China Unveils Climate Change Plan

China vowed to "blaze a new path to industrialization" today as it unveiled its first national plan on climate change.

But, in a blow to efforts to tackle global warming, the world's second biggest producer of greenhouse gases refused to accept binding targets for emissions, saying wealthy developed nations must take the bulk of the responsibility for the problem.

The announcement of the 62-page action plan appeared aimed at deflecting criticism ahead of the G8 plus six summit in Germany this week and a series of key international meetings on the environment.

China said the program, initially scheduled for release in April this year - would increase efficiency, make greater use of renewable energies and increase forest cover.

The government also pledged more research into energy-saving technology, improvements in water resource management and public education campaigns to raise awareness of the issue.

On the contentious issue of greenhouse gas emissions, the plan promised "significant achievements," but made no commitment to a quantifiable goal.

Although short on details, the rhetoric suggests a change of thinking in Beijing, where leaders have focussed almost exclusively on economic growth for most of the past 25 years.

"We must reconcile the need for development with the need for environmental protection," Ma Kai, the head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters. "In its course of modernization, China will not tread the traditional path of industrialization, featuring high consumption and high emissions. In fact, we want to blaze a new path to industrialization."

If this goal is realized, it would represent a remarkable turnaround. China's double-digit growth spurt has come at a huge environmental cost. Most of the country's rivers are dangerously polluted, the air quality in dozens of cities is hazardous to human health and industry is so inefficient that China uses seven times as much energy as Japan for each dollar of GDP.

The country's rapid growth and reliance on coal for 70% of its energy needs are pushing China to overtake the US as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, possibly as early as this year.

Taking into account its vast population, however, China is less of a climate villain. The carbon footprint of the average Chinese citizen is less than a fifth of that of their US counterparts, and just over a third of that of a European.

Nevertheless, China has come under increasing to act, particularly given the huge economic advances it has made since 1997 - when Beijing argued during Kyoto treaty talks that developing countries should be exempted from mandatory cuts because they needed room to grow and were less to blame for global warming.

Mr Ma repeated this line today, saying wealthy nations must take more responsibility because they have been pumping industrial gases into the atmosphere for 200 years.

He rejected an EU proposal - expected to be debated at a special session of the G8 summit - for the extent of global warming to be limited to a rise of 2C by 2050. "I fear this lacks a scientific basis," Mr Ma said.

But he gave qualified support to George Bush's proposals last week for a pact among the planet's biggest emitters, saying it was a "positive change". It should not, however, displace the main UN treaty on global warming, the Kyoto protocol, he said.

Most of China's climate change plan restates existing goals, including a 20% improvement in energy efficiency by 2010 and a more than doubling of the use of renewable energies by 2020.

But Greenpeace welcomed it as a step forward.

"This is a first. It shows China has done its homework about what needs to be done," said Yang Ailun, Greenpeace China's climate change campaigner. "Even though the plan is mostly a compilation of existing policies, that shouldn't detract from its significance or the current level of effort."