THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES SHALL LEAD

By Dr. Detlef Sprinz, PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

In formal terms, global climate change policy has resulted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol. In combination, both spell out the architecture for a globally coordinated approach to reduce and, more implicitly, to adapt to the challenge posed by climate change. Despite US hesitance, the Kyoto Protocol has now a good chance to come into force in the foreseeable future. Yet while the developing countries are likely to be most threatened by the impacts of global climate change, they have negotiated on the basis of neither having - by and large - caused the problem and nor being willing to make a major active effort towards solving the challenge. This is both an understandable approach and a defensive one as it entails the grave danger of failing their countries in limiting climate change impacts. Far from being perceived as a largely passive force in global climate policy, developing countries have to assert their position as innovators of global climate policy and as agents of the well-being of their own populations. This will make them leaders, not laggards, and thereby indispensable partners in global climate policy.

The challenge to many developing countries is daunting. They often face one or several of the following conditions: They are poor, lack abundance of advanced technology, are expected to suffer from climate change impacts, face many other challenges such as economic troubles, unstable political systems, etc. Calls for outside assistance are standard approaches undertaken via different channels. Yet developing countries are expected to become the dominant emitters of greenhouse gases in the foreseeable future. Everyone will expect them to share the responsibility for whatever they cause - although the presently effective concentration of greenhouse gas concentrations is the result of past emissions in now developed countries. This will change, and with it comes added responsibility - and opportunity. The prospects for participation by developing countries in the abatement of greenhouse gases as well as adaptation may look bleak. But this does not look all that different from the challenges many now developed countries faced centuries ago before political and economic development started. And there are some lessons to be learnt, although this will clearly differ by country.

Many now developed countries were enduring subsistence level economies centuries ago, often combined with a feudal system and religious strife that often hindered political and economic development. A look at the religious songs from the early period of Reformation is quite instructive: Fear of famine, death, plague, war, etc. were commonplace. Yet many of these countries can by now assure nearly all of their citizens sufficient food, shelter, education, political participation, and quite often reasonably stable democratic systems. There have been various roads to democracy, and not always peaceful ones. Despite increasing world trade over the past centuries, colonialism, etc., much of the long-term political and economic outcomes were ultimately domestically determined. Long-term outside forces of development led to late achievement of sovereignty, as, e.g., Australia and Canada can attest to. Thus, whoever wants to make a political-economic transition is likely to be dependent on one's own population, its interest groups, their relative power and ability to form winning coalitions. If these domestic forces do not become engaged in climate policy on a reasonably broad level in those countries which are either contributing substantially to emissions of greenhouse gases or will be impacted by increasing atmospheric concentrations, then two conclusions can unfortunately be drawn. First, responsibility for one's own actions is removed, and second, the chance of adapting to whatever cannot reasonably be avoided is foregone. Either of these two conclusions would make developing countries elusive partners for those developed countries which wish to manage planet earth (somewhat) more wisely.

Why should developing countries do what governments in some developed countries consider undesirable? Would it not be fair to expect them to go ahead? Indeed, there is good reason to pass the buck, and if everyone does so, nothing will happen. To the degree that helping oneself is efficient, it makes sense to undertake respective climate policies towards one's own benefit regardless of what others do. Even better, over the long run, undertaking such policies in developing countries robs some developed countries of their excuse for non-action. There is no reason to believe that developing countries should follow the (retrospectively) folly path of high-carbon industrial development that the West undertook. Surprise? No, it is just the same challenge as the developed countries face with well entrenched interests now often pursuing the status quo. And here the developing countries have a clear advantage: Their energy and industrial interest as not yet fully entranced in the old ways. Whoever offers solutions for the transition to a low-carbon future, either in developing or developed countries, and actually practices them sits in the drivers seat. Who wants to be taken for a ride, anyway?