There are two key ways in which climate
change will affect China’s development.
Firstly the impacts of climate change on China (such as increasing
droughts and water shortages, increases in severe weather events and rising sea
level, and the costs of air pollution) will affect China’s population and its
economic development. These effects were
discussed in a previous
post. The second consideration is to
how difficult it will be to shift China’s current economic model to one of low
carbon development and the costs and benefits of doing so.
China has developed very rapidly in a very
resource intensive manner which has grown the economy and reduced poverty in
China whilst simultaneously producing huge
levels of pollution that are now having a substantial impact on the Chinese
quality of life and a negative impact on continuing economic development. China was able to borrow ideas for its
development from both Soviet and western examples, and has followed a fairly
familiar development path. China has
also borrowed the idea of “develop first clean up later”. Given the dire state of the Chinese
environment, and the global imperative to reduce emissions, this is unlikely to
be a viable pathway for China. But there
are obstacles with Chinese characteristics in China shifting its economy to a
low carbon pathway.
