ASEAN-India-Australia: Towards Closer Engagement in a New Asia

9. Climate Change: An ASEAN Perspective

9 Climate Change an aSean Perspective Michael Richardson introduCtion Indonesia hosted the United Nations meeting in Bali in December 2007, which launched the current round of international climate change negotiations. The aim is to reach an agreement by the end of 2009 on new arrangements to curb global warming. These are supposed to start in 2012 when the existing control mechanism, the Kyoto Protocol, expires. Adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, the protocol is an agreement linked to the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). More than 180 states have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in 2005. But as the Bali meeting showed, the negotiations on a successor agreement are contentious. Among the many fissures are arguments over which countries are most responsible for accumulated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; which have the highest per capita emissions; and which have the fastest growing emissions. This debate sets the scene for one of the most crucial decisions on climate change: how will responsibilities and costs for limiting GHGs be apportioned? The way this is done will affect growth, employment, living standards, and the quality of life in many economies. It will also reshape global competitive advantage as energy-intensive industries and sectors in some countries are hit harder than others elsewhere by GHG emission controls. 153 154 Michael Richardson Kyoto and Southeast asia Under the Kyoto Protocol, only thirty-seven industrialized countries and the European Union (called Annex 1 Parties under the UNFCCC) were obliged to reduce GHGs and set binding national targets for doing so. They undertook to cut emissions by an average of at least five per cent below 1990 levels over the five-year period from 2008–12.1 Developing countries (termed Non-Annex 1 Parties), which form a big majority of U.N. member states, did not have to make commitments to limit GHGs. Among them were the ten countries comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. They are free riders on the protocol. Since the advanced economies were responsible for most of the build-up in man-made global warming emissions in the more than 200 years since 1800 and the industrial revolutions in Europe and North America, the UNFCCC and its protocol applied the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” to the parties, allowing Non-Annex 1 developing countries to shoulder a much lighter load than Annex 1 advanced economies. In addition, the advanced economies have to report changes in their GHG emission levels to the UNFCCC each year. As a result, many of these countries have put in place procedures and agencies to measure GHGs in various sectors of their economies. Many have also put a price on carbon and either introduced emission trading schemes or plan to do so. The declared intention is to reduce GHG emissions, although a number of Annex 1 countries have failed to do so. Non-Annex 1 developing countries, including ASEAN members, are subject to much less stringent reporting of their GHG inventories and most have simply given an accounting of their emissions in the five years to 1994, using 1990 as a base year. This contributes to the problem of uneven or incomplete reporting of global GHG emissions. The Kyoto Protocol also excluded several significant sources of emissions altogether — those from tropical deforestation, and from aircraft and ships. Limiting or reducing GHG emissions from burning aviation fuel and marine bunker fuel was left to the two responsible UN agencies, the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the International Maritime Organisation, respectively. greenhouse gas Build-up Six GHGs are covered by the UNFCCC and its protocol. Two of them, carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) accounted for 91 per cent of global emissions in 2004. CO2 alone accounted for 76.7 per cent. Climate Change: An ASEAN Perspective 155 Figures 9.1a, b, and c Global Anthropogenic GHG Emissions Notes: (a) Global annual emissions of anthropogenic GHGs from 1970 to 2004.5 (b) Share of different anthropogenic GHGs in total emissions in 2004 in term of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2 ,-eq), (c) Share of different sectors in total anthropogenic GHG emissions in 2004 in terms of CO2 -eq. (Forestry includes deforestation.) Source: Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Figure SPM...