China to embrace low-carbon city strategy

China's speedy urbanization has urged the government to take on a low-carbon approach, to kick off the green transformation of its urban development as part of the country's 12th five-year planning from 2011 to 2015.

It is forecast that up to 75 percent of the population in China will live in cities by 2050, a significant rise from the 44.9 percent in 2007. This will further the tension between the demand and supply of resources, and overstretch the accommodating capacity of the environment, says a recent report on China's low-carbon and eco-city development strategies.

Embracing low-carbon city model, which will lead to energy, industrial and lifestyle revolution, is the only way for Chinese cities to achieve sustainable growth, the report which was issued by the Chinese Society for Urban Studies points out.

China's aggregated CO2 emissions will keep growing until 2040, if China doesn't implement energy-saving and emissions-cutting measures, or only acts less vigorously, or only works for restructuring industrial setup to reduce the share of heavy industrials of the whole economy, says the report.

"Only adopting a low-carbon path, China is able to check the growth of its emissions 10 years ahead, namely by 2035," the report says.

Beijing has been called on to demonstrate low-carbon city development as a city suitable for living, to address the challenges it faces in population, transport, energy and the environment.

On the other hand, Beijing International Institute for Urban Development says that groups of cities will boom as urban agglomeration during the coming few years, to further the advancement of regional economic growth.

There is no doubt about the contribution of cities to China's development. China's top ten big cities in total are home to over 1/3 of the country's population, cover 11 percent of the country's areas and contribute to 2/3 of the country's GDP.

Bangkok climate change talks make no real progress

The UN climate change negotiations that end today in Bangkok have largely failed to deliver any substantive progress on targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or the transfer of technology and finance from rich to poorer nations for adaptation and mitigation, leading to serious questions about the political commitment of the industrialised nations.

"Last month, President Obama, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders of industrialised nations all lined up to say how committed they were to tackling climate change and reaching an effective agreement on how to do this when UN negotiations end in Copenhagen in December," says Saleemul Huq, senior fellow in the climate change group at the International Institute for Environment and Development and a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"This gave the world high expectations for the international negotiation session that has run for the past two weeks in Bangkok," says Huq. "But it seems like the negotiators from industrialised nations either didn't follow their leaders' speeches or haven't been received any new instructions because in virtually every aspect of the talks there has been minimal progress of any substance."

The G77/China group of 132 developing nations says that the EU is trying to "divide and conquer" the developing nations and detract attention from their own broken promises.

There was virtually no progress on new targets for developed nations that are party to the Kyoto Protocol to cut their emissions, despite them being legally bound to agree new targets.

The G77/China accuse the United States and European Union stand accused of trying to kill of the Kyoto Protocol, the only legal agreement that commits any nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. The EU as a party to the protocol is legally bound to agree new targets for a post-2012 period.

In the negotiations focusing on ways to tackle climate change by reducing deforestation , the European Union has removed a provision that would protect against the conversion of natural forests to plantations, threatening impact for biodiversity and forest-dependent people.

Only Norway, by announcing that it would increase its pledge to cut emissions by 40% of their 1990 level by the year 2020. This is an increase from their earlier pledge of a 30% cut.

"One area of hope is that countries are now reaching agreement that adaptation is essential to protect people and economies in the developing nations," says Huq. "Negotiators made some good progress on adaptation to climate change, assuming that money will be available to do it. But the big questions still to be answered are: how much money will developed nations provide and how will it be chanelled to make adaptation a reality."

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change binds rich countries such as the United States and European Union member states to provide funding to developing nations to adapt to and mitigate climate change.