A Leadership of Twenty (L20) Within the UNFCCC: Establishing a Legitimate and Effective Regime to Improve Our Climate System

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The North-South Gap on the Response to Climate Change Climate change has imposed an unprecedented threat to human security. The Bali Road Map (which includes the Bali Action Plan), adopted at the UN Climate Change Conference in December 2007, points out that the evidence of warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Therefore, the Road Map urges immediate global actions to reverse the current trend in climate change because any delay in doing so significantly ... increases the risk of more severe climate change impacts. (1) Despite growing global convergence on the urgency for actions on the climate change issue, there is substantial divergence, especially between the developed (North) and developing (South) countries, on how concrete actions--from emission standards to allocation targets, from financial arrangements to technology transfer, from industrial models to market development, and from adaptation plans to preservation of ecological systems--need to be taken to deal with this exacerbating problem. Beneath these differences are not only varied perceptions and explanations of the causes, and hence responsibility for climate change, but also substantial conflicts of interest caused by the gap between the North and South in socioeconomic development. Developing countries, including fast-developing China and India, believe the countries (particularly, the United States) must shoulder the major responsibility in reversing climate change not only because of their lion's share in energy consumption, but because the postindustrialized, developed countries are for the majority of carbon dioxide emissions since the dawn of industrialization. The South insists that the developed countries, given their predominance in technology, finance, and capacity for research and development, should provide assistance instead of shifting responsibility to the developing countries in the effort to improve the climate system. Although the dramatic increase in carbon emissions in the developing countries is hardly defensible, the Southern countries' demand that the North take major responsibility in addressing the climate change issue (e.g., adopting a higher emission standard, equitable allocation of carbon emissions, providing more financial and technical assistance, and changing lifestyles) is morally and economically justified in terms of poverty eradication and human development. The North holds the viewpoint that the developed countries (especially, the European Union and Japan) have endeavored to contain climate change, resulting in remarkable improvement not only in energy efficiency (their energy consumption per capita is over three times above the average in developing countries), but also in the ecological systems in their economies. Moreover, policy initiatives and increasing commitment by the North have helped generate global momentum to reverse (or, at least, contain) climate change. As the emerging economic powers, especially China, are becoming the leading carbon emitters, there is a growing concern and anxiety that rapid development in these countries will further exacerbate the already endangered climate system. The North is urging the South (particularly, China and India) to be responsible stakeholders in the global effort to improve the climate system. The difference between North and South on the climate change issue reflects a fundamental dilemma in the South's effort to achieve economic modernization, which is an inalienable goal, if not right, for human development. Because industrialization has been the only way for a human society to achieve this goal effectively, virtually all developing countries have embarked on the same Northern path in their efforts to modernize their societies and economies. While the developed countries are trying to upgrade their industries to become high tech, high value added, and consume less energy, the irony is that high energy-consumption but (usually) low value-added manufacturing and processing industries have been outsourced to developing countries and are a dominant force in their economic development. …