外文文献及翻译：中国的低碳发展之路 China’s Pathway to Lowcarbon Development.doc

本科毕业论文外文文献及译文文献、资料题目 Chinas Pathway to Low-carbon Development文献、资料来源： Journal of Knowledge-based Innovation in China文献、资料发表（出版）日期：Vol.2 No.3, 2010院 （部）： 管理工程学院专 业： 工程造价班 级： 姓 名： 学 号： 指导教师： 翻译日期： 2012.5.28外文文献Chinas Pathway to Low-carbon DevelopmentAbstractPurpose The purpose of this paper is to explore Chinas current policy and policy options regarding the shift to a low-carbon (LC) development.Design/methodology/approach The paper uses both a literature review and empirical systems analysis of the trends of socio-economic conditions, carbon emissions and development of innovation capacities in China.Findings The analysis shows that a holistic solution and co-benet approach are needed for Chinas transition to a green and LC economy, and that, especially for developing countries, it is not enough to have only goals regarding mitigation and adaptation. Instead, a concrete roadmap towards a LC future is needed that addresses key issues of technology transfer, institutional arrangements and sharing the costs in the context of a global climate regime. In this light, it is argued that China should adopt an approach for low-carbon development centred on carbon intensity reduction over the next ten years.Originality/value The paper thus provides a unique summary, in English, of the arguments supporting Chinas current low-carbon innovation policies from one of the authors of this policy. Keywords：Carbon, Sustainable development, Environmental management, Government policy, ChinaPaper type Research paperClimate change has become the most signicant environment and development challenge to human society in the twenty-rst century. Responding to climate change is the core task to achieving global sustainable development, both for today and for a rather long period of time from today. International negotiations on prevention of global warming and related actions not only concern the human living environment, but also directly impact the modernization process of developing countries. Although the process of global climate protection depends on the consensus of our scientic awareness, political wills, economic interests, societys level of acceptance, as well as measures adopted, a low-carbon (LC) development path is, undoubtedly, the critical choice of future human development.The science basis of climate change and its extended political and economic implicationsGlobal warming of the climate system has become an unequivocal fact. According to a large amount of monitoring data, global average land surface temperature has risen 0.748C over the last century (IPCC, 2007a, b, c, d). And the rate of rising has been sped up. In the meantime, global average sea level has been constantly rising too. Global warming has posed a serious challenge to Chinas climate, environment and development. In the global context of climate change, Chinas climate and environment are changing too. For instance, in the last century, the land surface average temperature has witnessed an obvious increase; though the precipitation has not changed too much, its interdecadal variations and regional disparity have been big. In the last 50 years, there have also been major changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather and climate events (Editorial Board of Chinas National Assessment Report on Climate Change, 2007).The IPCC (2007a, b, c, d) integrated assessment shows that since 1750, human activities have been a major cause of global warming, while in the last 50 years, most of the global warming is the consequence of human activities, with a probability of more than 90 per cent, in particular from the greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions due to the human use of fossil fuels. It is forecast that before the end of the twenty-rst century, global warming will continue, and how much the temperature will rise depends on what actions humans will take. According the Third Working Group Report of the IPCC fourth Assessment (IPCC, 2007a, b, c, d), human actions to mitigate climate change are feasible, both economically and technologically. Actions to deploy key mitigation technologies in various sectors, adopting policy and administrative interference and shifting the development pathway could all contribute greatly to mitigation of climate change.With China becoming the worlds largest CO2emitter, China faces increasing pressure to reduce its emissions. Being a responsible country, China will take actions to tackle climate change. When developing its mitigation target, China will consider such factors as level of development, technology know-how, social impact, international image and a new international climate regime underpinned by fairness and effectiveness. China will move into a win-win development path to achieve climate protection, quality economic development and other related policy targets.To develop LC economy background, opportunities and challengesAs illustrated above, systematic solutions are required to tackle climate change, due to the complexity of the global climate system as well as its coverage of broad social and economic issues. After nearly two decades exploration, human society has realized that in order to effectively mitigate and adapt to climate change, we have to fundamentally reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, which means that we have to achieve the shift to a LC future from the way we produce and consume to how global assets are allocated (including industries, technology, capitals and resources) and how they are transferred. From the perspective of the limited storage capacity of GHGs in the climate system as a global public good, both a high level of human wisdom and a new international climate regime to deal with market failure are required, which also demands the participation of all stakeholders and together they shall charter a new development pathway. Human society has to pay the economic prices to solve climate warming. Thus, the three exible “mechanisms” in the Kyoto Protocol ( joint implementation, emissions trading and clean development mechanism) demonstrate a meaningful experiment for the Annex I countries to decrease their emissions reduction costs. What is needed is to move forward from where we are now to explore a more universally applicable mechanism that would effectively allocate the resources among the key responsible stakeholders. The LC development path embodies an integrated solution strategy. It aims to build up a LC society through LC economic development, tries to achieve the restructuring of all the key elements discussed above and offers new opportunities for human society in response to climate change through collaborations.As a fundamental venue to coordinate social and economic development, guarantee energy security and respond to climate change, development of LC economy is gradually gaining the needed consensus from more and more countries. Though without a xed academic denition, the core of developing a LC economy is to establish a development pathway that has high-energy efciency, low-energy consumption and low emissions. Under a fair and effective international climate regime, the efciency of energy exploration, generation, transmission, transformation and use is expected to be increased greatly and energy consumption greatly reduced, so that the carbon intensity in energy supply for economic growth is dramatically reduced, along with the carbon emissions from energy consumption. Through increasing carbon sink and using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, the GHG emissions from fossil fuels that are hard to reduce can be offset. In the meanwhile, through the establishment of reasonable and fair technology transfer and nancial support mechanisms, developing countries can undertake the costs of shifting towards LC patterns while being at the lowest end of the value chain in the international trade structure. The perspectives of development value need to be changed in order to promote the transition of consumption towards a sustainable and LC future.What needs to be claried is that, due to the differences of various countries social and economic contexts, the starting points towards a LC future might vary, as might the pursued goals. For developed countries that are taking the lead to commit to reduction targets, their rst objective to develop a LC economy is to reduce emissions. For developing countries whose economies are still at a fast growing stage, their rst priority is development and their per capita energy consumption is expected to continue to grow. The objectives shall be multiple. At the current stage, it is hard to mainstream the climate change policies domestically. What is possible is to reduce energy intensity and increase carbon productivity in order to gradually decouple economic growth and carbon emissions. What is equally important is that there exist many uncertainties in development of LC economy, particularly for developing countries. Tremendous difficulties and barriers need to be overcome in the process. At the international level, the uncertainties of developing LC economy include:Costs and markets at this moment we could hardly be able to estimate the whole costs that are required to develop a LC economy. It is far from being as simple as calculating the direct costs of adopting LC technologies. It also takes time to establish LC technology and product markets, especially now, when the global nancial crisis has hit everyone hard and when no one can give a good estimate about when the world economy could turn around and recover; though many experts and scholars hold that the response to the long-term climate change could bring new opportunities to economic recovery (Stiglitz, 2009; Wang, 2008b). What makes the situation more complicated now is how the USA, China, India and other key countries would participate in the establishment of a LC market.Establishment of a fair international climate regime and mid- to long-term targets to tackle climate change the development of a LC economy also depends on the international climate negotiation process and its result, of which the most critical element is whether it will result in legally binding global emissions reduction targets and the corresponding mechanisms of technology transfer and nancial support, even if this was not established at Copenhagen.To date, even though some EU countries have achieved the decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions, LC economy has not generated universally applicable, successful experiences; and what those experiences mean to developing countries still needs to be gured out and tested overtime. For developing countries, the difculties and barriers to developing a LC economy are obvious, including current stage of development, international trade structure, economic costs, inadequate market, technology diffusion system, institutional arrangement, incentive policy and management system. From the historic evolution of the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions in industrialized countries, most countries experienced successively the inverted U-shape curves of carbon intensity, per capita carbon emissions, and then total carbon emissions. But different countries or regions vary greatly in economic development level or per capita gross domestic product (GDP) relative to the carbon emissions peak. This shows that there does not exist a single, exact turning point between economic growth and carbon emissions. If you examine those countries or regions that have passed the carbon emissions pe ak, roughly 24-91 years, on average 55 years, are required between the peak of carbon emissions intensity and that of per capita carbon emissions. Some driving forces to reach different peaks have been shown in Figure 1 in terms of experience in the past and scenario analysis in the future. The point is, without strong mandatory emissions reduction measures and external support, developing countries will need relatively longer time to reach the peak of carbon emissions growth and then stabilize and decreaseStrategic measuresOn the basis of the above-mentioned analysis, the LC path with Chinese characteristics shall also focus on gradually setting up “resource-efcient, environment-friendly and LC-oriented” society. Guided by LC development strategy and its targets, efforts shall be made to develop relevant institutional arrangements, improve management systems, stipulate development plans, accumulate experience from demonstrations and pilots, and push forward LC economic development in an orderly manner, so that a sustainable and LC future can be shaped for China.Four major aspects are the key starting points to structure a LC social and economy system:(1)Establish a legal and regulatory framework addressing climate change and improving the macro-management system. The legislative feasibility and legal model of “Law to Address Climate Change” shall be debated and articulated. Also, in the legislation process of other laws and regulations, articles related to response to climate change shall be included. For instance, a technical guideline of strategic environmental assessment shall include articles related to climate change impact assessment. A legal and regulatory framework of responding to climate change will gradually emerge. Owing to the fact that Chinas administrative authority in charge of climate change remains weak and lacks capability, rst, the Leading Group of the States Response to Climate Change and Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction Work shall play its full roles when a more exible and diverse departmental coordination mechanism is established; and the group shall put forward strategic measure recommendations in response to climate change. Second, capacity building shall be strengthened and more administrative resources shall be allocated, so that better preparation is made for the next round of government restructuring to further improve the administrative level of the government department in charge of climate change.(2)Establish long-acting mechanism framework of LC development and stipulate related LC development policies in an orderly manner. Institutional innovation is the key to embarking on a LC development path. China shall become more pragmatic in developing a long-term incentive mechanism and policy measures that are in favour of energy saving, environmental protection and climate protection, guided by the balanced development framework and achieve the LC transition at government and business levels. At this moment, many regions and cities have expressed their interest and enthusiasm toward LC development. As well as the complexity of LC economy and the diversity of models, related guidelines shall be rolled out to guide the macro policy and regulate the content, mo