts undertaken by these six countries have reduced their emissions growth over the past three decades by approximately 300 million tons a year. Further, it finds that many of these efforts are motivated by common drivers: economic development and poverty alleviation, energy security, and local environmental protection. Put another way, there are multiple drivers for actions that reduce emissions, and they produce multiple benefits. The most promising policy approaches, then, will be those that capitalize on natural synergies between climate protection and development priorities to simultaneously advance both.

Just as equity demands that developed countries act first, the physical workings of our planet demand that in time developing countries limit and, ultimately, reduce their emissions as well. The search for consensus on an equitable sharing of responsibility must begin with a fair accounting of how nations already are contributing to this common effort. The authors and the Pew Center gratefully acknowledge Charles Feinstein, Alan Miller, Jiahua Pan, Cedric Philibert, and Leena Srivastava for their review of previous drafts of this report.