China-West ambitions inscribed in negotiations at COP conference

By Nick O'MalleyUpdated November 9, 2021 â€" 4.05pmfirst published at 8.31am

At a glance, the announcement at United Nations climate talks last week that the United States along with the United Kingdom and other European nations would channel US$10 billion to South Africa to help it shut down its fleet of coal-power generators is unvarnished good news for the world.

And it is good news. It is an example of how wealthy nations might help emerging economies skip faster past the carbon-heavy period of their development.

Former US president Barack Obama speaks during day nine of COP26.Credit:Getty

But it’s more than that. It is also an example of the geostrategic intrigue attendant to the climate talks.

One of the long-standing voting blocs in the Conference of the Parties has been BASIC - made up of Brazil, India, South Africa and China.

These large emerging economies have traditionally pushed back on the demands of western nations that they decarbonise faster, pointing out not unreasonably that the world is in this mess because rich nations developed their economies over centuries by burning hydrocarbons.

Wealthier nations contend, not unreasonably, that we are all cooked if BASIC nations don’t increase their ambition.

In a world where, as former President Barack Obama put in his speech, international cooperation has atrophied, these tensions are feeding into climate talks, particularly between the US and China.

The South Africa deal is not only an example of the creative use of financial assistance to help a heavy emitter decarbonise faster, says one COP veteran, it also serves to stick a wedge in the BASIC bloc.

“Of course the US wants to break apart the BASIC bloc. It has been a force in the negotiations, and it’s probably still going to raise its head here in some fashion. I’d be very shocked if it didn’t.

“But [the coal deal] is probably going to knock off the rough edges of how it operates, if South Africa knows that it’s going to have this funding stream coming in for saving their utility system, which is a complete shambles.

“South Africa may not swing in as hard behind what China wants. So I think the US has gone through a very deliberative process here.”

So what does China want? Well, traditionally, China and BASIC have pushed back against calls to strengthen emission reduction ambitions.

At this COP, there may also be differences on the design of new rules on how emissions are to be measured. Some developing nations are concerned about the cost and technical feasibility of measuring the carbon output of their economies.

Efforts to split China from its broad support among many climate-vulnerable and developing nations are not new. Indeed, Hilary Clinton originally announced the the US$100 billion that rich nations promised to “mobilise” annually by 2020 for developing nations to achieve just that.

The figure, says Mohamed Adow, director of think tank Power Shift Africa, was neither sufficient for the task, nor based on any serious analysis of need. Rather it was a political wedge.

In the end it was never delivered, serving only to reinforce the sense of abandonment felt by those nations to which it was promised.

While the West overpromises and under delivers, says Adow, China has been steadily building friendships in Africa with funding for infrastructure and, during the pandemic, with vaccines, he says.

Because temperatures continue to rise and adaptation targets were never even properly set, let alone met, developing nations now need funding for loss and damage due to extreme weather events.

Having set what Boris Johnson called “the Doomsday Clock” in motion with the industrial revolution, rich nations have failed developing nations at every turn, says Adow.

South Africa’s stance within BASIC may be blunted by their new funding, but the rest of Africa is unlikely to abandon its more reliable friend in China, says Adow.

Adow’s fear is that the geostrategic competition at the COP undermines the unity of action the crisis demands, and which the Paris Agreement went some way to securing.

He looks back to World War II when Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill forged an alliance to defeat Hitler.

“Don’t look at the physics of climate change,” he urges. “Look at the politics. It is not up to it.”

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Nick O'Malley is National Environment and Climate Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is also a senior writer and a former US correspondent.Connect via email.

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