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EU Should Reduce Emissions by 60%, Chinese Ambassador Claims
Thursday 17 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 17 (TASR) - For the Kyoto Protocol principles to be met, the European Union would have to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 60 percent compared to 1990, Chinese Ambassador to Slovakia Jianfu Chen told TASR in an interview on Thursday.
The Chinese diplomat was speaking in connection with the ongoing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change summit in Copenhagen. According to Chen, the current agreement on reducing emissions by 20 percent, i.e. 30 percent in the given period can't be considered satisfactory in the fight against climate change.
"These are more positive aims compared to the U.S. ones, but still not be sufficient," he said of the EU's intentions. He noted that the UN Convention obliges developed countries to reduce emissions by 5.2 percent - an objective that hasn't been met at all. "Some countries have, conversely, increased their emissions," he stressed.
According to Chen, the major players at the summit view China differently than it views itself. He emphasised during the interview that China isn't a developed country, but a developing one, thus it does not have legal bindings vis-a-vis the UN Convention and the country itself should receive assistance to tackle the climate change. "Despite this fact, China voluntarily reduced its emissions by 46 percent between 1990 and 2005," he added.
The Chinese side argues that it is unfair to compare traditionally industrial countries with the People's Republic of China, which has only been developing as a modern state for half a century.
Another argument is that China is a huge country with 1.3 billion people. Thus, when the total amount of emissions produced historically is re-calculated per capita, China's participation on the climate change is much lower than the U.S.A. or EU. "From a global perspective, 173 tonnes of emissions on average fall upon one person. It is 542 tonnes per capita in the EU. In Germany, for example, that figure reaches 958 tonnes per person, in Britain it is 1,125 tonnes per head. In China, it's 72 tonnes," he specified.
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