Clinton's Visit

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gets two thumbs up for her handling of the climate issue in Beijing. It's worth taking a little step back to think how far we've come in recent months. Just two months ago, the United States demonstrated its familiar reticence to take a leading role of climate at talks in Poznan (see previous post). But when she arrived in Beijing, Clinton placed the climate issue front and center, telling China "we hope you don't make the same mistakes we made" on climate. She also made a smart move in framing the climate issue as one that threatens the security of both nations, saying "This not a matter of politics or morality or right or wrong,” he said. “It is simply the unforgiving math of accumulating emissions” (see New York Times). Indeed, Clinton even went so far as to participate on a webchat, asking China's 300 million Internet users to "work together for a clean energy future" (see China Daily).

China's response to this welcome overture has been one of cautious optimism. China's Foreign Minister pledged that the economic crisis would not derail the country's greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts, a welcome sign of confidence in the seriousness of the issue. ""The government's resolve to tackle climate change has not changed, and our actions have not weakened," the Minister said, before pledging that "We are willing to work together with the international community to push the Copenhagen talks forward and make sure they yield a positive result" (see China Daily). Elsewhere, however, China's government sought to emphasize the necessity of technology transfer if climate cooperation is to be enhanced. An official at the Ministry of Science and Technology was quoted as saying "China is glad to see that the US has started to take concrete action [on US-China climate cooperation]. But without funding and technology, cooperation would end up as empty talk" (see China Daily). The official went on to reference Beijing's familiar developing-country argument that it is unable to take on concrete GHG reduction targets (see previous post).

Beijing's hesitancy points towards the next step for a promising re-invigoration of US-China climate cooperation. The US and China must come to an agreement about technology transfer and financing the deployment of GHG mitigation technology. Chinese academic Zhang Haibin writes that "Hostility toward Communism excludes China from receiving official development aid from the United States, which could significantly hasten climate-change-related projects" (see New York Times), while a recent essay by Chinese environmental experts notes that international transfer of clean technologies remains underdeveloped (see China Dialogue).

In sum, then, Clinton's push on climate can be considered a success. The real work, though, lies ahead. As Zhang's statement indicates, Washington must build on its climate overture with a series of confidence-building measures to indicate its seriousness, including adopting binding emissions restrictions itself. It must also put its money where its mouth is on technology transfer- something that, particularly in the midst of economic crisis, is an unmistakable sign of conviction to tackle climate change through Sino-American partnership. Two smaller steps will be crucial to achieving these larger goals. First, China and the US need to reaffirm and expand the dialogue on climate and energy established under the Strategic Economic Dialogue (see previous post). Second, a joint task force should be formed at once to overcome the technical obstacles to technology transfer, most crucially intellectual property rights (see previous post).

As these steps are taken, Washington should also make clear to China that it expects reciprocation. The climate and energy dialogue should state at the outset that the ultimate outcome of US-China climate cooperation must be for China to reduce its GHG emissions by a set amount, within the framework of an equitable global agreement that promotes sustainable economic development. All this lies ahead. But it's nonetheless a huge achievement to be underway on the road towards a genuinely sustainable future.

The future of US-China climate cooperation

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will soon arrive in Beijing, with energy and climate to figure high on the agenda (see previous post). Two excellent reports from the Asia Society and the Brookings Institution provide a fine illustration of what should be done as Washington and Beijing begin to take the climate crisis seriously. China Environmental Law Blog provides a thorough commentary on both reports; this post will thus not attempt to summarize, instead making only a few additional comments.

As both reports note, one important driver of US-China energy and climate cooperation is the high proportion of coal in each country's energy mix. Both reports thus single out clean(er) coal technologies as being priority areas for enhanced technology collaboration. In particular, the Asia Society report recommends that the US Department of Energy's FutureGEN program to build an integrated gassification-combined cycle coal demonstration plant in China be accelerated (p 30). This is sensible, but it's important that neither the Chinese nor the American side lose sight of the ultimate goal of transforming the energy infrastructure, rather than simply trying to make coal clean(er). Ultimately, coal is not a sustainable energy source, and as a recent Greenpeace report makes clear, its environmental externalities in China are matched by others in health.

One major emphasis in both reports is on supporting sub-national initiatives, something CGS has consistently championed (see previous post). The Asia Society report notes that in the US, energy efficiency standards have been most effectively implemented at the state and local level; the Brookings report similarly notes the dynamism and vitality of local initiatives to combat climate change. It's clear that the sub-national level should receive substantial attention in an expanded US-China climate cooperation agenda. The Asia Society report further delves into cooperative training, recommending (p 42) that

A cooperative training program for the next generation of interdisciplinary energy
and climate specialists in China and the United States should be promoted to develop
technical expertise and promote mutual understanding.

This is an important idea, and it deserves particular attention. The US government already funds a number of programs designed to accomplish similar goals, including the Fulbright program, which supports this author. Creating a dedicated, Fulbright-like program to encourage US-China collaboration targets money where it's most needed: where scientists and technicians labor at the ground level to create sustainable energy alternatives. Even a small such program can reap massive benefits in terms of human capital enhancements on both sides.

Such a program can also have a small but meaningful impact on another key challenge confronting US-China climate cooperation: mutual distrust. The Brookings report insightfully emphasizes the depth of this mistrust, including the widespread Chinese suspicion that US pressure on climate is part of a strategy to "keep China down." This suspicion is amplified by the related Chinese concern that its economy is being locked into a pollution-intensive, low-value industrial niche from which it will be difficult to escape. Indeed, these insights explain a great deal about the state of US-China climate talks so far, and kudos to Brookings for emphasizing these crucial political contexts.

The Brookings report also provides a helpful insight for conceptualizing the institutional and governance challenges confronting climate issues in China. It's best, says the Brookings report, to think of sociopolitical China as a group of relatively developed urban islands, with a total population of 400 million, scattered amidst a sea of poor agriculturalists who total 800 million. China's leaders struggle to understand the depth of this sea. This conceptualization strikes me as a more subtle, intelligent framework than the "state policy breaks down at the local level" model that typically characterizes Western analytical descriptions of Chinese environmental policy. Even China's leaders, the Brookings report suggests, don't fully understand what's going on, a suggestion that meshes well with observations from the ground here in China.

While the report says relatively little about how to overcome this challenge, it's clear that a lot of attention will have to be given to institutional and political capacity building in US-China climate cooperation. Something that should be emphasized are the benefits that can be gained by giving local jurisdictions leeway to develop their own solutions to environmental problems. As explored in a prior post on China's environmental regionalism, delegating authority and responsibility for environmental protection, rather than ceaselessly trying to tighten the center's grip, may help to work around the capacity problem. The US has a great deal of experience in this kind of "environmental federalism," and could contribute a great deal to developing more autonomous environmental protection institutions in China.

In sum, these two reports are smart and subtle outlines of how the US and China can work together to address the greatest challenge of our time. They are particularly valuable in indicating how framing and context matters: climate and energy cooperation also requites work to diffuse Beijing's mistrust of American intentions. But this commentator for one is sadly skeptical that leaders on both sides will fully grasp the potential and imperative for US-China climate cooperation. One avenue, largely unexplored (though referenced by Brookings) in these two reports, is to frame such cooperation primarily as a security issue. That will be the subject of CGS's next post.

New US-China EcoPartnership Initiative

China Greenspace is all about international environmental cooperation. So it's quite excited about the recent establishment of the EcoPartnership initiative as part of the US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED).

The SED, just to back up a bit, is a sustained series of high-level meetings between Chinese and American officials "for addressing issues of mutual concern." One major component of the Dialogue concerns Energy and Environment; in June 2008 the two countries announced a "Ten-Year Energy and Environment Framework" through which they intend to "address the challenges of environmental sustainability, climate change, and energy security." So again, right up our alley here at CGS.

The EcoPartnerships were announced at the recent (December 4, 2008) SED ministerial conference in Beijing. EcoPartnerships are intended to link sub-national actors, including local governments, research institutions, and enterprises together to work on specific issues of common environmental concern. The EcoPartnerships framework stipulates that partnerships "may have as their objective the promotion of policy innovation, educational initiatives, technology transfer on appropriate terms, information dissemination."

The EcoPartnerships website, for example, announced that the city of Detroit and Ford Motor Company will work with Chang'an city and auto company to "focus on implementation of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles." Even cooler, New Orleans' Tulane University will partner with Shanghai's East China Normal University to "develop a global model for the sustainability of coastal cities, focused on restoration, conservation and enhancement of environmentally sensitive wetland areas." Bravo. In fact, CGS can't help but gloat that it suggested this very kind of coastal partnership a couple months ago.

But will they actually accomplish anything? Our friend Charles McElwee at Chinese Environmental Law Blog calls the EcoPartnerships a "boondoggle." He's right that "the US-China energy/environmental cooperation space is already jam packed with initiatives and organizations driven by the private sector and NGO’s." And I say, the more the merrier.

It's true that such low-level cooperation is no substitute for high-level agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting sustainable development. But it's also likely that sub-national partnerships can prepare the ground for the Holy Grail, a US-China agreement on reducing emissions. In a previous post CGS argued, following the featured book Can Asia Change the Game?, that cities in developing countries can help to break the climate deadlock by providing some policy entrepreneurship in reducing emissions. There's no reason, for example, why Shanghai and Los Angeles shouldn't be working together to reduce emissions and improve air quality simultaneously, even while Beijing and Washington dicker over emissions targets. The former pair are both affluent, cosmopolitan places where transportation and industrial emissions impose serious economics and aesthetic costs. Cooperation between each city's renowned universities can only bring benefits to both.

So the basic proposition here is that sub-national cooperation on environmental issues can help subvert national-level intransigence. It's a thankless, herculean task to negotiate a bilateral (let alone global) agreement on greenhouse gas emissions reduction. But for Shanghai and LA, for example, to do the same would in all likelihood be a lot easier.

It remains unclear how effective EcoPartnerships will be, and they probably won't result in sub-national agreements to reduce emissions. But they are almost certain to represent value added, and CGS, for one, is happy even in such a crowded "cooperation space" to see the SED promoting Eco-Partnerships. Now if the rest of the government (and economy) would only start thinking this way, we might really be getting somewhere.