By Martin Khor
GENEVA, Nov 16 2015 (IPS)

South-South cooperation is usually seen as a poor second fiddle to North-South aid in the world of development assistance. Indeed, developing countries’ policy makers themselves insist that South-South cooperation can only supplement but not replace North-South cooperation.

Martin Khor

The pledges, made by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to the United States in September , have given an immediate boost to the status of South-South cooperation in general, and to the rapidly growing global role of China.

President Xi first announced that China would set up a China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to provide 3.1 billion dollars to help developing countries tackle climate change.

Secondly, speaking at the United Nations, Xi said that China would set up another fund with initial spending of 2 billion dollars for South-South Cooperation and to aid developing countries to implement the post-2015 Development Agenda.

The sheer size of the pledges gives a big political weight to the Chinese contribution. Xi’s initiatives have the feel of a “game changer” in international relations.

It is significant that Xi used the framework of South-South cooperation as the basis of the two funds.

In the international system, there have been two types of development cooperation: North-South and South-South cooperation.

North-South cooperation has been based on the obligation of developed countries to assist developing countries because the former have much more resources and have also benefitted from their former colonies.

Indeed, developed countries have committed to provide 0.7 per cent of their gross national income (GNI) as development assistance, a target that is regularly monitored and taken seriously but unfortunately is currently being met by only a handful of countries.

South-South cooperation on the other hand is based on solidarity and mutual benefit between developing countries as equals, and without obligations as there is no colonial history among them.

This is the position of the developing countries and their umbrella grouping, the G77 and China.

Xi himself described South-South cooperation as “a great pioneering measure uniting the developing nations together for self-improvement, is featured by equality, mutual trust, mutual benefit, win-win result, solidarity and mutual assistance and can help developing nations pave a new path for development and prosperity.”

In recent years, as Western countries reduced their commitment towards aid, they tried to blur the distinction and have been pressing big developing countries like China and India to also commit to provide development assistance just like they do, and preferably within the framework of the OECD, the rich countries’ club.

However, the developing countries have stuck to their political position: the developed countries have the responsibility to give adequate aid to poor countries and should not shift this on to other developing countries. The developing countries however will also help one another, through the arm of South-South cooperation.

This has increasingly led some developed countries to advocate, during negotiations at several UN meetings, that for them to continue with their aid commitment, some of the developing countries should also pay their share.

The traditional framework in international cooperation may now be changed by the two Chinese pledges, both interesting in themselves.

It is noted by many that the 3.1 billion dollar Chinese climate aid exceeds the 3 billion dollars that the US has pledged (but not yet delivered) to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) under the United Nations Climate Convention.

China has now taken that South-South route by announcing it will set up its own South-South climate fund, with the unexpectedly big size of 3.1 billion dollars, an amount larger than any developed country has pledged at the GCF.

With such a large amount, the Chinese climate fund has the potential to facilitate many significant programmes on climate mitigation, adaptation and institutional building.

As for the other fund announced by Xi, the initial 2 billion dollars is for South-South cooperation and for implementing the post-2015 development agenda just adopted by the United Nations. The agenda’s centrepiece is the sustainable development goals. Xi mentioned poverty reduction, agriculture, health and education as some of the areas the fund may cover.

This new fund has the potential of helping developing countries learn from one another’s development experiences and practices and make leaps in policy and action.

Xi also said an Academy of South-South Cooperation and Development will be established to facilitate studies and exchanges by developing countries on theories and practices of development suited to their respective national conditions.

The next steps to implement these pledges would be for China to set up the institutional basis for the funds, and design their framework, aims and functions. It is a great opportunity to show whether South-South cooperation can contribute as positively as North-South aid.

Of course, aid is not the only dimension of South-South cooperation, which is especially prominent in the areas of trade, investment, finance and the social sectors.

The regional trade agreements in ASEAN, East Asia, and the sub-regions of Africa and Latin America, as well as the trade and investment links between the three South continents, have shown immense expansion in recent decades.

Recently, the world’s imagination was also captured by the creation of the BRICS New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Chinese One Belt One Road programme, which all contain elements of South-South cooperation.

South-South cooperation in aid, however, is symbolically and practically of great importance, as it tends to assist the more vulnerable – including poor people and countries, and fragile environments including biodiversity and the climate undergoing crisis.

Let’s hope that the two new funds being set up by China will give a much-needed boost to South-South cooperation and solidarity among the people.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Dec 15 2014 (IPS)

It is now official: the current inter-governmental system is not able to act in the interest of humankind.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Lima – which ended on Dec. 14, two days after it was scheduled to close – was the last step before the next Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015, where a global agreement must be found.

Roberto Savio

In Lima, 196 countries with several thousand delegates negotiated for two weeks to find a common position on which to convene in Paris in one year’s time. Lima was preceded by an historical meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which the world’s two main polluters agreed on a course of action to reduce pollution.

Well, Lima has produced a draft climate pact, adopted by everybody, simply because it carries no obligation. It is a kind of global gentlemen’s agreement, where it is supposed that the world is inhabited only by gentlemen, including the energy corporations.

This is an act of colossal irresponsibility where, for the sake of an agreement, not one solution has been found. The “big idea” is to leave to every country the task of deciding its own cuts in pollution according to its own criteria.“Lima has produced a draft climate pact, adopted by everybody, simply because it carries no obligation. It is a kind of global gentlemen’s agreement, where it is supposed that the world is inhabited only by gentlemen”

And everybody is aware that this is most certainly a disaster for the planet. “It is a breakthrough, because it gives meaning to the idea that every country will make cuts,” said Yvo de Boer, the Dutch diplomat who is the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). ”But the great hopes for the process are also gone.”

To make things clear, all delegates knew that without some binding treaty to reduce emissions, there is no way that this will happen. But they accepted what it is possible, even if it does not solve the problem. It is like a hospital where the key surgeon announces that the good news is that the patient will remain paralysed.

The agreement is based on the idea that every country will publicly commit itself to adopting its own plan for reducing emissions, based on criteria established by national governments on the basis of their domestic politics – not on what scientists have been indicating as absolutely necessary.

This, of course, is the kind of treat that no country in the world objects to. The real value of the treaty is not the issue. The issue is that the inter-governmental system is able to declare unity and common engagement. The interests of humankind are not part of the equation. Humankind is supposed to be parcelled among 196 countries, and so is the planet.

This act of irresponsibility is clear when you look at all the countries producing energy, like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, Iran or Ecuador, Nigeria or Qatar, whose governments are interested in using oil exports to keep themselves in the saddle. And take a look at what the world’s third largest polluter, India, is doing in the spirit of the Lima treaty.

Under the motto: “We like clean India, but give us jobs”, the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is moving with remarkable speed to eliminate any regulatory burden for industry, mining, power projects, the armed forces, and so on.

According to the high-level committee assigned to rewrite India’s environmental law system, the country’s regulatory system ”served only the purpose of a venal administration”. So, what did it suggest? It presented a new paradigm: ”the concept of utmost good faith”, under which business owners themselves will monitor the pollution generated by their projects, and they will monitor their own compliance!

The newly-appointed Indian National Board for Wildlife which is responsible for protected area cleared 140 pending projects in just two days; small coal mines have a one-time permission to expand without any hearing; and there is no longer any need for the approval of tribal villages for forest projects.

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar boasted: ”We have decided to decentralise decision making. Ninety percent of the files won’t come to me anymore”. And he said that he was not phasing out important environmental protections, just “those which, in the name of caring for nature, were stopping progress.” He also plans to devolve power to state regulators, which environmental expert say is akin to relinquishing any national integrated policy.

It is, of course, totally coincidental that Lima conference took place in the middle of the greatest decrease in oil prices in five years. The price of a barrel of oil is now hovering around the 60 dollar mark, down from over 100 two years ago. This price level has basically been decided by Saudi Arabia, which did not agree to cut production to increase the cost of a barrel.

The most espoused explanation was that the low cost would undercut schist gas exploitation which is making the United States energy self-sufficient again, and soon an exporter. But this will equally undercut renewable energies, like wind or solar power, which have higher costs and will be abandoned when cheap oil is available.

Again coincidentally, this is creating very serious problems for countries like Russia and Venezuela (U.S. irritants) and Iran (a direct enemy), which are now entering into serious deficit and serious political problems. And, again coincidentally, this is making use of fossil energy more tempting at a moment in which the world was finally accepting that there is a problem of climate change.

In March, countries will have to present their national plans and it will then become clear that governments are lacking on the very simple task of arresting climate change, and this will lead us to irreversible damage by our climate’s final deadline, which was identified as 2020.

Thus the exercise of irresponsibility in Lima will also become an exercise in futility.

Is there any doubt that if the people, and not governments, were responsible for saving the planet, their answer would have been swifter and more efficient?

Young people, all over the world, have very different priorities from corporations and industry … but they also have much less political clout.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The presidents of China, Xi Jinping, and Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solís, both at their microphones during a Jul. 17 meeting in Brasilia. Credit: Presidencia de Costa Rica

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Jul 30 2014 (IPS)

China’s plan to become Costa Rica’s main energy ally through the joint reconstruction of an oil refinery has been revived after the presidents of the two countries agreed to review the conditions of the project during a meeting in the Brazilian capital.

The two countries initially signed a framework accord in 2008, including Chinese participation in oil projects, especially the upgrade and expansion of the Moín refinery on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, with an investment of 1.5 billion dollars.

But criticism from public institutions, political leaders and social organisations brought the initiative to a halt.

The Costa Rican president’s office stated in a communiqué that Beijing had accepted its request to renegotiate the project, with the aim of “resolving inconsistencies in the contract,” in which each country has invested 50 million dollars so far.

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel González said in a Jul. 22 press conference that “we have no deadline” for that review, which all of the involved institutions will take part in.

President Luis Guillermo Solís participated in the news briefing, although he did not specifically refer to the refinery.

Solís held a bilateral working meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Jul 17 in Brasilia, during a summit of presidents of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) with Xi, after the sixth summit of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping.

The upgrade of the Moín refinery, which belongs to the state oil refinery Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo (Recope), would increase its processing capacity from 18,000 to 60,000 barrels a day of crude. The company controls Costa Rica’s oil imports, and since 2011 it has had to purchase only refined products, because the plant was shut down.

The joint refinery project, or “Chinese refinery” as it is referred to locally, was criticised by politicians and a large part of organised civil society from the start.

“We have always defended the construction of a refinery, whether it was with China, Russia or France,” said Patrick Johnson, a leader of the oil workers’ union, the Sindicato de Trabajadores Petroleros Químicos y Afines.”We want the confusion to be cleared up…and if the project is beneficial, then it should go ahead because the country needs a refinery,” he told IPS.

In June 2013, the office of the comptroller general brought the initiative to a halt arguing that there were serious problems with a key feasibility study. Since then, the project has been on hold.

The renegotiations should overcome the first real hurdle that China has run into in Costa Rica. In 2007, this country became the first in Central America to establish diplomatic relations with China, in a part of the world that continues to have ties with Taiwan – incompatible with relations with China.

“Having an embassy here makes it easier to deal with matters with Central America,” Patricia Rodríguez, an expert on China who was an official in Costa Rica’s embassy in Beijing from 2008 to 2010, told IPS.

China is now Costa Rica’s second-biggest trading partner after the United States. This country’s sales to the Asian giant climbed from 91 million dollars in 2000 to 1.5 billion in 2011, when a free trade treaty signed in 2010 went into effect.

In strategic terms, the joint refinery between Recope and the state-run China National Petroleum Corporation International (CNPCI) is China’s star project in the country, and the joint venture Sociedad Reconstructora Chino Costarricense (Soresco) was set up in 2009 to carry it out.

The investment is to amount to 1.5 billion dollars, of which Soresco would receive 900 million in loans from the China Development Bank. The rest will come from the partners. The construction and remodeling of the plant will absorb 1.2 billion dollars of that total.

The work was to begin early this year and was to last 42 months. The comptroller general’s office’s decision to put it on hold was due, among other things, to the fact that the feasibility study was carried out by a subsidiary of CNPCI, which it said subverted the evaluation.

The resolution had the effect of “completely paralysing the refinery upgrade process by leaving it without the technical studies necessary for it to continue,” explained Recope in a lawsuit brought against the comptroller general’s office in response to the measure.

Despite the ruling by the comptroller general’s office, the administration of conservative President Laura Chinchilla (2010-May 2014) continued to defend the refinery modernisation project. But the centre-left Solís promised during the election campaign to renegotiate the agreement, because he considered several aspects of the contract negative for the country.

The request to renegotiate the contract had the support of political sectors and in particular of lawmaker Ottón Solís, an economist and university professor who was one of the first to speak out against certain facets of the agreement.

“We have enormous bargaining power here because China is desperate to open up negotiations with Costa Rica and this country has prestige,” Deputy Solís, of the governing Citizen Action Party, told IPS.

“If we insinuate that it’s impossible to negotiate with China because they take advantage of you with unfair contracts, the whole world will be put on the alert and other countries won’t want to negotiate with them,” and that gives Costa Rica bargaining power, he said.

One of the promises made was that the upgrade of the refinery will bring down fuel costs for consumers, who currently pay 41 percent extra in taxes and profit margins for service stations and Recope’s operating costs.

Petrol currently costs 1.48 dollars a litre in Costa Rica, which makes it the most expensive gasoline in Central America. Official figures from 2012 indicate that oil consumption in the country stood at 53,000 barrels per day.

“Fuel is a fundamental element for price stability because there are public services that depend on its price, like public transportation and electricity, and the same is true in the case of the productive apparatus,” the president of Costa Rica’s consumers association, Erick Ulate, told IPS.

During the meeting with President Solís, Xi also agreed to expand the timeframe for carrying out studies for the project of widening the road connecting San José with the Caribbean port of Limón, where 90 percent of the country’s exports are shipped out. The expansion of the road will be financed with a 395 million dollar loan from Beijing.

In case you missed it, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the third and final part of a report on Apr. 13 in which it says bluntly that we only have 15 years left to avoid exceeding the “safe” threshold of a 2°C increase in global temperatures, beyond which the consequences will be dramatic.

And only the most myopic are unaware of what these are – from an increase in sea level, through more frequent hurricanes and storms (increasingly in previously unaffected areas), to an adverse impact on food production.

Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency. Credit: IPS

Now, in a normal and participatory world, in which at least 83 percent of those living today will still be alive in 15 years, this report would have created a dramatic reaction. Instead, there has not been a single comment by any of the leaders of the 196 countries in which the planet’s 7.5 billion “consumers” reside. It’s just been business as usual.

Anthropologists, who study human beings’ similarity to and divergence from other animals, concluded a long time ago that humans are not superior in every aspect. For instance, human beings are less adaptable than many animals to survive in, for example, earthquakes, hurricanes and any other type of natural disaster. You can be sure that, by now, other animals would be showing signs of alertness and uneasiness.

The first part of the report, released in September 2013 in Stockholm, declared with a 95 percent or greater certainty that humans are the main cause of global warming, while the second part, released in Yokohama at the end of March, reported that “in recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans”.

The IPCC is made up of over 2,000 scientists, and this is the first time that it has come to firm and final conclusions since its creation in 1988 by the United Nations.

The main conclusion of the report is that to slow the race to a point of no return, global emissions must be cut by 40 to 70 percent by 2050, and that “only major institutional and technological changes will give a better than even chance” that global warming will not go beyond the safety threshold and that these must start at the latest in 15 years, and be completed in 35 years.

It is worth noting that roughly half of the world’s population is under the age of 30, and it is largely the young who will have to bear the enormous costs of fighting climate change.

The IPCC’s main recommendation is very simple: major economies should place a tax on carbon pollution, raising the cost of fossil fuels and thus pushing the market toward clean sources such as wind, solar or nuclear energy. It is here that “major institutional changes” are required.

Ten countries are responsible for 70 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas pollution, with the United States and China accounting for over 55 percent of that share. Both countries are taking serious steps to fight pollution.

U.S. President Barack Obama tried in vain to obtain Senate support, and has used his authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act to cut carbon pollution from vehicles and industrial plants and encourage clean technologies. But he cannot do anything more without backing from the Senate.

The all-powerful new president of China, Xi Jinping, has made the environment a priority, also because official sources put the number of deaths in China each year from pollution at five million.

But China needs coal for its growth, and Xi’s position is: “Why should we slow down our development when it was you rich countries that created the problem by achieving your growth?” And that gives rise to a vicious circle. The countries of the South want the rich countries to finance their costs for reducing pollution, and the countries of the North want them to stop polluting.

As a result, the report’s executive summary, which is intended for political leaders, has been stripped of charts which could have been read as showing the need for the South to do more, while the rich countries put pressure on avoiding any language that could have been interpreted as the need for them to assume any financial obligations.

This should make it easier to reach an agreement at the next Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Lima, where a new global agreement should be reached (remember the disaster at the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009?).

The key to any agreement is in the hands of the United States. The U.S. Congress has blocked any initiative on climate control, providing an easy escape for China, India and other polluters: why should we make commitments and sacrifices if the U.S. does not participate?

The problem is that the Republicans have made climate change denial one of their points of identity.

They have mocked and denied climate change and attacked Democrats who support carbon taxing as waging a war on coal. The American energy industry financially supports the Republican Party and it is considered political suicide to talk about climate change.

The last time a carbon tax was proposed in 2009, after a positive vote by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, the Republican-dominated Senate shot it down.

And in the 2010 elections, a number of politicians who voted for the carbon tax lost their seats, contributing to the Republican takeover of the House. The hope now for those who want a change is to wait for the 2016 elections, and hope that the new president will be able to change the situation – which is a good example of why the ancient Greeks said that Hope is the last Goddess.

And this brings us to a very simple reality. The U.S. Senate is made up of 100 members, and this means that you need 51 votes to kill any bill for a fossil fuels tax. In China, the situation is different, but decisions are taken, in the best of hypotheses, not by the president alone, but by the seven-member Standing Committee of the Central Committee, which holds the real power in the Communist Party.

In other words, the future of our planet is decided by 58 persons. With the current global population standing at close to 7.7 billion people, so much for a democratic world!
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

By Roberto Savio
SAN SALVADOR, Bahamas , Dec 27 2013 (Columnist Service)

At this time of hope for what the new year may bring, it would be useful to look at the legacy we carry with us from the year we leave behind. It was a year full of events – wars, rising social inequality, unchecked finance, the decline of political institutions, and the erosion of global governance.

Perhaps this is nothing new, since these trends have been with us for a long time. But some events have a deeper, longer-lasting impact. And here we will present them briefly, as a list to remember and to watch. They are not offered in order of magnitude, which is always a subjective decision.

Roberto Savio. Credit: IPS

1. Collapse of the Arab Spring. The situations in Egypt and Syria have discouraged other Arab countries from following in their footsteps. The internal struggles in the large and variegated world of Islam will take a long time to settle. The real challenge is how modernism can be used as an element making Islam viable.

The coup in Egypt has given new strength to the radicals who do not believe in democracy, and we will never know if the Muslim Brotherhood could have run the country effectively, or if it would have failed (as is most likely). Outsiders cannot solve this conflict, as the case of Syria, which has become a proxy war financed by external players, clearly shows.

2. U.S. self-sufficiency in energy. In five years the exploitation of shale oil and gas will cut American oil imports in half, and if this trend continues the U.S. could actually become self-sufficient in energy supplies. The impact on the price of oil is clear, and this will affect the strategic importance of the Arab world and petrodollar countries like Russia. American industry will receive a strong boost, but incentives for the development of renewable energy will decline worldwide.

3. The inability to reach a meaningful agreement on climate change. The failure of the last climate change conference in Poland demonstrates that there is little political will to reach a global consensus on ways to tackle this issue. Yet according to most climate scientists we are fast approaching the point of no return, with the prospect of irreversible damage to the global ecosystem.

Meanwhile, French investors are buying land in the south of England to grow vineyards. And Iceland is besieged by investors (including the Chinese), who want to get their hands on a large land area where cultivation will continue to be possible. And all nations are gearing up for the exploitation of mineral reserves under the melting Arctic ice, which is also opening up new avenues for marine transportation.

This shows that the business world has a clearer appreciation of what is happening than governments. But it also shows a lack of vision of social responsibility.

4. U.S. decline. President Barack Obama had to cancel his participation in the recent Asian summit because of the U.S. budget crisis. But Russian President Vladimir Putin was able to attend, and he has managed to successfully manipulate events in Syria.

Obama’s signature healthcare reform is in jeopardy, and Edward Snowden has shown the world that the U.S. does not respect its own allies. Meanwhile, the Tea Party has been able to paralyse the U.S. government and bring the Republication Party to espouse a policy of public sector decline.

People all over the world now consider the U.S. an unreliable partner, in an irreversible crisis, with a president who makes a lot of high-sounding promises but is unable to bring them about.

Nobody has managed to bring the financial sector under control, and scandals and gigantic penalties are a continuing reality. There is no solution in sight on Palestine, and the U.S. is facing great difficulties extricating itself from Afghanistan, while Iraq is reverting to chaos, and the talks with Iran are giving a strong boost to the radical Shia section of the Islamic world. The U.S. is a country of great resilience, but the future does not look at all promising.

5. European decline. The past year was one of disunity in Europe, and the definitive ascendancy of Germany in European affairs. Only macroeconomics counts today. Ireland is held up as an example, after it brought its deficit under control. But at the microeconomic level, the damage to the social fabric can be dramatic.

The same is happening in Portugal, and Greece is the most extreme example. Greeks have lost 20 percent of their income, unemployment has climbed to 27 percent, and more cuts are being demanded.

This is not the place for an analysis of how Germany is helped by its policy, which undercuts others without any hint of solidarity. But in the May 2014 European elections, people are likely to vote in large numbers for the anti-Europe parties, which have sprouted almost everywhere, with the sole exception of Spain. The Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy, as the harsh laws on abortion and public order show, is far enough to the right to leave space to a more right-wing party.

The weakening of the European Parliament will be with us for a long time, until Europe recovers some of the appeal that it has been steadily losing among its citizens.

6. Chinese nationalism. The new president, Xi Jinping, has in a few months assumed an authority unprecedented since the time of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. He is pushing the idea of a Chinese dream, to galvanise people under his leadership. This is based on the assertion of China as a great power commanding respect around the world.

And bold steps have been taken to affirm Chinese territorial claims that have opened up conflicts with South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. With the Japanese government now run by nationalist politicians, many analysts are considering the possibility of a third world war beginning in Asia.

In the 16th century China had 50 percent of world GNP, and there is a strong desire among the Chinese to regain their “rightful” place in the world. The defence treaty between Japan and the United States makes this a potentially global point of conflict.

7. Changes in the Vatican. The election of Pope Francis has brought a much-needed change of direction in the Catholic Church. The Pope is binging back a focus on people rather than the market, using terms like “solidarity”, “social justice”, “exclusion” and “marginalisation”, which until recently had all but disappeared from political discourse.

President Obama has followed with a strong speech against the growing social inequalities in the U.S.

And according to the London School of Economics, in 20 years Britain will return to the level of social inequality it experienced during the times of Queen Victoria.

But Pope Francis is the only one denouncing the dismantling of the welfare system which emerged during the Cold War. Let us hope that his call will help prevent the writing of a new Das Kapital, where the victims will not be workers, but young people.

Excerpt:

Washington and Beijing are stepping up research into new “carbon capture” technologies at coal-fired power plants. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 11 2013 (IPS)

The United States and China have agreed on a suite of potentially far-reaching initiatives aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the world’s two largest economies and largest polluters.

Environmental groups are applauding initial reports of the agreements, arrived at during high-level talks here on Wednesday and Thursday. Further, there is also a sense that the discussions indicated a warming of relations between the two powers that could constitute the basis for an important new cooperative relationship at international negotiations on climate change."Bilateral efforts between these two countries are essential – and this collaboration can inject additional vigour in tackling climate change around the world." -- Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute

“I thought it was one of the best sessions for climate change I’ve ever sat in,” a senior official in President Barack Obama’s administration, speaking on background, told reporters Thursday. “Not only were they high-level officials on both sides, but I thought that there was candid discussion, interesting discussion, and most importantly, proposals for cooperation moving forward.”

As unveiled Wednesday and further refined Thursday, the two countries have agreed to jointly focus on five broad areas. These include cutting down on emissions from heavy transport, strengthening energy efficiency, and improving the collection of greenhouse gas-related data.

Washington and Beijing will also step up research into new “carbon capture” technologies at coal-fired power plants, and collaborate on building new “smart” electrical grids that are both more efficient and can more easily incorporate renewable energy sources and distributed generation.

The talks also advanced modalities behind a landmark agreement struck between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in June to reduce the amount of HFCs, “super-greenhouse gases” used in refrigeration and air conditioning, the two countries use and produce.

“They’re clearly addressing some of the largest sectors in terms of greenhouse gas emissions – buildings, transportation and power, which together constitute the majority of emissions for both countries,” Alden Meyer, director of the Washington office of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a watchdog group, told IPS.

“For the moment, however, it’s hard to gauge the actual impact on emissions without knowing more of the details. The most fundamental question is whether these initiatives will merely help the two countries meet already-stated emissions-reductions goals between now and 2020. That would still be good, of course, but it wouldn’t be adding additional ambition to the global effort.”

Current U.S. policy revolves around a 17 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2020. For China, the central goal is to cut its economy’s “carbon intensity” by 40 to 45 percent, also by the end of the decade.

Yet Meyer notes that “everyone agrees” that both countries need to do far more if there is to be any chance of keeping the global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the current international goal that climate scientists warn constitutes a dangerous cut-off point.

The talks are also being seen as a key success on the part of the new U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, long known for his climate advocacy. Kerry was integral in setting up a new U.S.-China working group on climate, and reports suggest the secretary of state has been actively engaging in this way in nearly every country he visits.

“This is no longer a side issue – Kerry has made climate into a centrepiece of political discussions, elevating it to the top tier of the geopolitical agenda, up there with security and economic issues,” Meyer notes. “That’s also being helped by the recent push by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the International Energy Agency to warn that this is a major threat to development and the world economy alike.”

Patching the disconnect

Climate change was not the only issue under discussion during the two-day U.S.-China summit, known as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED). But the talks did showcase the initial results of the bilateral working group on climate, set up in April, the final report of which can be found here.

“One of the great features this year is the special sessions on climate change and energy security, so we envision smaller sessions with a very focused agenda,” an Obama administration official told reporters in a briefing Monday.

“We want to demonstrate to the world that the two largest economies in the world can cooperate in this century to help tackle these environmental challenges … We’re hoping that at the end, we can cite some concrete examples of our cooperation through reduced emissions.”

Nor are the five initiatives outlined this week planned to be the end of the new U.S.-China cooperation. The working group on climate is reportedly working unusually intensively, a schedule that is expected to continue.

By October, the group is expected to agree on the implementation details for the first five initiatives. Thereafter, the Obama administration has suggested that climate issues will remain on the annual S&ED agenda, which will include annual review of implementation of previous initiatives and the assumption that new ones will be launched.

The results from this week’s discussions could now be used as a springboard to jolt ongoing international negotiations in the lead-up to a Paris summit, in 2015, where world leaders will be required to fashion a new global deal on climate change.

“There is renewed momentum between the U.S. and China on climate change. Bilateral efforts between these two countries are essential – and this collaboration can inject additional vigour in tackling climate change around the world,” Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate and Energy Program at the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank, said in a statement.

“These actions can help build trust and enhance cooperation between these two major countries. The benefits of joint action are clear. Now, we need them to follow up with actions that will drive down global emissions and take advantage of economic opportunities in a low-carbon future.”

UCS’s Meyer notes that the disconnect between the United States and China on the way forward on climate action has been a key obstacle in the international talks over the past several years.

“To the extent that they’re now cooperating on the ground, hopefully that will spill over into a more useful partnership in the negotiations for a post-2020 deal,” he says.

“In Paris in 2015 we’ll need broad engagement and cooperation among leaders of major countries, which is what we didn’t have going into the Copenhagen summit [in 2009]. To have this new relationship at the leadership level more than two years out from the Paris talks is a good thing – this level of engagement among leaders will be essential.”

This week’s relatively informal and unscripted summit between the presidents of the United States and China on a private estate in southern California is being welcomed by most analysts here as a virtually unprecedented opportunity for each side to gain a better understanding of the strategic aims of the other.

The two-day meeting between President Barack Obama and China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, which begins Friday at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, will likely cover the broad range of issues – among them, cyber-security, intellectual property, maritime conflicts, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and the Middle East — that have recently bedevilled ties between the two great powers.“We have an opportunity to turn it in a different direction. Mr. Xi seems to see that; I hope we do, too." -- Amb. Chas Freeman, Jr., (ret.)

But a frank discussion of these issues – and, more importantly, an overall bilateral relationship which has become as complicated and consequential as any in the world today – may produce some insights and reassurances on both sides that could build an increasingly constructive dynamic.

“I think it’s very important that the two presidents get together to develop as best they can some kind of personal relationship that will allow them to have, if not trust, at least confidence about what the other leader is seeking to achieve and what policies or actions by one side or the other might either advance or set back relations,” Alan Romberg, director of the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center and 27-year State Department veteran, told IPS.

“One meeting isn’t going to do it, so they need to engage in sustained dialogue over time more often, and not just on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly or other fora,” he said, adding that the “mutual strategic suspicion” that currently exists between the two powers “greatly inhibits their ability to move boldly forward together on a common agenda.”

That “strategic suspicion” was clearly on view at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-level security forum, in Singapore last weekend, even as Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, was meeting with Xi and other top Chinese officials in Beijing to prepare for the Sunnylands summit.

Addressing the conference, U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel re-iterated – albeit more diplomatically – recent public charges that Beijing is systematically stealing U.S. military and industrial secrets through cyber-espionage. He also insisted that Washington’s “rebalancing” of military assets from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region would proceed apace despite its budgetary woes.

In response, Gen. Yao Yunzhu, a top official at China’s Academy of Military Science, asked Hagel how he could reassure China that increased deployments of U.S. military forces – 60 percent of U.S. naval assets will be based in the region by 2020 under current plans – were not part of a containment strategy designed to “counter China’s rising influence and offset (its) increasing military capabilities.”

“China is not convinced,” she noted.

Xi Jinping. Credit: DoD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

The exchange evoked what is being referred to as the “Thucydides trap” after the ancient Greek historian who argued that the clash between the emerging power of Athens and the reigning power of Sparta was made inevitable by misapprehensions on both sides – a dynamic that echoed some 1500 years later when the ambitions of a rising Germany fell afoul of the hegemonic British Empire, eventually resulting in the First World War.

The summit, the result of Xi’s appeal after his formal inauguration in March to create “a new type of great power relationship”, comes amidst growing concerns that Beijing and Washington risk falling into a similar trap.

This is especially so given rising tensions over territorial claims between China and its neighbours – some of them, notably Japan and the Philippines, formal U.S. treaty allies — in the East and South China Seas, as well as its interest, as demonstrated by a rapid build-up in its naval assets and its expansion of port facilities in the Indian Ocean (“string of pearls”), in securing vital sea trade routes from the Middle East and beyond that have long been dominated by the U.S. Navy.

In his trip to Beijing, Donilon echoed that concern, calling for a “new model of relations between an existing power and an emerging one.”

Given its record generation-long economic growth – it could surpass the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by the time Obama leaves office in 2017, according to some estimates – China’s interests now truly span the globe.

This is dramatised by the fact that Xi will arrive in California after visits this week to Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica, and Mexico – countries long considered part of Washington’s “backyard” and hence subject to the Monroe Doctrine. According to some estimates, China could become Latin America’s leading trade partner by 2015, a status it already enjoys with Chile and Brazil, among others.

Beijing’s recent maritime skirmishes with its neighbours, its naval build-up — including the recent disclosure that it was “reciprocating” U.S. naval and air intrusions into its 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) — and its alleged cyber-espionage have increased concerns here that China is systematically trying to challenge U.S. power and the international system on which it is based.

“To my way of thinking, we’re caught in a strange argument over dominance, and we’re trying to preserve the monopoly position in terms of power that we gained in World War II and the Soviet default in the Cold War which left us the only one standing,” according Amb. Chas Freeman, Jr., (ret.), a China specialist who served as President Richard Nixon’s interpreter during his ground-breaking trip to Beijing in 1972.

“So, we’re not really willing to share or accommodate very much, which has drawn a predictable reaction – in other words, Zhou Enlai’s famous statement that if we wanted China to be an enemy, all we have to do is treat it like one. That prophecy is self-fulfilling and in many respects seems to be coming true,” added Freeman, author of a new memoir on Sino-U.S. relations, ‘Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige’.

Freeman said he hopes the Sunnylands meeting will indeed follow the model set by Nixon and his conversations with Mao Zedong and Chou 41 years ago, the last time leaders of the two nations dispensed with the “bureaucratic litany of irritants” in favour of a wide-ranging discussion that ultimately resulted in “broad strategic understanding and catalysed something entirely new in the relationship that turned out to be very good for both sides.

“If the two sides rise above their staffs, I would be optimistic,” he told IPS. “I think they’re capable of reaching understandings at a strategic level that then become the basis for working through some of the specific problems that trouble us. If they follow the scripts they will have been provided by staff, then I think this could be like the Kennedy-Khrushchev Vienna Summit (in 1961), the disaster that led directly to the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

“We have an opportunity to turn it in a different direction. Mr. Xi seems to see that; I hope we do, too. The president deserves a lot of credit for being willing to devote this time and effort to a meeting that both sides don’t expect to produce so-called ‘deliverables’,” he added.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The victory of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the recent Japanese elections, with Shinzo Abe coming back as prime minister after five years, will probably mean an escalation of tensions with China. Both countries are embarking on a fresh burst of nationalism, but for different reasons.

Roberto Savio.

Japan is suffering from an economic and political crisis. The economy is stagnating (albeit at a high level), and Abe will be heading the sixth government in five years. His party had been in power almost with interruption since the end of the Second World War, until he resigned abruptly in 2007 for serious health reasons.

The Japanese tried for a change, and in 2009 put the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in power, which rapidly went through three prime ministers in just three years. The DPJ has been a terrible administrator and its handling of the nuclear disaster and tsunami in 2011 has been completely incomprehensible. During a visit to Japan earlier this year, I heard from refugees housed in a large camp in the north that they had not seen an official in 18 months. In the meantime, Abe found a medicine that worked and made his comeback, largely thanks to the debacle of the DPJ. But nothing has changed – Japan has an old prime minister with a new medicine, but there are no new ideas or new leaders.

What is new is that the tide in Japan has shifted in the direction of nationalism. Not only is Abe a hawk who has always minimised Japanese aggression in Asia, even denying the enslavement of Korean women as prostitutes for the Japanese army. More seriously, he wants to eliminate Article 19 of the constitution, which forbids Japan from having an army for offensive purposes and commits the country to peace. This can only come about through a referendum and, lately, the citizens of three of the largest Japanese cities have elected right-wing mayors.

The economic crisis is bringing the usual escape from reality, with politicians claiming that they will go back to the old good days and people wanting to believe that this is possible – “All we need is a strong leader, forget the economy, globalisation and other structural problems”.

Rising nationalism in China has totally different roots. Xi Jinping, who is set to become China’s new president in March 2012, has much more power than in past transitions, but knows well that the idea of communism is no longer vital and that he has to come up with some popular idea for rallying the people behind him. So he speaks about “fu xing”, the idea of “renewal”, which has always been a strong element in Chinese history, and he associates that with the “Chinese dream”. His speeches have mixed bolder economic policies with anti-corruption measures, a vigorous military build-up and a muscular foreign policy. The Chinese have not forgotten the humiliation of the two Opium Wars in the 19th century, when the Western powers used arms to impose their right to sell opium freely in China during the Qing dynasty.

Beside the use of “fu xing” in his speeches, it is worth noting that, two months before his election in November as general secretary of China’s Communist Party, Xi was appointed as head of a powerful inter-agency group high up in the Chinese Government to oversee maritime disputes. And it was during Xis tenure that the conflict over the Diaoyu-Senkaku islands flared up.

The islands were originally Chinese, but in 1895 were annexed by Japan during the first Sino-Japanese war (another Chinese humiliation), amidst general indifference. But some years ago, a geological survey found that the islands could have deposits of gas and oil. The ultra-nationalist governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, wanted to buy those three barren and uninhabited islands from their private Japanese owner as a sign of Japanese muscle. To outsmart Ishihara, Japan’s outgoing prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, bought them for the government. This, of course, met with a sharp Chinese response and enormous mass demonstrations, which, while allowed by the government, were basically spontaneous. Since then, boats from both countries have been to the islands in a show of sovereignty.

Then, on Dec. 13, on the eve of the Japanese elections, a Chinese plane flew over the islands, with five Japanese F-15 fighter jets sent to intercept it.

As the late Tarzi Vittachi[1] famously said, “Everything is always about something else”. In this case, it is about the consequences of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), concluded in 1982, which basically gives countries “economic exclusive rights” to an area of up to 650 kilometres around their coasts.  Because of its many islands (Minami, Ogasawaram, Izu) situated 2,000 kilometres from Tokyo, Japan thus has an exclusive maritime zone of 4.5 million square kilometres, the ninth largest in the world. China, with more coast than Japan, has only 880,000 square kilometres, ranking 31st in the world, between the Maldives and Somalia. Furthermore, China is blocked by the maritime zones of the United States (islands such as Guam, Palau, Caroline, etc.), the Philippines and South Korea.

Let us add that Obama has announced that, by 2016, 60 percent of the U.S. fleet will be at sea around China. This will include six aircraft carriers and all the most advanced weapons, from nuclear submarines to electronic shields, formally deployed against North Korea (but, in fact, against China). And, in the dispute between China and Japan, while it has called for peace and diplomacy, Washington has also made clear that, in the event of conflict, it considers itself obliged to intervene in favour of Japan, by virtue of the mutual defence treaty that both countries signed in 1960.

This kind of conflict between China and Japan should actually be resolved by the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN), in which the United States is an observer. But ASEAN is irremediably split over China, with some countries like Cambodia so dependent on Chinese aid that they block any attempt to regulate China.

There are maritime disputes among nearly all countries in this part of the world: the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, Brunei and Russia all have unresolved issues of sovereignty over islands. But it is unmistakable that China is ready to confront others. In its latest passport, China has printed a map of Asia in which it lays claim to practically all of the South China Sea. The Philippines has refused to stamp the passport and, on the eve of the Japanese elections, its minister of foreign affairs declared that his country “would very much welcome” a change of the Japanese constitution, allowing Tokyo once again to become a military power and this from a major victim of Japanese invasion during the Second World War.

All the signs point in the direction of this dispute over three barren islands becoming a major element in the realignment of geopolitics in the near future. When will humankind ever be free from the spectre of confrontation and war?

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

[1] Senior official with UNFPA and UNICEF.

Roberto Savio is founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News.